Living in my own multivers☆

“Mom! Is it okay if Yoongi stays the night?”

Not yours, though. Other than his own parents doing less than the bare minimum to play their role, the details of his home life remained murky at best. However, you caught on at an early age that they simply weren’t good people, which explained his constant presence at the breakfast table several times a week.

You’re ten years old the first time Yoongi is at your home for a sleepover and your mom smiles when your brother asks for permission, noting the hope in both boys’ eyes. They high five happily after approval is granted, scurrying back to the backyard to play soccer.

Before Yoongi slips outside, he makes eye contact with you in the living room, where you watch television alone.

He says your name, exasperated. “Well, are you coming?”

Momentarily taken aback, you pause; you’re too used to vanishing into the backdrop at school and home. Quiet, well-mannered and taking a backseat to your more extroverted friends and popular older brother. But Yoongi always had that ability to draw you in, some strange power he perfected over people. You end up hopping off the couch and trailing after him.

The next few months, Yoongi would come over once a week to watch a movie with your brother, Owen, and often times, your parents would nag the latter to include you. You end up in the basement sandwiched between the two boys, skimming through a mountain of DVDs with them and gave your opinion every once in a while.

"Stop hogging the popcorn,” Owen grumbles once the movie has started, reaching over Yoongi on the couch to snatch the bowl away from you.

When he did that, Yoongi would wordlessly pass you the bowl back right after, even if Owen complained that he wanted it on his side.

He’d found an escape through Owen, his best friend that opened your home to Yoongi whenever he needed it. This proved to be a constant necessity and soon enough, your family welcomed him like their own. You came home after school and never blinked twice when you saw Yoongi sitting on the basement couch, playing video games with Owen. Passing rice to him at the dinner table and waking up the next morning to board the school bus as three became a normal occurrence.

Sleepovers turned into more at some point and you’re not exactly sure when it started, but you remember one night when you noticed the change for the first time. You’re in your brother’s room, the two of you messing around on Mario Kart, cross-legged on the floor when the window creaks open. Violently, even, but neither you or Owen flinch at the sharp noise.

He doesn’t flinch when Yoongi effortlessly jumps in either, shoes hitting the carpet with a light thud that interrupts the sound of Mario collecting coins on the screen. His best friend’s green hair is tousled by the wind and as usual, you glance at the visible purple skin on his knuckles that no one ever comments on, even in spite of the constant stares. The red in the whites of his eyes are just as hard to ignore, as he gives you a little wave.

You’ve always been there, like a shadow. You don’t say or do much, but your presence is lucid and just enough for you to offer a wave back. Nothing more, like you usually do. Owen greets him without looking up from the game.

“Yo.”

“Hey, man.”

Yoongi nonchalantly plops his backpack underneath Owen’s desk and makes himself comfortable in between the pair of you. Your knee bumps against his and you hope that he doesn’t notice your blush as much as you hope he doesn’t notice your Hello Kitty pajamas.

“You gonna let me have Princess Peach or what?” It takes a second for you to realize it, but Yoongi is talking to you. He has a lazy smirk on and your ears burn—not because of that, but because he remembers what character you like to play.

You clear your throat. “S-Sure. Go, uh, right ahead.”

There’s something automatically enchanting about your older brother’s best friend that makes you feel like a fool. It could be the mystique of it all, the seemingly older and wiser experiences of the boy next to you that felt untouchable.

The three of you play the game and the night goes on like it’s a normal hangout. When you leave Owen’s room to go to bed, Yoongi remains there. You don’t think he ever actually leaves after this night.

A pattern carves itself out over time and soon, your mom gets sick of Yoongi accidentally knocking over her garden decorations when he sneaks in. After sitting him down for a conversation, Yoongi begins walking through the front door. He gets his own pair of house slippers. His own set of keys. He comes along for family vacations and helps your dad with the turkey at Thanksgiving.

When you start high school that year, you begin to piece things together even more. Rumours float around that consistently align with your suspicions and not only do you see a different side of Yoongi, you start seeing him around campus doing things he shouldn’t be doing.

You watch him slam guys from the soccer team into lockers for just looking at him wrong, teachers yelling at him for smoking on school property, making out with girls underneath the bleachers. You read sharpie written about him on the stalls of the bathroom and hear warnings about getting too close to him. People either talked about him like he was the devil or like he was every girl’s biggest fantasy.

But, you don’t see him that way. You never did. To you, Yoongi is your older brother’s angry best friend that the world misunderstands.

“Are you okay?”

You’re surprised that you’re able to will your voice to be louder than a whisper when you approach Yoongi after class.

The school hallways are deserted at this point in the day. You’ve stayed back for a student council meeting and when it’s time to head home, you accidentally walk in on the sounds of grunts and clanking metal.

He got into another fight. You hide behind a corner and watch Yoongi hammer his fist into some guy’s face, wincing at a cracking noise. The latter eventually has a friend come and yank him away, leaving Yoongi alone and panting. He slides down a wall, unceremoniously dropping on the ground.

When you approach, blood is already drying around his nose and as usual, his knuckles are bruised. Flesh split open. His eyes are empty and his jaw is set, as if hardened from head to toe.

Yoongi’s head snaps up, rooted to his spot at the sudden voice. His eyes do soften when he realizes that it’s just you.

He makes a joke out of it, like he always does. “Just peachy,” he muses, turning his hand over to admire his work.

You roll your eyes, but to your surprise, your body moves for you. Taking a few steps forward, you hold out your hand in front of him. You don’t know why, but you do. He doesn’t look helpless or anything, but like a magnet, you're drawn to him yet again.

“Come,” you mutter, ignoring the steady rhythm bellowing in your ears from your chest.

Yoongi blinks blankly. He’s just as surprised as you are and opens his mouth, unable to find words of protest. Then, he envelopes his palm into yours and you help him to his feet.

In silence, you lead the way to the nearest empty bathroom. He leans against the wall as you dig into your backpack for a band-aid. Neither of you talk, not even when you run some toilet paper under the water and he hisses through his teeth when you dab at the blood on his face.

“Thank you,” he says and you don’t know if you’ve ever heard him say such words to anyone but your parents.

You can count the number of eyelashes fanning cheeks from this close and all you can do is nod.

Yoongi was a little mean and arrogant, but never to you personally. He looked at you like you were something precious—the meek little sister that mostly minded her own business and focused on her academics. You saw the way he treated other people that crossed him, how Yoongi never held back his sharp tongue or already bruised fists. He never cared about the whispers about his either, whether it was the kind that circulated around your high school hallways or even around town about how the apple never falls far from the tree.

You may be biased, but you never understood why people viewed Yoongi the way they did, even with the mean-spirited attitude he exerted. He was a little rough around the edges, but you knew that he’d been through a lot for someone his age. Instead, you see the boy that cuddles with your family’s cat and helps your grandmother walk up the stairs during her visits. Still, he keeps up that image to the rest of the world.

It’s clear that the walls he’s erected aren’t for fun or the reputation, but to keep everyone at arm’s length. He refuses to let anyone get too close and it takes you years to realize that it applied to you, too.

Yoongi buys a motorcycle as soon as he’s old enough to get the license and eventually, you lose count of the different heads of flowing locks in the school parking lot at the back of his bike. Always gripping onto his waist, as he zooms off with each girl and by the month’s end, with another one.

If you had enough nerve, you’d admit that you wished you were one of them—even if you’re more than aware that each of those girls were temporary.

One day, you get the chance.

Some boy from your math class asks you to be his date to the homecoming dance and you have the worst time. He spends the entire night trying to spike the punch bowl and flirts with girls on the cheerleading squad right in front of your face. By the second hour of the event, you make the executive decision to get the hell out of there, irritated.

When you burst out of the gymnasium doors and find yourself in the parking lot, Yoongi is leaning against his motorcycle with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Typical. You make eye contact with him and silently wave, as usual, expecting him to carry on. You’re too preoccupied with figuring out if you have enough change to take the bus home.

Instead, he calls your name. Twice. You initially think you’re imagining the sound as you walk past his figure, but he repeats himself—firmer and impossible to ignore.

You spin around and he’s stomping on the cigarette, abandoned on wet pavement. Dew floats in the air from rain earlier in the day, a mist that surrounds you and brings goosebumps to your exposed arms. Yet, Yoongi is clear as day through the fog.

“Where are you going?” he asks, eyebrows raised. The last thing you expected was him prodding into your business.

Actually, the last thing you wanted to do was admit your failed date, all too embarrassing in front of a boy who probably never encountered any difficulties in his love life. You can tell that Yoongi already knows, though, by the way you’re weighed down by a look of pity.

You inhale deeply. “I’m going to walk home.”

He almost looks offended at that statement.

“No, you’re not,” Yoongi scoffs, gesturing to your attire.

You feel even more stupid at the observation. You’re in platform heels that you can barely walk in, a baby pink gown that you’ve been tripping on all night, and you have nothing but your clutch and phone. With a frown, you watch Yoongi approach closer.

To your surprise, he wraps his hand around your wrist. His touch is icy hot and your heartbeat drums even louder. You let him tug you towards his bike, wordlessly.

When Yoongi passes you his spare helmet, you hope that he doesn’t notice you gulp. “You don’t have to,” you insist.

A smile quirks up at the corner of his lips. “You scared?” he asks, his eyes flickering towards the motorcycle. “Just trust me. I got you, kid.”

The nickname leaves your chest fluttering again. You look over at the bike and swallow your nerves, having never ridden one before.

“No,” you reply defiantly, even though you both know you’re lying. Yoongi sees through you like glass, as usual. Still, you do trust him. You know that he wouldn’t let anything happen to you.

He’s always shown a subtle protectiveness over you, the way way yours hovers over him, even if he doesn’t look like he needs any kind of protection. But, you take it as a given and don’t look anything into it when you’re his best friend’s little sister—even if you notice every time his voice softens just for you or how he always grabs your favourite snack without asking on convenience store runs with Owen.

Yoongi’s teasing smile mellows and he places the helmet on your head, fingers brushing along the underside of your jaw as he secures the straps. You try to not move an inch, but it probably makes you more obvious. His movements are uncharacteristically gentle and he follows with draping his leather jacket around your shoulders. It smells like him, intoxicating and warm.

He says, “Put that on.” You can’t ever argue with that tone nor the sigh that leaves his mouth.

“Why aren’t you inside?”

“Pft, not my thing. I’m only here because I had detention and they told me that I need to help set up for the dance.”

You nod slowly. “Right,” you reply awkwardly, unsure of what to say.

Before he turns the key to bring the engine to life, Yoongi turns back to you.

“Don’t ever settle for shit you don’t deserve, alright?”

That night, you wrapped your arms around Yoongi’s waist as the two of you sped off on his motorcycle. You captured this moment like lightning in a bottle, like the gust of wind that sends dandelions flying; though, you prayed the entire time for him to not feel how fast your heart went as you pressed up against his back. You would do anything to replay that moment again and again.

More than enough people were surprised when Yoongi was accepted into a nice university, but you knew better. He was smart—maybe too smart for his own good. That was Min Yoongi to you, the version of him that last existed when you were sixteen and before he moved away for college with your brother.

Witty, strong-willed, and had a hunger to become more than what people thought of him. This was the last time you saw Yoongi, when he gave you a kiss at the end of the graduation party your parents threw for him and Owen.

Your parents loved Yoongi like a second son, so the celebration was as much for him as it was for your brother. The house was packed wall to wall and after a little while, you became desperate for breather and decided to slip away for a walk outside.

A block away, there’s an old playground that you and Owen frequented as kids, which you make your destination for the night. He’s back at the house, his presence taking up an entire room and being the life of the party as always, and you have an easier time slipping away without anyone noticing because of it. You usually do, as the quieter of one between you two.

When you get there, you don’t notice someone sitting on the swings. The sun is just about setting, as clementine skies bleed into soft clouds and the warm breeze unearths a certain calm that you’d been looking for. You’re distracted by the streaks of pink in the sky, as you climb your way to the top of the slide and screw your eyes shut to let the peaceful quiet fill your ears.

Then, you smell it. The waft of weed in the air, sharp in your nose. Footsteps approach softly and you’re nearly spooked until you see a flash of mint hair.

“What are you doing here?”

Yoongi climbs the ladder with ease and slots himself right next to you, not much room on the slide made for children. His eyes are reddened and there’s a curious glint shining in them.

You shrug. Owen made you take a shot or two with him when your parents weren’t looking, so you don’t feel the usual nerves in your muscles like yo usually do when you’re left alone with Yoongi. Otherwise, you’d be mostly silent. Even with him constantly around, he still leaves you shy and breathless.

“House was packed,” is what you settle on, burying that shyness underneath your skin. “Needed some air.”

Yoongi nods. He’s put out the joint, recognizing the way your nose scrunches slightly whenever he lights one near you.

He tilts his head up slightly, watching the same clouds drift lazily above. “Yeah. Me too.”

“It’s your party,” you remark. “Graduation is a big deal.”

Shrugging, Yoongi replies, “I guess. Parties aren’t my thing, though.” He chucks a pebble across the playground aimlessly.

“Congratulations. I guess I never got to say that.”

“Trust me, I’ve heard it more than enough from your parents,” he chuckles, nudging you. “Owen swears they’re happier for me than him.”

“They’re proud of you,” you say, smiling softly. You can tell that Yoongi isn’t used to that kind of thing or even congratulatory words, by the way he shrugs everything off.

“Yeah.”

“I, um—I’m proud of you.”

Yoongi pauses momentarily in his movements and even his feet stop swinging off the slide. He looks at you and it’s the kind of look he only gives when the two of you are alone. The tension he seems to constantly carry in his body dissipates, even for just a moment, and the corners of his mouth twitch into a real smile.

He says your name, gently. “Thank you. I mean it.”

You’ve never really been good at change. No sixteen year old ever is. When you look back at Yoongi, the idea of how things aren’t going to be like this anymore hits you as if you’ve ran into a brick wall. It reminds you of the way you let rings turn your fingers green and how you wince when cutting off the dead ends of your hair.

Only, this time, it’s a person. A person you’ve only really watched from afar, but admired up close.

“You guys are really moving away soon, huh?” you blurt out before you can help yourself.

The liquor in your body gives away your despondence, whether you like it or not, and Yoongi’s half-smile softens.

“You’ll see Owen during the holidays.”

“I don’t care about Owen.”

He pauses at that, your honesty freezing him in place. Meanwhile, you’re looking off into the sky like he was a few moments ago with a blank stare. You don’t know why the words fall out of your mouth. You’re not that drunk, but you also can’t stop yourself. In the darkening sun, your cheeks turn noticeably rouge and evading eye contact is the most natural thing to do.

Yoongi reaches out to brush some hair out of your face and your flinch—not out of fear, but because you don’t expect that gesture. It’s delicate in a way that Yoongi isn’t. He chuckles, continuing to tuck it behind your ear when you don’t verbally protest.

“Why do you get jumpy around me? When it’s just us?”

“Not jumpy,” you shoot back in a mutter, still not looking at him.

“Do I…do I make you nervous?”

For a second, the strain in his voice makes you realize that he thinks you might be scared of him because of who he is. His reputation. At first, you think he’s intentionally reaching for you to rile you up—maybe even flirting with you. Instead, you notice how his smile disappears and a frown threatens to pull at his lips.

The last thing you want him to think is that you’re afraid of him. Your heart aches because you wouldn’t ever see him that way, not when your family treats him like family and when you somehow show up for each other when you need it most. Funnily enough, you’ve never been scared of him.

You shake your head rapidly.

“No! God, no, I just—” you swallow hard, turning your face away even further to hide your embarrassment. “I just don't talk to boys that much, okay?”

A half-truth. You don’t need Yoongi knowing about your crush on him, not with how things have unravelled over the years and how he’ll be gone sooner rather than later.

You can’t see his expression, but you can feel the tension ease at your shameful admission.

Yoongi remains patient and doesn’t even acknowledge it. “Want me to go? Or walk you home?”

“….No.”

He chuckles and decides to flip the topic to moving away for college. You’re able to loosen your shoulders ever so slightly.

Yoongi says, “So, you’ll miss me when I’m gone?” He’s not even mocking, just clarifying casually. He speaks like he’s talking about the weather.

“Yeah,” you concede, looking down at your feet. Considerable progress from completely turning away from him. “It’ll be weird when you’re gone.”

“It’ll be weird without you for me, too.”

Your shoulder brushes against his. The two of you are sitting closer than before.

Yoongi is still trying to read the expression on your face. “Are you really that nervous around guys?”

Your face burns hotter. “Oh, please. Don’t tease me now.”

“I’m serious,” he responds, eyebrows raised.

And, you believe him. He almost sounds concerned, like he cares about trivial things like your lack of love life. You just let out a dry laugh.

“Sometimes, I guess. I think I’m just bad at it,” you sigh and think back to your failed homecoming date with how you haven’t had the guts to talk to another boy since.

“That’s surprising,” Yoongi remarks casually, like he’s explaining one-plus-one. “You’re a pretty girl, you should have an easy time.”

You scoff, thinking he’s trying to just butter you up, but when you look at him, you come up empty when you search for any signs of dishonesty. It doesn’t matter, anyway—with the painful nature of this conversation, you’d rather die than talk to Min Yoongi about how you have zero game.

“Well, I don’t,” you huff, trying to deflect with frustration. “You know that. I’ve never even had a boyfriend or anything like that.”

“What, don’t tell me that you’ve never kissed anyone either.”

Yoongi is still trying to lighten the mood, but you only grow more flustered. His features melt when he sees the sheepish blush painted across your cheeks. You try to hide behind your hands, shielding your face away further with the curtain of your hair.

Instead, you feel a gentle tug when he reaches out to them. They fall to your lap and your breath hitches when Yoongi inches closer—so slight, but enough for you to notice. His eyebrow knit together and you can tell that he’s not judging, but…thinking. Yoongi is thinking and you couldn’t guess in a million years about what.

You frown. “It’s not a big deal,” you mumble, but you’re unable to avoid his gaze this time.

“Do you want to kiss someone?”

The earth stops spinning in its rotation and the entire world feels like it’s closing in on you. It may even tilt on its axis. Your eyes go wide as saucers at the question and Yoongi chuckles. Again, you think he’s making fun of you and this time, you’re ready to climb down the slide, but he reaches out again.

“Hey,” he mutters, hand on your cheek and his skin stings icy hot. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”

The deepening summer evening is unnerving and uncertainty, echoing in the silence of the park. In this light, Yoongi is striking. He draws you in, like he always does, but in this moment, you’re acutely aware of it.

"Yeah, I want to.” The words fall out of your mouth like a landslide before they’re even processed through your brain.

Yoongi’s eyebrows shoot up, not expecting that answer. But, he doesn’t move. You also think you’re frozen. He doesn’t do anything until you do, letting you go at your own pace.

“Okay.”

“Are you sure?” he says, scanning your eyes for any hesitation. “You know you can trust me, right? It’s just a kiss.”

“Yeah, I know,” you reply, then pause. “And, yeah. I know I can trust you.”

He smiles with a kindness that he doesn’t just trust with anyone. You swallow your nerves until you’re certain that they’re buried deep beneath the pit in your stomach.

Yoongi managed to teach you a lot of things before he left that summer. He taught you to stand by what you know you deserved. He taught you that goodbyes can be okay and change happens no matter what. He made it all feel okay.

When you close your eyes and his lips brush against yours, the surroundings fade until frost and the only clarity is him.

Your first kiss, first crush, first goodbye. You always thought that Yoongi would remain that way forever—just a teenage memory—and you moved on with your life like everyone else does.

So, when you walk into a bar on the first night after moving back to your hometown, you don’t even recognize him.

“Thanks for helping me unpack!” you sigh happily, letting Aya lead the way out of the Uber.

Moving back in with your parents after years away working towards multiple degrees was seemingly as plausible as the sky falling. However, reality struck and you recognize that there isn’t much you can do when you’re stuck in the eye of the job market hurricane.

You make the decision to come back home temporarily while looking for a place of your own with some interviews lined up, returning after over a decade. You thought it was the safest thing to do with no guaranteed job offer on the table just yet and between some years living abroad, you missed your family.

Your best friend from high school, Aya, drags you to the nearest bar after you spend the entire afternoon sorting through boxes in your childhood bedroom. Standing in a room that still has boy posters pinned up on painted baby blue walls and a myriad of manga lined up on your shelf was a bit jarring. Being reminded of just how much time has passed was a wake up call.

Things change. You learned that the hard way many years ago and you still carry that with you today.

Aya’s lips stretch out into a wide smile, as you make your way through the front door. “Of course, this is is so exciting,” she squeals.

She hasn’t seen you for more than a few times a year since going to the same university for your undergraduate degree. While you moved away a second time to another country for graduate school, Aya moved back home and your friendship was relegated to meet-ups for special occasions and milestones.

It’s one of the things that you’ve forced yourself to get comfortable with in your twenties. Life moves fast for everyone and people naturally carve their own paths that lead you in different directions. Adjusting to living five minutes away from your best friend to only getting to hug each other at Christmas was hard.

Yet, even with the years that have passed, being right back in your hometown has you feeling like you’re sixteen again.

“Feels strange,” you remark, taking a seat at the bar with her. “Can’t believe that I’m actually back for good.”

The place is relatively congested for a random Monday night, which Aya mentions is the norm, given their populatiry. You’re surrounded by clinking glass, the roar of a hockey game on the televisions, and melodic chatter flowing from every corner of the room. Dim lights glow for an intimate atmosphere in the room and you’re able to relax for the first time all day.

For now.

Everything around you feels exactly the same, yet completely different at the same time. From what you remember, there used to be a toy store instead of a bar on this lot. The city buses have been painted a brighter shade of blue. The park a block away from your house has new playground equipment that lacks rust.

“Something to celebrate!” Aya says, as she tries to wave over a bartender.

Your phone buzzes as a momentary distraction with Owen’s name flashing on the screen. He’s asking how you’ve settled in so far, inviting you over to see his apartment when you’re free. You type up a reply, letting him know that you and Aya are out after getting some unpacking done.

Without looking away from the text thread, you ask, “Hey, what’s the name of this bar again?”

The voice that answers startles you—not because it doesn’t belong to Aya, but because it’s one that you haven’t heard in over a decade.

“Static. The bar is called Static, kid.”

And that nickname. Despite just a two year age difference and how overused it became, he never failed to call you that.

Your head snaps up.

It is him.

The realization stutters because Min Yoongi no longer fits in the mold that you’ve crafted for him in your head. You have to do a double take because you don’t see wind-tousled mint hair, but shaggy brown locks that fall just below silver hoops on his ears. Wire-rimmed glasses are perched on his nose, but the same hardened eyes remain behind them—the unmistakable signature of Yoongi’s that not even time can mitigate. Still, your eyes don’t decieve you.

“Yoongi.” It’s not a question nor a statement of any kind. You breathe his name, despite feeling like it’s been stolen away.

The man is like your hometown—exactly the same, but completely different. He’s older and it’s not just the kind that lives in the subtle crinkle at the corner of his eyes when he smiles or his broadened shoulders. There’s an aura of calmness that you’ve never associated with Yoongi. When you were teenagers, you only ever felt the vibrations of a certain chaos with him.”

“Hi,” you say dumbly, lips parted in shock.

At a glance, he doesn’t look like the boy who cut class everyday to smoke at the beach, but a man that holds confidence in himself. All your life, you’ve always known Yoongi as a guy who had everything to prove to the world, Now, he stands behind the bar and casually learned on the counter without clenched fists. You can’t help but trail your eyes over those shoulders again and his sharpened features.

He looks good. Mature. Grown. Needless to say, you struggle to form an actual sentence when you could have never predicted this reunion.

This is not the Yoongi you grew up with at all. You’re not sure if you should stand up or hug him, especially with how he’s in the middle of work, so you offer a hesitant wave. An awkward one that that and in your peripheral vision, Aya is holding back a snicker.

He sports a plain black shirt and jeans with a silver chain that dangles around his neck. Sleeves rolled up just enough to expose his forearms, you notice that the one thing that hasn’t changed is how he can pull off hair so perfectly out of place that it looks like he didn’t have to try very hard. Your eyes flicker towards Yoongi’s glasses again, thinking about how much they suit him, framing his face like a damn painting.

You don’t remember the last time a man’s presence made you blush like a school girl like this and it’s pathetic. However, you do know that it makes you feel just the way it used to when you would steal glances at Yoongi from afar as kids. You try to not sink into your seat.

Yoongi drawls your name like honey on his tongue. “I heard from Owen that you’d be back home,” he says, head tilted as his eyes scan your appearance. His expression is mostly unreadable.

You can tell that he’s sizing you up, not unlike the way you did.

“She came back today!” Aya cuts in and you’ve never been so grateful. “Can we get two tequila shots, Yoongi?”

He clears his throat, realizing that he was staring. The question snaps both of you back into the real world.

From what Owen has told you, he and Yoongi remain close. They went to the same university and you heard his name enough in Owen’s stories to assume that he lives nearby. Still, you didn’t expect to see him and especially not like…this.

Yoongi nods with a lazy smile, grabbing a bottle to pour for the two of you. One of the other bartenders call him over for something, but he waves them off and directs somebody else to go help them. His attention is fixated on you, even as he prepares your shots.

You’re still. Something about his older self draws you in just as much as you did when you were younger, subconsciously leaning towards him and watching him. It’s quieter, but just as dangerous.

Your eyes meet and he raises an eyebrow.

He holds himself like he knows it, too, and it makes things worse.

Noticing that he’s holding some top-shelf blanco, you shoot a hand out. “Actually, can we get well?”

Yoongi waves you off without hesitation. “Don’t worry about it, it’s on the house.”

From your side, Aya shoots you a look to not protest. You normally wouldn’t decline free drinks either, but you’re seconds away from stammering and making a fool of yourself from just sitting in front of Yoongi for the first time in years. You’re not sure how you’ve even made it this far in conversation, just watching him with an awkward smile.

He’s still studying your appearance, in the way Yoongi always has—silent and with a magnetism that is intimidating.

“Sorry,” Yoongi apologizes, catching himself as he finds lime wedges and even chuckles a bit as he does so. “You’re just all grown up.”

In your teenage years, you definitely had yet to come out of your shell. Not only were you quiet, but relatively soft in other aspects. You wore big sweaters and long skirts. You braised your hair for school with ribbons and spent the majority of your time with your nose buried in a book. All you wanted to do was blend into the background.

Your blush burns hotter. “Yeah, it’s been a long time, Yoongi.” You clear your throat, hoping your nerves will disappear with the imminent liquor your way.

Now, you sit in front of Yoongi as a woman. Your eyes are sharp and fierce, lined with a smudgy black pencil that brings out the best of your features. A dark blue bandage dress hugs your curves and lifts your cleavage just right. You don’t hesitate to speak up when you want to and you know when you turn heads. Things have changed.

Except for the way Min Yoongi still manages to redden your cheeks without trying.

“That is has.”

You look up and that this proximity, you spot the same scar that drags along the underside of his lip that he’s had since you were kids. It’s only ever noticeable when he laughs.

Yoongi slides over the shots filled to the brim with amber liquid, along with two wedges of lime. He watches you and Aya throw the tequila back without hesitation, whistling. You wince ever so slightly, but you’re not stranger to drinking after getting through university going to parties on Greek row or partying abroad. The warmth spreads throughout your body and you hope it translates into easiness.

You glance over him, now with a steadier breath. “Thanks.”

“You’re good at that,” Yoongi muses with a chuckle, grabbing the empty glasses. “I remember back when you couldn’t handle your liquor.”

“What, when I was fifteen?” you huff and it makes him laugh again. When he does, it feels like you’ve won a prize.

The corners of his lips curve up into a smirk, likely imagining the same memory as you—Owen’s first house party that he threw when your parents went out of town, where he dared you to take your first ever shot. You choked and Yoongi was there to instantly hand you a red solo cup full of water—at the time, you were mortified, but he didn’t laugh once.

Someone calls Yoongi’s name yet again, even though the man looks like he’s two seconds away from telling them to fuck themselves. Now, that’s the Yoongi you know.

“Hold on, I'll be back,” he grumbles. “Just call if you ladies need anything,” Yoongi says before shuffling over to the employee that has been trying to get his attention for five minutes now.

When he’s out of earshot, you send a glare to a grinning Aya.

She was right there in high school, snapping you out of blatantly staring at Yoongi from across the cafeteria at lunch. She listened to your wishful rants about him during sleepovers and encouraged you to make a move on him during the entirety of his senior year. And now, she’s watching you make a fool out of yourself in front of him yet again.

Aya pretends to fix her lip gloss. “What?” She asks innocently.

“You took me to a bar where Min Yoongi works?”

“Actually, he owns this place,” she corrects with a laugh, pointing to where he stands.

Yoongi is showing one of the employees something on a tablet, presumably explaining something. You take a look around and you notice that the bar is very…him. Simple, dark, and sleek. Nothing too flashy, but there’s an element of effortlessness that speaks to his personality. It reflects his appearance, from the new glasses and shaggy hair. Different from the Yoongi you grew up with, but somehow not.

He walks around like he indeed owns the place, giving orders and checking in on everyone. Calm, collected, and sure of himself. Yoongi has always carried himself that way, but it’s more evident now.

Still, your heart stutters all the same.

-

Yoongi thinks of himself to be a decently upright kind of guy. He got his life together during college, putting in all the hard work to figure out a path that didn’t involve metal bars or a lifetime of running away from the demons he always feared he inherited from his parents. Owen played a major influence in that, keeping him on the right track through the years and diffusing the temper that made Yoongi notorious. He owed a lot to his best friend and his family, who made Yoongi part of theirs.

So, when you come back to town over a decade later, glowing with a dangerous hue of perfection, Yoongi is screwed.

He notices you before you notice him when you walk into his bar. Yoongi is here nearly every night and has been for the past year since buying the place, creating a name for himself and engineering a confidence that his younger self lacked. There was arrogance and anger and then there was fortitude that only growing the hell up could build in a man. Yet, all of hard work nearly crumbled in a seconds’ notice at the sight of his best friend’s little sister.

You’re all but enchanting in the way that he remembers, an effortless charm that is rare in its subtlety. Yoongi isn't the only one that sees it either, watching the way several heads turn when you walk past and are unable to notice.

During the short interaction you share, Yoongi feels like an idiot. He points out the obvious and internally winces with each: you're back and you're all grown up. He thinks the years have been kind to him when it comes to talking to women, considering he had no problem with exuding a certain charm going so far back as high school. Yoongi can be enamouring, a true Casanova once upon a time, and he knows it.

He wonders why it immediately crumbled in front of you.

Now, Yoongi doesn't think it was obvious. He kept things short - that's the way he always does, given his nature. However, he doesn’t feel any less stupid. His jokes didn’t exactly hit, he nearly stuttered, and he’s sure that if he stared any longer, you’d be officially creeped out.

Worse than a wire short-circuiting, as soon as he turns away from you, his mind goes completely white. Blank. He nearly runs face first into one of the bartenders, Adam.

Adam attempts to shield himself until Yoongi catches his balance. “Woah—”

“Shit,” Yoongi curses, rubbing his jaw when he finally snaps out of whatever blank space he lost himself in. “Sorry, man. You okay?”

Adam is baffled. He’s been working at Yoongi’s bar since it opened and he's always seen his boss as pretty straight-forward —calm, cool, collected. Barely smiles at his own customers, who love his nonchalant allure and somehow end up always coming back for it.

Right now, Yoongi looks…dazed. Not entirely flustered, but definitely out if it.

For the rest of the night, he steals glances over to where you sit with Aya. He even thinks about whatever excuse he can make to check up on the two of you, but it’s a busy night for a Monday and the world decided they need Yoongi to be taking care of a thousand different issues at once. Problems with the register, training two new hires, listening to customer complaints. He can’t even make time to listen to the group of older women in the corner that have become regulars for the sole reason of being able to flirt with Yoongi.

By the time he’s actually gotten a second to breathe, Yoongi realizes that you’ve retired for the night.

He can still smell the floral of your perfume—something so sweet, but classy. Poised. You really do look so different now. Are different. The ghost of your presence lingers as Yoongi’s eyes hone in on the seat that you left behind.

It’s not like Yoongi hasn’t thought about you once over the past ten years. You were an integral part of his teenage years, even if you thought of yourself as nothing more than background noise to his friendship with your brother. You were always there and treated Yoongi the same way your parents did; you always gave him consideration, respect, and unconditional kindness. That kind of heart is priceless and can’t be forgotten. He’s not sure if anyone has every shown him that unwavering faith, even now.

By the time Yoongi finished college, you were off doing your own thing and seldom visited for the holidays. Every time you came back to town, he missed you by a narrow margin. One missed Christmas turned into several, then you started your master’s degree and eventually your PhD, and then all of a sudden, ten years passed.

When he gets home, Owen is asleep in his room as usual. Yoongi always works late hours because of the bar—not that he minds when the business is everything he could have ever wanted. It get hectic, though, and he looks forward to being able to sleep in when he has the following day off.

Or, rather, Yoongi looks forward to staying up and doing whatever bullshit he wants. Sometimes, it’s binge watching a show. Tonight, he’s decided to internet stalk.

“Fuckin’ pathetic,” he mutters under his breath, as he settles into bed with his phone in his hand, screen open to Instagram.

Yoongi feels ridiculous, with his old man glasses on his nose and his plaid pajamas. There’s a cup of steaming hot tea on his bedside table. He looks like this and what is he doing? Looking up his best friend’s little sister.

He already stays away from social media to begin with and has to actually install the app on his phone to log into his private account with less than twenty followers. There’s a reason why he hired someone to do marketing for Static as opposed to doing any of that shit himself.

Quickly, Yoongi finds your profile by way of Owen’s and he exhales deeply when he sees that you’re no different than him. Private account, about one hundred followers. You have your degrees and alma maters in your bio and nothing else. If Yoongi zooms in enough, he can make a profile picture of your dog. Owen doesn’t post you in anything either and before he knows it, Yoongi’s thumb slips and taps on the ‘follow’ button.

The next morning, Yoongi didn’t even realize that he did such a thing until he notices a notification for an accepted follow request.

“Shit, shit, shit—”

Owen sits on the couch, eating breakfast as Yoongi pauses his watch over his scrambled eggs to check his phone.

“What?” He asks upon Yoongi’s outburst, eyes remain fixated on the television.

Yoongi clears his throat, hastily turning off the heat on the stove. The absolute last thing he needs is Owen looming over his shoulder and noticing his best friend’s newfound interest in his little sister.

“Uh, nothing. Just saw the score from the game last night.”

“Weren’t you at the bar?”

“Was busy,” he says, clearing his throat and turns away.

Owen doesn’t question further, leaving Yoongi to his own devices - specifically, taking a closer look at your Instagram. The only picture uploaded is a picture of yourself and some friends on what appears to be your last birthday.

You wear a stunning black dress and pose with a wine glass in your hand. He quickly puts his finger on exactly what has captured his attention and why you feel so different—you’re absolutely radiant. Time has been more than kind to you and it’s not just your appearance, but the energy that exudes off of you.

Not only that, but you hold the same unwavering determination after all these years. He knows how well-travelled and educated you are and seeing it up close is all but impressive. It’s unfair to be not just kind and beautiful, but intelligent.

Owen is talking in the background all of a sudden and Yoongi isn’t paying attention until his ears perk up to the sound of your name.

“—gonna go help her with unpacking in a bit.”

Yoongi almost jumps up to offer his help, but resists. It’s not noticeable at all, as he sits firmly in his seat, but the joints of his fingers twitch ever so slightly. His eyes dart up. Still, he keeps it to himself.

Between working long nights and the seemingly endless amount of errands that take up his days, Yoongi doesn’t often get the opportunity to enjoy his time at home. He’s always had a strange itch for constantly affirming productivity. The second the fridge needs milk, he’s already at the store. When their elderly neighbour, Mrs. Lopez, needs someone to walk her dogs? Yoongi is out the door with the heathen of a poodle. If he’s not busy, he’s not comfortable.

Yoongi spends all day deep cleaning the bathroom and fixing the leaky faucet in the kitchen. He even puts on an educational podcast in the background to ensure maximum usage of his “day off.” It’s easy for him to get lost in the motions, the hours passing by like sand.

When his concentration finally breaks, it’s because there’s a light rap on the front door.

He’s in the middle of cleaning out the fridge when he hears it and a hint of hesitation graces his features. He rarely has guests and surely did not invite one over tonight. So, Yoongi takes a glance at his phone left on the counter, wondering if he missed a text or call from Owen indicating he didn’t have his keys.

Nothing. Yoongi makes an irritated noise at the back of his throat, wondering who could be bothering him at this hour. Mrs. Lopez goes to sleep at eight on the dot, but the couple next door has a kid that they sometimes send over with leftovers. Or, likely, it’s those sales people that have been popping up more often than not lately.

“Damn solicitors,” he mutters with an eye roll.

He trudges over to the door and doesn’t bother looking through before swinging it open.

Now, it didn’t occur to you that your brother would have a roommate. Owen didn’t make any indications that he did, so you assumed otherwise. It should have crossed your mind —being in medical school equates a lot of debt with little help from your parents’ humble income. You would know after first hand three degrees and countless of earned academic scholarships.

When you come by your brother’s apartment to drop off the laptop he left behind earlier that day, you arrive thinking you would be personally handing it off to him. In just the span of a few hours, he’d helped you build your bed frame and a dresser, so when you noticed the forgotten item, you decided that personally coming by to return it was the least you could do. Owen seemed to agree, as he texted you to just show up whenever.

You eventually got tired of hanging up clothes and folding up boxes, so by dinner time, you decided it would be a good time. Not bothering to change clothes, you set out for the noodle place that your family has frequented since before you were born and searched your text thread with Owen to find his address.

A mistake, you realize.

When Min Yoongi opens the door, you think you could sink into the ground in shame. It’s more revealing than what you wore at the bar, wearing leggings and a sports bra. Not anything you would care about on the regular, but standing in front of Yoongi last time already had you feeling like an idiot that’s never spoken to a man before.

Thankfully, if he notices your attire, he doesn’t make it known. Yoongi opens the door with a grumpy expression painted all over his face, but it drops when he sees you. In fact, he blinks blankly, like he’s not sure if what he’s seeing in front of him is real.

Yoongi says your name, eyebrows raised. “Uh, hey. What are you doing here?”

You don’t know how to answer and you’re also just standing there, stupidly blinking right back at him. He has to repeat your name again to get your attention, but you’re too hung up on the velvety way he pronounces your name.

Each syllable briefly takes you back to various memories of the past: Yoongi greeting you in the morning at breakfast, calling you across the hallway after school to walk home together, the way he said it before he took your first kiss.

Surely, he doesn’t even remember any of that. Owen never mentioned it—not like it would be wise for Yoongi to mention kissing his little sister to him. You figure that between the dozens of other girls he was spending time with when you were all younger, it was all but an insignificant thing to him. A favour to you and you both carried on with your lives.

Yoongi says your name a third time and now you have to snap out of your thoughts. If you didn’t look dumb earlier, just standing there, you’re sure you do now.

“Sorry,” you shake your head rapidly, a nervous laugh falling out of your lips. “Had a really long day. Got no sleep either—um, anyway, hi Yoongi.”

“That’s okay,” he chuckles, cocking his head to the side, still waiting for some sort of explanation.

He’s dressed down today, looking far more casual than he did at static. An oversized hoodie and basketball shorts, along with those same wire-rimmed glasses. They catch the light slightly when he moves his head. You gulp.

By some miracle, you manage to collect your thoughts—well, after you stammer and stumble on your words a bit. Jesus, you haven’t had this happen in so long.

“Uh, I—” you pretend to cough to hide your delayed reaction, but Yoongi just waits patiently. “I have Owen’s laptop. You guys, er. . .live together?”

You’re taken aback, but at least you confirm you’re at the correct address when you look over Yoongi’s shoulder and notice your brother’s comic book collection on a shelf.

He fights a smile, noticing the rosiness spreading on your cheeks, unlike the way they did last night or even how you used to blush when you were younger. Cute.

“Owen didn’t tell you?” Yoongi replies.

“No, he’s a bastard who never mentions anything.”

“Yeah, well,” Yoongi murmurs, trying to push away the way you’d been plaguing his thoughts ever since last night, “that I can agree on.”

It would have been nice if Owen mentioned you in any capacity beyond “she’s doing good” in the past ten years. Maybe Yoongi would have been less caught off guard when he saw you at the bar—not that it’s an excuse for ogling his little sister.

You pinch the bridge of your nose. “I’m so sorry for intruding -”

But, Yoongi waves you off. “You’re never intruding, kid. You’ve known me too long for that.”

Kid. Of course, he’ll still call you that.

At that, you can’t argue. “I guess so, huh?” You shake your head again with a nervous laugh. “Um, so, Owen’s not home?”

Yoongi looks back at his phone, where the last text Owen sent him was about sleeping over at his girlfriend’s apartment.

“Of course he forgot to mention that to you, too,” he mutters, then turns back to you with an apologetic smile. “Nah, he’s not. He’s at Daisy's until tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

Technically, when Owen told you that you could come by, he didn’t say he would be there. Your hand tightened around the plastic bag holding takeout containers—this is what you get for being a good sister. Never again.

Yoongi steps aside and opens the door wider. “Sorry about that. You’re welcome to just leave the laptop in the living room,” he says. “Do you want a drink or anything?”

This time, you swallow your nerves and do something that you have grown to learn: being confidence.

“Actually, have you eaten any dinner yet?”

Not even twenty minutes later, you’re sitting at the dining table with Yoongi, slurping on noodles. The offer comes out of nowhere, as you’re not even sure at what point your brain decided to ask that question. It just happened and although it took Yoongi off guard, he just ended up smirking and telling you to take a seat.

That damn smirk. Some things really do never change.

The apartment is nicer than you expected for your brother’s living quarters, but you figure that has nothing to do with him and all with the man who sits across from you. The interior is fairly spacious with a dimly lit lamps emitting a terracotta gleam. All kinds of greenery line the walls, vines crawling up shelves, and are perched on top of surfaces in clay pots. Other than that, there are few embellishments and minimal furniture that decorate the seemingly spotless apartment.

Yoongi pours you a glass of water, eying the way you observe your surroundings. “What is it?” he asks amusedly.

“I just didn’t think of you as a plant lover,” you admit.

He just laughs at that. “How did you know the plants are mine?”

You send him a pointed look as you accept the water from him. “Oh, please. Owen couldn’t keep a cactus alive to save his life.”

“Nah, you’re right. Remember that goldfish he had when we were kids?”

Yoongi didn’t show it often back then, but he had the most endearing gummy smile. He had what appeared to be a permanent scowl stained on his lips for years. So, every time you managed to crack one from him, it felt special.

Right now, he wears the easiest kind of smile and you can’t help but think about how good it looks on him.

You huff out a chuckle at the memory. “Yeah, the one that ‘mysteriously’ died after a week? Can’t forget.”

The conversation is more fluid than you expected. It’s not like Yoongi is a stranger by any means, but you’re not the most talkative person in the first place.

Two full days have finally passed since you dragged all of your belongings out of a moving truck and back into your childhood home. For some reason, this is the first time that you're at ease. Not worried about the move, not trying to hard to relax like you were at the bar. Everything goes just a little quiet.

“So…how’d the move go?”

“As smooth as it can be when you’re ancient and moving back in with your parents,” you huff jokingly, picking at some green onions in your bowl.

He snorts. “Watch it,” Yoongi warns, pointing at you with his chopsticks. “Wait until you’re in your thirties.”

“Pft, you’re barely there.”

“Tell that to my back.”

“Maybe it’s from years of hunching over that bike of yours,” you retort, noting the pair of motorcycle gloves strewn across the coffee table as the only form of clutter.

Yoongi just chuckles. “You sound like your mom.”

When the noodles are all finished, he leads you around the apartment for a tour. You briefly duck your head into your brother’s room after Yoongi shows you where it is, scrunching your nose up at the mess, and promptly shuffle over to the next part of the tour. This happens to be Yoongi’s room and he gestures for you to come in.

He opens the door wider, chuckling. “Don’t worry, this one doesn’t smell like a toxic wasteland.”

The room is not unlike the one that Yoongi used to have at your parents’ house growing up—minimalist, neat, but still cluttered with small things that reveal parts of his usually guarded personality. A desk with motorcycle trinkets, a bookshelf lined with what appears to be textbooks and other non-fiction, and a made bed with dark bed sheets. There’s even abandoned dumbbells on top of his dresser. You also notice a few frames on his wall, which appear to be some pictures posing with Owen and Daisy, along with his college degree in business administration.

Approaching the wall, you look up at the piece of paper, impressed. “I guess that’s how you found yourself starting your own business?”

Yoongi leans against the wall next to you, shrugging. “Yeah. Turns out I have a knack for that shit.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” you reply and raise an eyebrow at him. “You’ve obviously done pretty good for yourself.”

He hums, eyes trained on his feet instead of trying to conjure another witty response. You move along his room and notice that his wall closest to his closet has a few film posters pinned up.

Yoongi says, “Remember seeing that one in high school?” He points to a poster of a horror comedy that you’d seen with him and your brother, at a late night drive-in theater. That was the summer you turned sixteen and right before the boys left for school, back when everything seemed like the end of the world and you had no idea who you were.

It was also the summer that Yoongi took your first kiss. You wonder if he catches the goosebumps prickling at your skin when the memory comes back to you and if he does, he doesn’t show it. After all, it was a long time ago, you remind yourself. It probably still means nothing to him, even if it was everything to you.

You clear your throat. “Yeah. I guess you’re still a big movie guy, huh?” you inquire, fingers running over the posters on his wall.

“For sure. Owen and I try to watch at least one movie a week.”

“Aw, how cute,” you tease and he rolls his eyes. “Movie night, huh?”

He nods, pushing off the wall and takes a step towards you. Pausing for a moment, you watch as he seems to deliberate something in his head. You open your mouth to question it, but then he finally asks.

“Do you want to join us? For movie nights, like old times?”

A quiet routine emerges twice a week where you find yourself on Yoongi’s couch at seven in the evening, no later and no less. Owen joins, but more often than not, it’s just you and Yoongi. He didn’t mention this when he offered for you to join in, but Yoongi is often left alone or cancelled on last minute because of Owen’s inconsistent and ever-changing work schedule.

However, you still join Yoongi each time.

Your brother thankfully doesn’t bat an eye, either too busy with work to care or he simply doesn’t see an issue with the two of you hanging out. He even encourages it.

“You need more friends,” Owen deadpans one movie night, after Yoongi excuses himself to go to the bathroom and leaves you both alone. The flicker of the television reflect off his face, as he sighs.

You’re mid-chew with popcorn stuffed in your mouth when he says this. “What?” you scoff, voice muffled.

“I’ve watched you do nothing but go to job interviews and lock yourself up in Mom and Dad’s house since you moved back,” he says. “You know you need a social life, right?”

“I have Aya!”

“That’s one person. Have you met anyone else since?”

Chucking a kernel at his face, you pout at your brother. “Wow, way to make me sound like a loser.”

“There’s no such thing as a loser with a PhD,” Owen retorts and slaps it out of the way perfectly in time. “At least you have me and Yoongi.”

From then on, your place in that apartment is solidified—even when your brother’s notorious cancelling habit comes up and leaves you alone with his brooding roommate.

On Yoongi’s end, he tries to convince himself that this is normal and perfectly fine. On paper, it should be, especially since he isn’t doing anything wrong. You’re both grown adults that share evenings together platonically, nothing that is out of the ordinary. He finds your presence a fresh breath of air and it’s likely because he has the same problem as you do, lacking a meaningful number of friends that he can count on beyond one hand.

Plus, if Yoongi had to admit it, he’s always been comfortable around you. Easygoing, like he can be himself without judgement. He’s surprised to learn that over a decade apart hasn’t changed that and you’re laughing and bantering together sooner rather than later.

“Well, it’s different for you,” you grumble by the third movie night and the first without Owen after mentioning that your brother has essentially labelled you a loser with no friends. “You’ve always been Mr. Big-Bad-I-Don’t-Need-Anyone.”

Yoongi had been trying to reassure you that your brother just wants to make sure you’re settling back into town and that he also doesn’t exactly have a large circle.

He snorts, not denying the fact. “Don’t psychoanalyze me.”

“Someone should’ve a long time ago.”

“Yeah, maybe it would have decreased my suspension load in high school,” Yoongi muses dryly and you snort.

“Whatever. Thanks for having me over regardless.”

Tonight, you sit at opposite ends of the couch, trading stories about what kind of lives you’ve led in the decade wedged in between. Everything falls into place easily, spending more time filling in the gap than watching the movie on the screen. You think you spend more time trading stories in one evening than you’d ever spoken to Yoongi between the ages of ten and sixteen.

Yoongi lounges back with his feet on the coffee table and balances a beer bottle on his knee. A bowl of popcorn sits in the middle and you catch a glint of his silver rings when he reaches out for it. Every time he does so, you’re hyper aware of your own hand after he accidentally brushes fingers against yours.

However, you’re not nervous at all. Maybe it helps that your eyes aren’t on each other the entire time, or maybe it’s the fact that you’re no longer a teenager.

“By the way, your taste is movies is still awful.”

He hurls a single kernel into your hair, not unlike the way he used to back then. “When did you get so talkative?”

You don’t even have to look up from the screen to dodge. “Since I was evidently named the town loner by my dumbass brother,” you retort.

“Probably better than being known as the town delinquent for years,” he says, smirking.

“What a pair we are.” You playfully roll your eyes, adjusting the sleeves of your sweatshirt. “But, seriously, I’m not that talkative. You’re probably used to me keeping to myself.”

“Well, I think it’s nice,” he eyes you and it’s the first time you hold his gaze, even if it’s just a second. “You’ve always had…spunk.”

Your nose winkles. “Spunk? What am I, the Energizer Bunny?”

All it took was a couple of years away in college for you to finally shed your reserve and come into your own. You remained thoughtful and observant, but no longer in a quiet way and began to voice this dialogue. Like most, you found a new sense of confidence and identity that you hadn’t quite grasped in your teenage years and learned how to occupy spaces without apologizing for it.

Yoongi chokes out a laugh. “See. That’s what I mean,” he replies and at this point, he has no idea what’s going on in the movie. “This has been there the whole time.”

For as long as you’ve known each other, he’s seen this quality in you—between being the only person who could hear your muttered sarcasm at the dinner table back when you were kids and the way that, despite your quiet nature, you would never let anyone give you shit.

There are four times when Yoongi realizes just how different you are now. The first was at the bar, when you first walked in; all legs and a chin held up high, carrying a grace that only time has afforded you. Tonight is the second, as you find an easy rhythm in conversation that makes over ten years feel like less than one.

Before you go home, you do momentarily falter when Yoongi wordlessly tosses his phone onto your lap.

“Put your number in,” he says, turning away to recycle your glass bottles in the kitchen. “Your stupid brother is horrible at answering urgent messages. If you need anything for any reason, you can at least text me.”

You can’t read his face, but you’re sure as hell glad that he can’t see yours because your mouth parts in surprise. Clearing your throat a beat later, you tap your number into his contacts app. When you recover, you think of the next lame quip you can think of.

“Gonna come rescue me when I get a flat tire?” you ask, tone sweet. “Or when I get too drunk at the bar with no ride home?”

Yoongi just snorts, but you notice the way he scratches his neck. “Whatever. Yes, actually.” he answers, then adds, “Owen would kill me if I didn’t.”

“I’m sure.”

What you don’t expect is how your text thread is not at all used for emergencies. Instead, Yoongi sends memes about the movie you just watched. You ask Yoongi about restaurant recommendations in town, now that you have no idea what the food scene looks like anymore. He asks for pictures of your parents’ dog, even though he could surely text them himself.

yoongi: how was your interview today you: thought i was wowing them with my knowledge and charm, but the dude ended up hitting one me yoongi: yikes thats fucked yoongi: you’re way too overqualified anyways you: maybe i should just settle and become a server at your bar yoongi: impossible. you don’t like smiling at people you: neither do you and you’ve made it this far in life yoongi: touche yoongi: also, movie night? owen has another shift at the hospital though

When the next week of movie nights roll around, you start showing up with takeout from the noodle place next to your old high school, where you used to have lunch with Yoongi and Owen. Meanwhile, he’s already ready to defend his suggestions of action movies after you complained that you don’t want anything to do with a plot that involves exploding cars or a world war.

Movie night becomes a when rather than an if, assumed rather than planned. The third week blurs into the fourth and when Owen makes his return, he’s taken aback by the way inside jokes appear where old memories had left off.

“Hey, don’t gang up on me!” Your brother protests when you and Yoongi make fun of him for crying at the end of Coco.

The latter is still snickering when he walks over to the kitchen cupboards, pulling out both of your favourite bags of chips. “Dude, it’s okay to cry,” Yoongi assures, tossing the snacks onto the couch.

“Whatever—gross, when did we get those?”

You cut Owen a glare, embracing your veggie chips close to your chest.

Yoongi laughs again, settling in between the two of you. “It’s her go-to,” he says. You don’t show it, but you’re surprised he even remembered the off-hand comment you made about veggie chips last week.

Owen just scoffs. “As if I’m supposed to remember which nasty foods my sister likes,” he retorts, which earns him an attempted smack from your end that is blocked by Yoongi.

When your brother is unavailable and movie night remains with just the two of you, you become more comfortable with each other and you’re no longer stupidly nervous around your childhood crush. You let your guard down in a way your younger self refused to do and you’re surprised at how well your personalities bounce off of each other. It was always there, though, in the same way Yoongi’s quiet consideration is.

One night, you stir awake to a warmth laying beneath you, soft and strong at the same time. Eyes peeling open, you’re in your brother’s apartment with the lights dimmed and the flickering of the television momentarily stinging your vision.

Then, you feel it. The shift of a body against yours. Your cheek is pressed against not a pillow, but a chest.

When you finally get your eyes fully awake, Yoongi has also woken up. He wakes up to the scent of jasmine and honey, one that is unmistakably you. Confused for a moment, he groans and readjusts his glasses, which he had accidentally fell asleep with.

“Yoongi?” you murmur.

The sound of your raspy voice sends him chest into an irregular rhythm, but Yoongi catches himself.

“Fuck, sorry, I fell asleep,” his own voice rasps out, looking down at your figure that has yet to move.

You realize what position you’re in and with rouge painted on your cheeks.

He rubs his eyes, yawning and stretches without sitting up. “Guess we, uh, both fell asleep,” Yoongi mutters, not meeting your gaze.

The last thing you remember is bantering with Yoongi and insisting that you're “not tired,” after he pointed out that you were visibly fighting to stay awake.

“Pretty sure you fell asleep first,” you huff, smoothing out your hair.

“Did not.”

“Definitely did.”

You hesitate for half a second before scrambling to sit up. The clock reads just past one in the morning on the oven and although you instantly miss the heat of Yoongi’s body, you clear your throat and adjust your clothing once you’ve detached yourself from him.

Yoongi snorts, willing himself to his feet. “You drool, by the way,” he says nonchalantly, pushing away this accident as nothing but humourous. There’s the sound of the fridge opening and he’s grabbing water for the two of you.

You’re grateful for that and you clear your throat, letting the electricity on your flesh fizzle for the time being. “Shut the hell up,” you snap.

Then, with perfect timing on your end, the front door creaks open. Owen, with his shoulders slumped with the exhaustion of a twelve hour shift, trots inside and dramatically sighs as he kicks off his shoes.

“What a long fucking day,” he grumbles, nodding to Yoongi in greeting. His eyes locate yours and he isn’t fazed. “You still here?”

You’re just glad that you and Yoongi woke up at the right time because the questions your brother would send your way would not be desirable at all.

Still, you can’t shake off the feeling of Yoongi’s warmth or his strong arm that was haphazardly slung around your torso as your slept. The smell of laundry detergent and musky cologne filling your senses. His chest vibrating with laughter against your cheek.

Neither of you mention how there was no hurry to move.

The end of the month comes around and while you remain in what you believe is the longest interviewing process ever, your biweekly movie nights pass the time. Meanwhile, Yoongi is confident that whatever tension and restless thoughts about you have dispersed.

That is, until the third time Yoongi realizes something different about you. Today, you’ve dragged him out to the grocery store to buy snacks for later on. Owen refused, naturally, and cited his busy schedule at the hospital. Yoongi also groaned and gave a little push back, but he can never say no to you.

“You…you’re oddly health conscious.”

Yoongi raises a single eyebrow at you from where he stands in the organic pantry aisle, two different boxes of chickpea pasta in his hands as he deliberates on which one to get. He’s in charge of pushing the shopping cart, his rolled up sleeves on his button up exposed as he leans on it.

“How is that odd? I’m an adult,” he scoffs, putting one of them back on the shelf.

“Guess it comes with getting old. Just didn’t expect it of you,” you chide. “You used to smoke like a chimney—”

“—Ah, ah. Key word: used to.” Yoongi walks over to you and you catch a whiff of his cologne, smelling of cedar and lavender. He looms over you momentarily, just to poke you in between the eyebrows and you snap out of the daze.

You slap his hand away, but you’re laughing. He tries again and you swat, but miss, accidentally stumbling a little bit. Yoongi is there to steady you and he’s close enough for you to see the mole on his temple, the one he’s always had.

“Whatever. Lead the way to the condiments aisle, old man,” you snap. “You’re out of ketchup.”

"I know, it’s on my list.”

“And you have a grocery list?” you gasp dramatically, trailing just behind Yoongi as he pushes the shopping cart. “Who even are you?”

Yoongi pokes you again and he manages to succeed, even with the way you laugh loudly and grab his wrist right after. He’s smirking wide when a middle aged woman walks past the two of you with an exaggerated eye roll, muttering something about couples.

The two of you make eye contact when you hear that, which confirms that neither of you imagined it.

Instead of letting awkward air fill the space or ignoring it, Yoongi breaks the tension immediately. “And that is what it sounds like when you’re miserable and unhappily divorced,” he jabs.

Blinking, you suddenly break out into a laugh. “Don’t be rude.” You feel nothing but relief when the moment is skipped over and even made a joke out of.

He’s never really quite had a filter and you’ve gotten used to it at this point, but it’s nice to have someone like Yoongi around. Honest, no nonsense, and still had a sense of humour.

“To Mrs—sorry, Ms. Wu?” Yoongi exaggerates her title on purpose, as he turns past the shelves of vinegar and towards the plastic bottles of sauces neatly lined up next to them. “She’s awful. Works with my neighbour, Mrs. Lopez, at the daycare and apparently scares all the kids.”

The two of you continue chatting until you find what you’re looking for, which is a big wall of nothing but various shades of red and cartoon tomatoes. Yoongi is busy checking his phone for the grocery list to notice you struggling to reach the bottle you want on the shelf above.

“Oh, come on,” you grumble, just fingertips away.

You’re about to step onto the lowest shelf for leverage when you feel a presence behind you, strong and sturdy. That’s when you hold your breath, as Yoongi’s hand gently grips your shoulder to tell you to stay put. The other softly brushes over yours, just enough to grab what you need.

His chest is right up against your back and he reaches above you, grabbing the ketchup with ease. Your surprise is stuck in your throat, his fingertips electric on your skin and the scent of his cologne making you go dizzy.

A beat of silence emerges and for some reason, Yoongi doesn’t move nor put the item in the cart.

You clear your throat. “I had that.”

He just hums, unconvinced. “Sure you did, kid.” Yoongi’s voice is unusually lower, even raspier.

You turn around and he’s still standing so close to you, looking up into his dark eyes. The light bounces off the metal of his glasses slightly and for some reason, you’re reminded of that day in the park all over again—where the surroundings fade into something blurry until all you can see is Yoongi.

Back then, he brushed it off and led you back to your house. Now, he stands still and you can’t imagine what kind of thoughts are running through his mind, as his heavy lids bear into your gaze.

Yoongi notices the little crease in between your eyebrows, right where he would poke you. It’s a new thing, likely coming with age, and he decides that he really likes it. It always comes with some sort of pout, whether you’re in deep thought or when he teases you. Regardless, Yoongi loves seeing it.

He thinks he’s fucked for that.

When he sees it again, it’s just a couple of nights later at his own damn bar.

You’re celebrating finally being able to secure a full-time job after weeks of horrible interviews and sending out your resume like a message in a bottle. Stumbling in, you’re surrounded by Aya, Owen, and your brother’s girlfriend, Daisy. Yoongi is behind the bar and running around the place, as he usually is on busy Friday nights without fail, but stops talking mid-sentence to one of his employees when you enter.

The first thing he sees is a spine tattoo that is framed by your backless dress that falls mid-thigh, chiffon a pale yellow in hue and held up by a halter. Your hair is tied into a sleek ponytail and it’s obvious that you’ve already had a few drinks. mostly by the unusually wide smile on your face. Well, obvious to Yoongi, who is used to your more guarded demeanour.

He already has the bottle of tequila in his hand when the four of you approach the bar, pouring shots for the entire group.

“Yoongi!” you exclaim, a little shrill, but you’re bouncing off your heels.

He sends a fist bump in Aya’s way, gives Daisy a half-hug, and does the little secret handshake that he and Owen came up with when they were little when your brother greets him. When you approach him, though, you’re met with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

“You’re drunk,” he blurts out, but you only laugh.

“And you’re cute.”

That, he did not expect. While Owen’s face scrunches up , the other two girls look like they want to facepalm. Aya tugs you towards your stool, giving Yoongi a meaningful look when she catches the way he momentarily stutters.

Daisy clears her throat. “We’ve all been drinking for a hour now,” she says.

At the very least, you refrain from mentioning that you told your friends that you only wanted to come to his bar to celebrate. The girls also keep it to themselves that you mentioned that you wanted Yoongi one of the first to know about your good news.

Still, even without mentioning, he’s happy that you’ve chosen to come straight to Static, even if you just wanted free drinks. He’s able to look after you, if anything.

Yoongi nods curtly, lips thin as he tries to ignore your previous comment and the race of his heart. “Right,” he responds, moving smoothly back behind the bar and gestures to the four shot glasses in front of them. His steady, too-neutral tone masks his true feelings. “Go wild. And congratulations.”

The liquor in your system pauses to register the genuine tone in Yoongi’s voice and you smile up at him. However, you’re too preoccupied by your rowdy friends, talking loudly amongst themselves and trying to pull you back into conversation.

Throughout the evening, Yoongi isn’t able to get much time with you, not while he’s working and while you’re busy celebrating. One of his bartenders, Enzo, is serving your group and Yoongi finds himself keeping a close eye the entire time—even if he knows he doesn’t need to.

He’s running all over the place tonight and he still somehow ends up looking your way every so often, as if disaster will strike if he doesn’t check in. It’s irrational, especially when Owen is there and wouldn’t let a thing happen to you.

When Owen and Daisy momentarily leave for the dancefloor, Yoongi notices Enzo hovering a little too long over you and Aya. He’s laughing and clearly trying to work the crowd with jokes, maybe even flirtation. Meanwhile, you’re smiling, but Yoongi notices the way it doesn’t reach your eyes.

Even though he should be checking on an issue with the dishwasher in the back, Yoongi’s legs work for him and he approaches the bar.

“Yeah, ladies, I get off at around one—”

“—Everything okay around here?”

Yoongi’s deadly calm voice interrupts the conversation, pretending to have been walking past casually.

A look of relief washes over your features, while Enzo halts in his place. Yoongi likes the guy and all, but he’s gotten a complaint about how talkative he can be and doesn’t like the way you shifted uncomfortably on your stool just seconds prior.

Enzo presses his lips into a tight line when he feels Yoongi looming over him. “Just chatting, boss,” he coughs unconvincingly.

“You’re due for your break,” Yoongi responds flatly, ignoring the excuse.

Now, he’s made quite a bit of progress when it came to his anger management and patience, but the old Yoongi still breaks through every once in a while amidst frustration. His simpatico doesn’t go unnoticed by his staff, but they all know that Yoongi is more than capable of shedding this warmth for the personality he once retired.

Your eyes flicker to the look in Yoongi’s eyes and feel a rush of heat in your lower belly. The intense, protective stare that you’ve never seen him show for anyone else.

Enzo leaves immediately and Aya lets out a breath that she’d been clearly holding.

“Thank god,” she says, shaking her head. “He’d been trying to hit on her for the past ten minutes.” Her thumb jabs in your direction, where you roll your eyes.

“He was just…outgoing,” you say tentatively, burying the warmth in your body away, and turn to Yoongi with a casual msile. “You’re a lifesaver.”

Something unknown flooded his veins when he saw Enzo earlier, but Yoongi doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Instead, he lets a beat pass before loosening the strain in his shoulders.

Leaning over the counter, Yoongi’s voice is low and finite when he says, “If anyone else bothers you tonight, call me over,” he says, almost demanding.

At the space decreased between the two of you, you visibly gulp as you meet his eyes. Yoongi watches the way you press your lips together, the glossy nude shiny underneath the dim lights above. You can’t say no to that.

If you had to dissect it, you wouldn’t want to turn to anyone for help but him. That thought sobers you instantly.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, Yoongi.”

You’re breathless as you speak, but cover it up quickly by bringing your straw to your mouth. He has to turn away before you wrap your lips around it, waving the two of you off like he has something to do.

Yoongi definitely doesn’t. He retreats into the kitchen, pretending to check in on the chefs, when he’s really wishing that he still smoked and could escape outside for a damn cigarette.

He does get you alone later that night, even when the last patron leaves the bar and your friends return home.

“Just drive her home, please!” were Owen’s last words before his girlfriend dragged him out the door, giggling and clearly having a plan in mind for the rest of their night.

Aya eyes you when you don’t get up from your stool. “You sure you’ll be okay?” she asks, looking between you and Yoongi. She knows that the two of you have grown close over the past month, but is surprised when you insist on staying behind when the clock nears four in the morning.

Last call happened a while ago and Yoongi’s employees are wrapping up for the night, wiping down the last of the tables and others bidding their goodbyes. You remarked that you still hadn’t finished your drink, even though the ice melted long before last call. The rum and pineapple sits lukewarm, just enough liquid left to act as your excuse.

You nod. “I’ll see you later, text me when you get home,” you say, watching her boyfriend’s car pull up outside.

That leaves you with Yoongi and the two of you resume your previous conversation, chatting about your new job and the previous tension dissipated. You’re definitely sobered up at this point in the night and when time stretched into closing hours, Yoongi was able to slow down from running around all over the place and actually take time to talk to you.

You’ve been feeling restless all night, trying to figure out why until it stands right in front of you. He happily banters with you as he closes up the registers, your dynamic and humour bouncing off of each other like clockwork.

“Pft, you’re still an overachiever,” he teases dryly when you mention your past job experience before moving back home. “Glad to see that some things never change.”

“Some things don’t,” you repeat, noting the fluid way Yoongi cleans his surroundings. He’s quick, waving goodbye to each employee that makes their way out the front door. They all smile at him when they do and it reminds you of how he’s always been able to connect with people around him—that is, should he let them in the first place.

Yoongi chooses the people around him carefully and you admire that about him. The people who are permitted past his walls are treated the same way.

He recognizes the pondering expression on your face. “Uh oh. I know that face. It’s never a good one.”

“What, me thinking?”

“Exactly.”

You stick your tongue out at his grinning face. He grabs a water bottle, twisting the cap off and taking a gulp, seemingly not exhausted in the same way you aren’t. From what you’ve gathered, Yoongi loves his job and his job loves him back, from his regulars to the employees.

Tapping your fingers in a rhythm against the wood grain of the bar, you ask, “Why did you decide to open up a bar?”

Without a doubt, Yoongi has always been charming in the way a good entrepreneur should be, but he wasn’t necessarily the most outgoing guy. People just naturally gravitated towards him, like magnets. Not only that, but he’s a genuinely good person. You’ve watched him help his elderly neighbour bring her groceries up, treat his employees with dignity, be a rock to your overwhelmed older brother. There’s a lot to Yoongi, more than what meets the eye.

He pauses in his movements and set the water bottle down. “I guess…I don’t know. Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to open a place like this.”

Yoongi gestures around the place: the booths where a crowd of women celebrated a bachelorette party a few hours ago, to the television where a few older men had been watching the football game, and to the dancefloor where the DJ played old school R&B the entire night. Full of life, laughter, and people.

“Well, you did a damn good job,” you said. “I always thought you’d be successful. No other way when you were so determined back then.”

In a way, you like to think that you share the same quality. Years of working your ass off and figuring out your independence could have only been fuelled by a certain resolve to become more than what you used to be. When someone is hungry to prove themselves, the fire is often hard to miss.

Yoongi holds his composure well, but you notice the way deep thought fogs his eyes.

“Most people would beg to differ,” he mutters. “I think everyone thought there was a good chance I’d rot away in prison or something, maybe be a deadbeat like my dad.”

He says this without flinching like he used to when speaking about his parents. You knew there was an anger that lived inside of Yoongi because he made it known with clenched fists and ears that listened to nobody but himself. The rebellion was mysterious years ago, attractive even.

Still, you shake your head.“Well, no. I never thought your parents would hold you back from doing great things.”

The Yoongi in front of you is no longer that fantasy that you fell for when you were younger. This mild-mannered version that shakes dark hair away from his eyes and adjusts his glasses to pinch his nose when he gets frustrated, is softer, yet still captivating. You don’t think he could ever lose that.

Silence stretches to the corners of the room, a patient listener to the revelations settling in his chest.

“Never understood that, but I do now,” Yoongi responds, looking down at his shoes. “When you come from nothing, sometimes you think you deserve nothing.”

Years have passed and you can tell that he’s mostly grown past the doubt shovelled his way throughout his growing up, but there’s a kind of hurt that even Yoongi can’t forget when it comes to his upbringing. You lean forward slightly and tentatively touch his hand on top of the counter.

You’re making the face again. The one with your furrowed eyebrows and deepening pout.

“Good things come from not-so-pretty places, you know. Like flowers that grow on train tracks.”

The eye contact held weighs heavy in the air, tension thick as molasses, as if you could reach out and touch it yourself. Anything feels more interesting at this moment—your shoes, the ceiling, your hands—but all you can do is stare right back. Yoongi opens his mouth once, twice, but can’t settle on the words in his mouth.

Then, he sighs and lets out a chuckle.

“I don’t know if anyone has ever seen me the way you do,” Yoongi concludes quietly, eyes now torn away from yours.

An intimate confession, one that stuns your chest and steals away the quietude in your mind for days to come. You grasp it close to the cage of your ribs, unable to contain the leap of your heart, and instead bury the words with a soft smile. You’re just not sure what the feeling means and you don’t have the guts to untangle it into something you can understand, likely afraid of what revelations you’ll conclude with.

So, you offer a flat joke instead. “What, no kid?” you tease, chuckling through the thick tension that you hope only exists in your mind.

He pauses his movement over the glass he wipes, hand over the rim.

“Nah. No kid.”

Meanwhile, for Yoongi, this is the fourth time he’s noticed something different about you. It’s clear that you’ve gathered a lot these past few years—a sense of self, dreams, and grace. But, he’s captivated by your prudence and the kind eyes that you see the world in. You’ve always had that.

Yet, Yoongi can’t get over it. Your heart has only grown in your time away and he can’t help but remember your younger, meek self that exuded such solace that he’s now even more drawn to. It’s always been his favourite thing about you.

A week later, you return to the apartment for movie night. One hand sticks out to knock on the front door, when it flies open to reveal your exasperated looking brother with his work bag slung around his shoulder and keys in his hand. You squint at him.

“You’re bailing tonight?”

“The hospital needs emergency last minute coverage,” Owen grumbles, as he nearly drops his phone while trying to slip past you. “Yoongi’s in the shower! See you later!”

Your hurricane of a brother sprints to the nearest stairwell, not even bothering with the elevator, and you’re left standing with a plastic bag full of takeout and huffing. Typical. Not that you can even blame Owen, but watching his fickleness happen in real-time at least once a week borders on comedic.

Carefully stepping into the apartment, you take off your shoes and head to the kitchen counter to drop the food down.

Then, you hear it. Footsteps. You’re already too close to the hallway, where their bathroom is, to escape and by the time you process everything, Yoongi appears with nothing but a towel slung low on his hips and steam curling around him.

He doesn’t notice you at first. “Owen, where the hell is my—oh.” Yoongi has another towel in his hand, drying off his wet hair as he approaches and realizes that you are most definitely not the person you’re looking for.

You’re staring. Hard. He knows it, too.

Water droplets trail down his bare chest and if you step forward, you could trace the scar that runs down the side of his abdomen. Yoongi’s slender, yet broad and strong build that clearly indicates he’s spent time working on himself physically in the past decade, leaves you without words. Your eyes drag further down, unable to hide your gaze on where his smooth skin disappears underneath the towel.

A hot flush billows on your cheeks and you whirl around on your heels, facing the wall.

“Owenjustleft,” you say, scrambling all of your words together into one semi-coherent string and somehow losing your breath when you do so.

You just hear the deep rumble of his laugh and footsteps retreating. When you realize that Yoongi is returning to the bathroom, you let out an exhale that you hope he doesn’t pick up on.

“No worries. Make yourself at home, I’ll be out in a bit.” Yoongi’s tone is so casual and if you think too long about it, you may even think he sounds amused.

He’s seemingly not concerned at all. At least this doesn’t make things awkward and it’s up to you to ensure the situation doesn’t get weird just because you just saw this man half-naked. You rub your face and make your way to the couch, as you always do.

A few minutes later, Yoongi emerges and thankfully, he does so with clothes on. He wears a white tank top and sweatpants, still not doing much to conceal the figure that you were just ogling, but you train your eyes on the television in front of you instead.

“Thanks for bringing food,” he says, even though you always do, and begins plating the takeout in bowls.

“Mhm.”

You preoccupy yourself with scrolling through a streaming service with no actual genre or movie in mind, but letting the action take up your hands. He doesn’t comment on your short answers or the way you refuse to look over, instead calmly padding over to the couch. The dishes clank lightly when set down on the coffee table, but not enough to break your artificial focus.

Soft chatter fills the room, mostly mundane small talk that you force in order to keep your mind off that sinful image of Yoongi in that towel.

His voice trickles in from the kitchen. “How’s the new job going?”

Somewhere in the past few weeks, the space on the couch between you and Yoongi disappeared; a knee brushing against the other no longer felt accidental, he stopped thinking twice before stretching his arm across the back of the couch, and nobody thought anything of fingers brushing together when grabbing popcorn. Tonight, when Yoongi approaches, he’s already tossing you a blanket because he knows that you get cold.

“Take this before you use me as a personal heater,” he says, as the blanket lands on your head.

You scoff. “I fell asleep on you one time!” you shoot back, but it doesn’t wipe the smirk off Yoongi’s face.

“You liked it a little too much.”

That, you don’t deny, even if he’s joking. You don’t care if he notices.

Weight dips into the cushions, as Yoongi makes himself comfortable next to you, close enough where you can smell a hint of soap and minty toothpaste. Feeling a bit self-conscious, you’re still in your work clothes having come from the office. You pull the edge of your pencil skirt down and shift awkwardly against the strain of your button up top. Originally, your plan was to borrow something to wear from your brother and you open your mouth to announce this, when Yoongi’s phone buzzes against the grain of the coffee table.

Owen’s name and picture flashes on the screen, probably now at work.

“What could this goof want now?” Yoongi mutters, as he grabs the device and answers. “Hey. What’s up?”

A beat passes as he listens to whatever your brother has to say, sighing when he does. Yoongi rises to his feet once more and hovers over the window, pulling away at the curtains. That’s when you see it—a violent cascade of snow fall hanging over the city skyline. The intensity is unlike when you pulled up to the building, although you did have to run fast from the small stretch of outdoors between your car and the lobby doors. Sometime since that half an hour ago, the snow has doubled, tripled even.

Meanwhile, Yoongi is still on the phone. “Yeah. Yeah, of course, that’s fine,” he says. “I’ll let her know.”

As he speaks, you’ve flipped the channel over to the weather forecast, which confirms your suspicions: a crazy snow storm. Not only that, but roads are closed.

“You’re kidding,” you exhale, lips pressed together.

Yoongi hangs up the phone and returns to his seat next to you, sighing. “Owen said that he barely survived trying to walk to work,” he muses.

You can only imagine how bad the roads and sidewalks are if your brother struggled to make it to the hospital that’s just a block away. From where you are on the couch, you can only see a blanket of pure ivory out the window and not a single car or pedestrian in sight. This is bad. Not only that, but reality sets in when you realize that you’re stuck here.

“Yeah, he’d probably need a damn sleigh with all of that snow,” you murmur, eyes still fixated on the window and running the possible ways of how you can make it home.

Instead, Yoongi answers for you. “He said you should stay the night here. It’s not safe for you to go outside,” he says, shaking his head with a serious expression knitted in his eyebrows. “And I agree. It’s fucked.”

When he confirms this, your palms go sweaty and you bite the inside of your cheek. Yoongi’s determination doesn’t waver, displeased with the idea of you trying to make it home in these conditions.

“I can wait it out.”

“Like hell you will,” he retorts. “You’ll be waiting until morning. And I’m not letting you go outside with the weather like that.”

Throughout the night, you think you’re imagining lingering eye contact, the quiet kind that rips away once the other person notices. You don’t catch Yoongi staring once, but you can feel it throughout the night; especially with the knowledge that the night won’t end at any point and the tension sifting through the air because of it.

When the movie ends, neither of you rush because you don’t have to. The storm outside is louder than the television at this point, snow tapping against glass and rattling the windows. Both of you had been laughing and bantering about the film, but it dies when the credits roll and reality sinks in.

You’ve been keeping movie nights securely fixed in a box where the routine ends at a goodnight and goodbye for weeks. Yoongi sits there, arm slung over the back of the couch behind your frame. There’s no goodbye tonight, just an awareness that you’re sitting shoulder to shoulder and uncertainty about what to do next. When you speak, you don’t realize just how much closer you’ve been sitting together than you originally thought until you turn and accidentally brush against his side. He doesn’t move.

“I guess it’s time to get ready for bed,” you murmur, looking up at him through your eyelashes.

If he’s feeling awkward about the situation, Yoongi doesn’t show it. “Do you want to use the bathroom? I’ll lend you a towel and some clothes.”

“I, uh, are you sure?”

He responds, another small smirk on his lips. “I promise you, your brother is a week behind on laundry and I’d rather you wear clean clothes.”

Yoongi disappears into the hall and returns with a folded t-shirt and a spare toothbrush still neatly sealed in plastic.

You remain on the couch, fiddling with your phone and checking the weather too many times to be considered normal in the short span that Yoongi left the room. The roads are still hopeless and in a way, so are you. You don’t know how to cast aside your growing nerves or why they’re even present. It’s just Yoongi and it’s just a storm.

“Here. There’s spare towels in the cabinet.” Yoongi looms over you, offering the items to you with an unreadable expression. “If there’s anything you need, just tell me, okay?”

Back when you were younger, Yoongi was always one to tease, just a little bit. He still does now, but you recognize a certain maturity and genuine concern that leaves your heart fluttering. This is when you realize that you haven’t stopped thinking about him in that way, the way involving twinkling eyes and a heartbeat a touch too fast.

Your voice is softer than usual. “I appreciate it.”

You once fell for Yoongi because of a fantasy laced in mystery and rebellion. Now, standing in front of you, is an older man with the same quick wit and quiet consideration. A refined version rooted in reality and the years that have gone past. Your eyes flicker to the lines crinkling at the corner of Yoongi’s eyes when he smiles gently and how there’s no longer an anger that lives inside him.

Now, you think you’ve fallen for the real him.

There’s no doubt about the way he makes you feel, not even when you stand under the shower and let hot water sting your skin—as if you’re trying to will yourself out of these thoughts. But, the feeling stick like honey and remain glued to your skin and bones. You’re thinking about every quiet moment over the past month and how being alone with him now sends a rush through your veins.

If there’s anything you need, just tell me.

Yoongi’s t-shirt is too big, pooling down to your thighs. You intentionally don’t ask for pants and you wonder why he didn’t offer any. As you look into your reflection, brushing your teeth, your heart hammers because you want to show just how different you are now, too.

He’s waiting for you in the living room, laptop propped in front of him and you know that he’s likely checking emails or something for the bar. You emerge from the bathroom and Yoongi looks up, zeroing in on the sight of you in his t-shirt. He’s in the middle of typing on the keyboard, but freezes when you come outside.

“You doing okay?” Yoongi speaks with neutrality, but you make out a fine crack in his tone that betrays his attempt at aloofness.

You nod, staring at your outfit and the way the shirt barely hangs low enough to cover your thighs. “Yeah, I appreciate it.”

He clears his throat and shuts the laptop off to make his way over to where you stand in the hallway.

“Checked Owen’s room and it’s clean. Changed the bed sheets and pillowcases, just in case.” Yoongi leads you to the bedroom door, which is slightly ajar enough to reveal a neatly made bed.

You raise an eyebrow. “Wow. You’re an absolute saint for that charity work.” Over the last little while of getting to know him all over again, you’ve discovered that he’s become a bit of a neat freak.

“Tell me about it, he should thank me,” Yoongi mutters and you share a laugh.

Then, silence tightens around your surroundings once more.

The two of you just stand there, unsure of what to say or do next. He’s closer than he was on the couch—if you tilt your head up, you would just be a breath away from his face. Yoongi doesn’t move either, hands stuffed into his pockets as if he’s restraining them in place. You think about how soft those hands had been over yours at the grocery store. You think about his protective gaze that never falters, even in small moments like being snowed in for the night. You think about the flex of his arms when he adjusts his glasses, the droplets of water cascading down his chest earlier, the way he refuses to leave you alone. Not before and certainly not now, as he looks at you without moving an inch. Something buzzes in the small space between the two of you, something warm stirring.

“Well, goodnight—”

“—I, um,” you cut Yoongi off, tongue tied before you even speak. “There’s actually something else that I need.”

He stares back at you, an unknown glint in his eyes. You wish you could read the meaning behind them, as you notice that he still hasn’t moved, feet glued to where they stand barely a foot away from you. Meanwhile, your lungs seek air that refuses to come. For a brief second, your gaze drops to his lips—but, not quick enough to evade his attention.

Yoongi does the same, except when his vision fixates on your lips, he makes sure that you’re aware by taking his time. His eyes cloud in that second, like he’s seeing something for the first time.

Neither of you move away, even now. The lack of oxygen funnelling to your brain leaves you dizzy and you realize that you’ve subconsciously tilted your head up. Yoongi inches closer ever so slightly, until you share the same breath.

“Yeah?” he murmurs, voice strained.

He doesn’t want to move first or maybe he feels as though he can’t. Shouldn’t. Just lets out a shaky exhale.

So, you do it.

You’re reminded of the way Yoongi stole your first kiss all those years ago—hesitant and soft, but knowing. Back then, it’d been easy when the gesture felt like a favour more than anything.

Somehow, you find yourself in the same spot, as your lips brush against his to test the waters.

A beat passes before Yoongi realizes what’s happening and his arms slide around your waist with a groan, barely, so you take the initiative to heighten things. Your hands wind around his neck, fingers tangling into his hair, pulling him closer. He responds eagerly, tipping your head further back to explore the heat of your mouth.

You kiss him back, hard, and feel the way your entire body throbs as you tug him tighter around you—all for Yoongi to grab you by the hips and push you up against the hallway door. The impact leaves you gasping and he takes the opportunity to slide his tongue across your bottom lip, tugging in between his teeth until you’re moaning his name.

Yoongi’s teeth scrape down your throat, nibbling at sensitive spots along your neck and soothing them with his tongue. The pants that leave your breath are so pretty, the taste of mint still lingering.

Hardness presses against your lower body and against your better judgement, you hook a leg around his waist and experimentally roll against his clothed length, mouth hung open in bliss.

“S-Shit,” he hisses with a clenched jaw, pausing where his mouth trails along your collarbone after noticing that you really didn’t bother to put on anything underneath the t-shirt.

You whimper, as Yoongi’s hardened gaze lands on you and the eye contact leaves your heart lurching upwards, while desire pools in your core. The way he slots a knee in between your legs is intoxicating, the shirt hiking up your lips and revealing how soaked you’ve left your panties. He grits his teeth, pressing his knee against your pussy and you can’t help the moan that escapes your mouth.

“Please,” you mewl, unable to do anything but cry out for more. The most you can do is grind pathetically on his leg, watching his eyes darken as you do, but the hot friction isn’t enough for you.

For a second, Yoongi lets out a deep breath, as if trying to negotiate with himself. “Tell me what you want,” he manages to rasp out, as one of his hands come up to hold you by the face.

You lean into his touch, wrapping your lips around his thumb and he groans out again, pathetically almost, when you lewdly suck on it.

“I need you.”

Without warning, Yoongi scoops you up with a strength that surprises you both. You arch into him, meeting his mouth against in a hungrier kiss than before. Messier. A string of saliva trails between your lips and down your jaw before you notice that he’s carried you into his room. He unceremoniously drops you on the mattress and you squeal, bouncing lightly on the mattress at such force.

He doesn’t waste any time climbing over you, caging you against the bed by pinning your wrists down. “Been thinking about this for weeks,” he roughly admits.

“Yoongi,” you choke out, wrapping your legs around his waist again.

He kisses you fiercely once more, his hands letting go of you to grab the bottom of your t-shirt. You’re fumbling the same exact way and drag the tank top off his body, while immediately undoing the drawstrings to his sweatpants soon after.

“So fucking hot,” he says, tossing the article onto the floor without a second look.

As you discard his clothes, Yoongi is taking his sweet time exploring your body, kisses dragged down your neck until he reaches the valley of your breasts. Your nipples harden under the sudden exposure to the chill air, but you’re warmed up instantly when he attaches his lips to them. He starts by sucking hard on one, his free hand drawing lazy circles on the other.

“Oh—fuck, that feels so good.” You’re whimpering loud, as you continue rolling against his clothed cock. You can feel how rock hard he is, throbbing even with the barrier in between your bodies.

“Mhmm,” he murmurs, releasing the sensitive bud with a pop that leaves it puffy and wet from his mouth. “Spread your legs for me.”

Yoongi pushes your hair back out of your face as he makes his demand, tone too sweet for the hungry gaze he holds. You move automatically, laying back and parting your legs.

“Like this?” you whisper with swollen lips, completely red from his work.

He smirks in the way you’ve always loved, leaning in to kiss on your neck and lick a nasty stripe on the shell of your ear as two of his rough fingers yank your panties to the side. His touch slides over your clit and sink into your heat—a filthy squelching noise fills your ears, as you moan from where you’re pinned beneath the strong planes of his body.

Yoong’s voice remains low, in control. “Just like that, let me hear you,” he says and slides in a third finger with ease between your folds, messy and desperate for you get louder.

The cold of his silver chain, dangling from where he hovers above, brushes against your sensitive nipple and you squirm, which results in Yoongi splaying his free forearm across your lower belly and pinning you firmer into place. His fingers stretch your cunt with ease, as he mutters about how wet you are. You can barely hear between the ringing in your ear from pure pleasure and tighten your grip in his hair, drawing another moan out of him.

It doesn’t last long once Yoongi dips his head in between your thighs and you could feel the smirk against your clit.

“You’re soaking my sheets,” he teases roughly, before finally parting the lips of your pussy with his tongue and licking a languid trail up to your desperately puffy bud.

You know it’s not going to last long.

Your back arches off the mattress, dizzy with arousal with each curl of his finger and the way he circles his tongue perfectly around your clit, sending shockwaves throughout your system. “Wanna cum on your face.” Each laboured breath and sigh spurs Yoongi on, lapping and playing with the wetness of your pussy like he’s starving.

Then, he forces you off. Yoongi sits up, chin glistening with your essence and a predatory glint in his eyes.

“What the fuck, I was so close—” You’re whining like a brat and without shame, only for him to suddenly yank your panties off fully.

He drags them down your legs, past your ankles and flings them onto the floor, hissing when he gets the full view of how wrecked you are on top of the soaked mess you’ve made of his bed. Then, Yoongi grabs you by the hips and forcefully flips your positions, which leaves you gasping. You plant your knees on either side of his torso and balance yourself with palms flat against the bed, leaving your tits dangling just shy of Yoongi’s mouth.

He captures one of them with his lips once more and your head tilts back in moans, while he murmurs something against your sensitive nipple.

“Want you to ride my face.”

You mouth hangs open in bliss and he hasn’t even touched your cunt again. Yoongi taps your ass once, twice, and it’s enough for you to get the message to scoot upwards and hover over his face.

A redness spreads across your cheeks. “A-Are you sure?” you sputter, even with the way his thumbs draw soothing circles on your hips, as if to calm you down. “I don’t want you to not be able to breathe—”

“—That’s the point, baby.” Yoongi chuckles, amused by just how riled up you are. “You say that, but your eyes and your pussy say something different.”

As if to prove his point, he trails his finger just outside of your folds—not enough to fully plunge in, but enough to feel the way your walls clench at just the slightest of his touch.

“You’re too cocky,” you gasp out, but don’t refute the obvious. You rut pathetically into his touch, even, and the argument is settled.

“And I’ll show you why,” he shoots back, his hands now gripping your hips and leaving no room for argument, not when the tension in the air is this torturous. “Be a good girl and come here.”

You don't hesitate. You line your cunt up with Yoongi’s face, bracing one hand against the headboard and the other fisting in his hair as you sink down with a broken moan.

He works tirelessly with no teasing, no patients, but just the raw, filthy pressure that has your thighs trembling within seconds. His mouth is focused on only giving you pleasure, sucking and licking loudly like you’re his last meal and letting you hear each carnal sound. You try your best to grind down, hips moving in small circles to chase the feeling of his hot tongue. Yoongi moans just once and the vibration nearly undoes you.

Your begging doesn’t stop and you don’t care about how much noise you’re making. “Please, please, please,” you babble mindlessly. “God, Yoongi, just like that—”

Yoongi palms the fat of your ass cheeks as his mouth devours you, smacking the supple skin that echoes throughout the room. When he feels the way you clench harder at the stinging sensation, he takes the liberty of doing once, twice, and three times more until you’re sure the skin is left rouge. You hope his handprint stains your flesh.

He spreads your legs even wider, forcing you to fully sink down and he lifts his head to catch your clit between his teeth—just enough to make you cry his name out once more. Sucking on your clit until the pressure building in your lower half finally snaps, Yoongi is relentless. Your thighs squeeze hard around his head, fucking down on his greedy tongue messily until your wetness mixed with his saliva coat his entire face.

Then, time slows and your vision goes white. All you can tell is that your eyes are screwed shut as the most intense orgasm of your life ripples through your body and you come with a damn near scream, gushing and dripping down your thighs, onto Yoongi’s face, and ruining even the bed sheets. You don’t stop for a while, riding out your high while chanting his name.

“Fuck, Yoongi, Yoongi, Yoongi—” you sob, skin prickling and you feel his moans against your cunt again.

When you finally pull off of his face, you’re flushed with embarrassment after not just climaxing so hard, but so fast. You settle next to him on the bed and he sits up, completely coated with your arousal and lips swollen.

It’s the hottest thing you’ve ever seen.

Yoongi seems to think the same way about how absolutely destroyed you look—hair completely sticking up in every direction possible, panting heavily, marks left all over your breasts and hips. He shows this by immediately tugging you in once more for a wet, nasty kiss that has you worked up all over again. Teeth clicking, sucking on your tongue and tasting yourself on him, you can’t get enough of it.

“Fuck, I almost came from just eating you out,” he murmurs against your lips, satisfaction dripping from every word, and you can’t help but chuckle into the kiss.

You’re nowhere near done, though. “Oh, yeah?” you say, scooting closer even closer until you’re nearly on his lap..

Yoongi’s cock is still painfully hard, the tip red and angry with precum. He grabs your wrist before you can touch, eyes dark with want.

“We can stop here, if you want—”

You interrupt with a scoff, shaking off his grip. “We’re both adults here,” you purr, eyes half-lidded when you’re finally able to wrap your hand around his thickness, rewarded with a hiss from his lips. “And I want you inside of me.”

At your demand and touch, Yoongi groans and his hips jolt into your hand. “Yeah?” he husks, expression darkened with want. “Fine. Be careful what you wish for.”

He can’t protest nor deny you, not when you look at him like this. Hazy-eyed and wrecked from his mouth, you nod without hesitation. Then, Yoongi rolls you both over in one smooth motion, pinning you back onto the mattress with his body, his lips brushing your collarbone.

You dig your fingernails into his back muscles, just enough to leave crescent moon shapes. “Been wanting this for so long.”

“Shit, me too,” he confesses immediately, breath hitching at the way you’re spread out so prettily for him. Yoongi has no shame, not after spending weeks pretending like you don’t affect him. “How do you want me, baby?”

You arch against him, fingers digging even more into his skin. “Just—fuck—just please fuck me. Don’t hold back.”

“I won’t be gentle—”

“—Then, don’t,” you heatedly mewl, eyes trained on the way he pumps his cock with his fist.

Yoongi groans at your words. He momentarily pushes off the bed to lean towards his bedside table, but your hand shoots out and grabs his wrist before he gets any further. Turning to you with a questioning look, you shake your head at him.

“We don’t need one if you want.” Your whispers stuns Yoongi and he freezes in place with slightly widened eyes. “I’m clean and I have an IUD.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

Yoongi climbs over you once again, grabbing your leg and hooking it over his shoulder. You bite down on your lip at the first feeling of his cock head, hard and heavy, smearing the mess dripping from your folds all over your pussy. He teases his tip along your slit and uses your arousal to coat his thick length. You’re unable to stop from trying to grind down, seeking for more and squirming desperately.

He grits his teeth and screws his eyes shut, trying to take it slow at first. “So fuckin’ needy,” Yoongi rasps out.

“Fuck me, please, I’ve been waiting for so long.” Your reply is breathless and insatiable, despite having just came not even a few minutes before.

Yoongi starts off by sinking into your pussy inch by torturous inch, trying to not overwhelm you. When he bottoms out, he pulls out entirely before finally burying himself to the hilt once more with a single thrust, the angle of his cock stilling inside of you, deep and messy.

“So tight and wet,” he grunts. “This pussy is fucking taking me so well.”

You gasp out at the sheer pleasure that crashes over you, especially when his thumb finds your clit once more. He draws lazy circles that match the steady rhythm of his cock filling you up and stretching your walls, capturing your cry with a bruising kiss. He licks into your mouth, swallowing your moans.

“God, you’re filling me up so nicely—so, so, so good—” You’re lightheaded with each word against his mouth, drowning in the feeling of his cock as if you’re drunk.

Yoongi’s pace turns brutal, the lewd noises of his balls slapping against your ass and your skin rippling under his thrusts encouraging him to fuck into you even harder. Each snap of his hips drives you deeper into the mattress and the headboard against the wall rattles violently with your shared movements.

“You’re incredible,” he groans as your pussy flutters tighter around his cock and you roll your hips to try and match his pace, trying to anchor himself by gripping your thighs.

You don’t bother to cover your mouth when Yoongi adjusts the angle by grabbing your other leg and slinging it over his shoulder, leaning forwards and folding you in half. You curse loudly, blood roaring in your ears and Yoongi growls when you grab your ankles to pull them back even further, until they dangle next to your ears.

Tilting your hips, his cock drives in so deep that he find the spot that makes you gush again, wringing filthy sounds from you. “Hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he groans.

Yoongi doesn’t stop either, slamming into your g-spot, completely entranced with the way you soak the sheets. He pushes himself up slightly, hands still around your ankles, just to watch you erupt.

“M-More, I’m close again.” You mewl at how he’s absolutely manhandling you with no mercy, tits bouncing against his strong chest with each deep thrust. “Right there, Yoongi, just fuck me harder—”

He groans as your pleas vibrate against his neck, where your face has buried into the crook. His own control frays at the edges and obliges immediately, snapping his hips harder, faster—chasing your breath that comes in sharp, fractured gasps against his skin.

“Fuck, baby, feels so good.” Yoongi’s voice cracks when you clench around him, back arching off the bed as you finally shatter.

Your expression is shameless, mouth hung open in bliss and panting pathetically, as Yoongi’s name dribbles off your lips. To your sides, your hands shoot out to clutch the bed sheets, fist twisting at the covers as your climax jerks your body. Yoongi’s focus is carnal, as his own orgasm approaches and the sight of you coming undone sends him over the edge.

The noises you’re making are more than just filthy, but sweet and intoxicating to his ears.

“Please cum inside of me, please, I want you,” you gasp out, his cock twitching inside of your pulsating pussy.

It’s not long before Yoongi comes with a shout and gritted teeth, spilling hot into your greedy hole and thrusts deep with each spurt. He shudders hard, milking his cock inside clean of every last drop and you wrap your legs around his waist as he does.

Rolling you onto your sides, Yoongi continues with shallow thrusts into your ruined cunt, one arm hooked underneath your thigh and you bring him in for a dirty, messy kiss. Your tongues swirl against one another as he finally stills inside of you, pulling away as you’re both half-lidded and delirious.

When he slides his cock out, you whimper at the empty feeling. Yoongi curses under his breath when he sits up, parting your thighs to watch his spend drip out of your puffy slit. He traces a finger along your folds and up to your clit, which results in a shudder of overstimulation from you.

Yoongi just chuckles, looking up at you. “You okay?” he murmurs, voice gentle and contrasting greatly from his demanding tone earlier. “Stay here. Don’t move.”

He rises to his feet and disappears to the bathroom, returning with a wet towel. Sauntering back to the bed, he hovers over you and runs the damp fabric all over your thighs and in between, making sure to clean up everything he’s left. You’re still trying to catch your breath the entire time, the situation crashing down on you, and recovering from the pleasure that still shoots through your muscles at the sight of Yoongi in between your legs.

“Thanks,” you manage to say, chest rising at a more controlled pace at this point.

Yoongi isn’t finished. He’s always been quite attentive these past few weeks, so it shouldn’t take you off guard, but the way he moves and looks after you is so thoughtful. He brings you a glass of water, clean clothes, and even ties your hair up for you.

You gingerly get to your feet and practically waddle to the door when he informs you that he started a shower.

He notices this and snorts. “Having trouble walking?” Yoongi dryly comments, grinning when you flip him off. “I’ll be there in a second, okay?”

Whatever tension you anticipated has surely failed to appear. Instead, things feel…natural. Yoongi’s eyes twinkle with a question, as if to say is this alright? You just nod, a smile threatening at the corner of his lips. He does the same.

Your chest warms at the promise. You didn’t ask, but knowing Yoongi will join you in the shower causes butterflies that you can no longer deny.

Standing under the hot spray and steam rising from your surroundings, your muscles loosen and you sigh aloud at the calming sensation. A few minutes later, the shower door slides open and you don’t have to look behind you, not when strong arms wrap around your waist.

"I don’t do hookups.”

The sudden statement roots you to the tiled floor, a realization chord striking you. A slew of thoughts set off in your head, but only ones fades clearly and it’s that you just want to lean into him even more, needing more of his body heat. So, instead of answering, you do just that. You tilt your head into his neck, inhaling deeply and you feel his lips brush against your temple. His arms tighten around you even more.

“You know I’ve had a crush on you for, like, fifteen years, right?”

“Yeah, I’m not blind. By the way, you’re a much better kisser now.”

Yoongi yelps when you dig your elbow into his ribs, but it doesn’t wipe the wide grin on his face. Laughing, you spin around, facing him, and he doesn’t let go of your hips. The grip steadies you, as you brush away wet pieces of hair nearing his vision.

“Was it obvious even now?” you murmur, hoping your voice is anchored in spite of your embarrassment. The heat on your cheeks isn’t unwelcome with the stinging shower raining down from above, engulfing both of your bodies in a comfortable warmth.

He chuckles softly. “I wasn’t sure, probably too worried about me being too obvious,” Yoongi confesses, coolly and casually, like he’s talking about the weather.

Except, you catch the way his eyes flicker briefly away from yours, the way he always does when he’s nervous. It’s easy to miss, but it doesn’t escape your attention and your breath hitches because this means he’s being serious.

So, you bite.

“I like you a lot,” you admit back, holding eye contact in a way that you’ve spent years trying to work up the courage to.

Yoongi’s gaze doesn’t falter, almost encouraging you when he digs his fingers into your hips again.

You continue. “I liked you back then, too, but I think that was more of me falling for this..I don’t know, fantasy of you. The brooding bad boy that every girl wanted, and like every time you smiled at me, it was just a secret between us,” you say, shyly smiling. “But, I like you even more now. You’ve changed, but in a good way. Your patience, your passion, and how you see the best in people.”

“Funny you say that because I’ve always thought the same about you,” Yoongi responds, thumb brushing over your soft lips. “You have this huge heart and you’re incredibly smart. Gorgeous, too, it’s unfair. I thought that even back then.”

“Liar.”

“And by the way, it’s not because we’re older now and you’ve suddenly turned into this beautiful woman, but I want to be with you for who you are. Who you’ve always been.” Yoongi’s voice doesn’t waver one bit and you hold your breath when he admits this.

"I—” you start, heart skipping like rocks on water. “Me too. You just felt so…out of reach.”

“You've always been a little untouchable to me,” he chuckles. “Still, it’s hard to stay away from you when you bring out the best in me. Always have and fuck, I hope you keep doing that.”

Before you can reply, Yoongi leans into and this time, the kiss is unlike before. Slow, deliberate, and as if he’s wanting to taste all of you. You melt into his arms, just moving in tandem as if you’ve done this a million times before. Like Yoongi, you also hope that you can keep doing this.

It’s a sweet kiss until you bite softly down on his lip and he groans, pulling away. His hand comes up to cup your cheek, holding your jaw in place.

“Don’t start because it’s going to be a long night if you do,” Yoongi warns, genuinely pained and screwing his eyes close to shut down any desires, at least not right after how intense the two of you were not too long ago.

You do laugh at this, amused by how easily Yoongi is set off. “Right,” you say.

He clears his throat after a moment, opening one eye reluctantly. “Well.”

“Well.”

“Now, what?”

Shaking your head, you peck his lips once more. “Owen’s going to kill us.” The thought of having to explain this to your brother feels like an impending headache, especially since you’re under his roof. You know he’s not going to disapprove when it’s his best friend, but the nerves of it all are pushed away when Yoongi presses a kiss in between your eyes.

He sighs against your skin. “How about we don’t talk about your brother while you’re naked in my shower?”

A sense of relief settles into your skin as Yoongi peppers another kiss on your lips, between your shared laughter bouncing off the shower tiles.

You’d imagined this scenario a hundred times since you were fourteen, but nothing could prepare you for the quiet when you expected fireworks. Instead of a flurry of emotions or the nerves of wondering, waiting, and daydreaming that she used to feel about the man in front of her, it’s even better. He wears a fresh pair of eyes and a quiet certainty that he’s missed his entire life. A peace that he’s sought out for years. Yoongi is no longer a memory or a fantasy, but the first person you turn to when you need help, the first person you want to celebrate with, and the only person you want to share your heart with.

Jungkook realized that two americanos on an empty stomach had been a catastrophic decision after he ordered the third. He also realized that arriving thirty minutes early had somehow made everything infinitely worse for his peace of mind.

He’d convinced himself it was practical at first. He convinced himself everything needed to be perfect before you arrived. Maybe there could be traffic on the way— even though he wasn’t driving and the café was ten minutes walking from his dorm— he still couldn’t be late to the hangout. Or maybe he wouldn’t be able to find a seat— even though the place was empty most of the time at that hour… There could be a lot of issues that could show up out of nowhere so he needed to be the first to arrive to solve them… He also needed some time to look normal and not rushing in sweat like a psychopath.

All perfectly reasonable excuses until he found himself sitting alone by the window, staring at the café door while every muscle in his body slowly tightened with each passing minute.

Jungkook was going insane.

10:42 a.m

It had been only 10 minutes and you weren’t supposed to be there until eleven. Eighteen more minutes to go.

“…Fuck.” The word slipped out under his breath as he dragged both hands down his face.

This was a mistake. A massive, irreversible, life-ending mistake.

Jungkook thought how he should’ve stayed behind a screen forever. Texting was easy for him when it was with you. It let him delete things before sending them. Texting let him think before speaking to you. Texting didn’t involve making eye contact with the prettiest girl he’d ever met while pretending he hadn’t spent the better part of two years quietly orbiting your existence like a haunted fucking satellite.

His leg bounced uncontrollably beneath the table. Maybe he could leave.

Actually… Yeah. That felt right.

Jungkook stood and walked all the way to the café door, hand already pushing against the handle before he stopped.

What the fuck was he gonna text?

No. He couldn’t just pretend he couldn’t make it. Would that hurt your feeling? He didn’t want to hurt your feelings. He was the one who had the idea to hangout. He needed to be brave.

Jungkook sighed heavily, turned around, and walked back inside. The barista looked up at him with mild concern as he reclaimed the exact same chair he’d abandoned less than twenty seconds ago. But the girl didn’t say anything… especially since it was the third time he had done the same.

Five minutes later he’d convinced himself leaving actually made much more sense this time.

He got up again and finally made it outside. Jungkook walked half the block before stopping. “Jesus fucking Christ.” He rubbed his face so aggressively it almost hurt before spinning on his heel and marching straight back.

This time the same barista caught him before he’d even sat down. “Dude, are you sure you want this americano?”

“Yes,” Jungkook said frustrated. “And please add another shot.”

By 10:55 his hands were shaking just enough to piss him off. He stared at them while asking for another americano. He was definitely going to die before you even had the chance to say hi.

Which, honestly, it was probably better for him.

His phone buzzed and Jungkook grabbed it so quickly he almost dropped it.

the loml: two minutes away

Jungkook’s heartbeat stopped as another message appeared almost instantly.

the loml: what r u wearing

the loml: wait

the loml: that was lowkey nasty

the loml: what r u wearing babygirl?🤤

Despite his nerves, a laugh escaped him.

Jungkook: idiot (message not sent)

Jungkook: black hoodie (message not sent)

Jungkook: hoodie (message not sent)

Jungkook: IM LITERALLT WEARING THE WORST OUTFIT EVER OMG (message not sent)

Jungkook: the hottest outfit ever (message not sent)

His thumbs hovered uselessly over the keyboard while his brain started screaming loud enough to drown out the music playing through the café speakers— Shit. He couldn’t even properly send a text now. How was he supposed to talk to you face to face?

No, no, no. He couldn’t.

It was ridiculous. He’d survived perfectly fine without doing this… He could still leave. Right now. He could show up with some lie. He got an emergency, maybe food poisoning or he was suddenly arrested. Yeah, he could just invent a lie, he couldn’t stay. God, no. Jungkook was sure he wouldn’t be able to talk to you. He would just be so embarrassing you would never want to talk to him again.

Yeah, fuck no.

His chair scraped quietly against the floor as he stood, slipping his phone into his pocket before he could overthink it anymore. That was it, he was leaving. He’d apologize later. You’d probably be too busy being obsessed over his best friend to even care.

He took exactly one step before the bell above the café door chimed. Instinctively, his head turned.

You stepped inside.

Holy fucking shit.

You weren’t looking around yet. Your eyes stayed glued to your phone as you typed something, a strand of hair falling across your face before you tucked it absentmindedly behind your ear. His phone buzzed in his pocket but he didn’t pay any mind.

You looked… God. You looked exactly like you always did.

He’d spent two years noticing you between breaks, across hallways, sitting outside buildings with headphones on, laughing with those three idiots you called friends. He knew the shape of your smile from impossible distances because he still remembered it from close. Knew the way you’d throw your head back when you laughed too hard. Knew you gestured with both hands when you talked, like every sentence required visual aids.

But standing ten feet away after such a long time, you suddenly felt… real.

Not campus real. Not “girl I secretly look at during lunch breaks” real. Not ‘girl crush I’ve been dreaming about’. Real enough to walk over, real enough to say his name and real enough to realize he was just some random guy you probably wouldn’t even like.

Jungkook pulse lurched. He looked away so fast it almost gave him whiplash.

Nop. Absolutely fucking not.

If he didn’t look at you and if you didn’t see him maybe he could still pretend—

“Black americano for Jungkook.”

Ah, fuck.

He tried to ignore it, looking to the other side of the place. The barista’s voice cut cleanly through the café. “Jungkook?”

Couldn’t she take a fucking hint?.

He slowly lifted his head. The barista was looking directly at him, cup already in hand, moving it like she was waiting for him to hurry up as if she had any other clients waiting in line when the place was empty. Jungkook thought about all the bad reviews he was going to leave her as he walk closer to the counter.

“…Thanks.”

He reached for it automatically, almost cringing at the motion. Movement flickered in the corner of his vision. You had looked up and, finally, your eyes met his.

Jungkook was going to pass out.

He saw you frown. Your gaze dropped briefly to the coffee cup in his hand, then back to his face and then back to your phone. You did that three times, maybe too confused he was actually the guy you had been talking too. Jungkook couldn’t tell. Were you imagining someone better looking than him?

Yeah, he was definitely ending his shit tonight.

Jungkook felt every single organ inside his body shut down in perfect synchronization when you started walking closer to him.

“Oh my God.” You stopped right in front of him, a little too close, blinking twice before a huge grin spread across your face. “No way.” Jungkook forgot how breathing worked. “Jungkook?”

He nodded once. “Yeah.”

Your smile somehow got even wider. “What the fuck?” You laughed, looking him up and down with complete shamelessness. “Oh my God.”

He managed the world’s weakest laugh. “Hi.”

“I did not picture you like this.”

“No?”

“No!” You pointed at him as if that explained everything. “I had this whole image.”

“I’m scared.”

“It was completely different.”

He chuckled shyly. “Care to share?”

“I thought you were gonna be…” You tilted your head thoughtfully. “I don’t know… glasses and shit.”

“Glasses and shit?”

“Yeah, you know— disney nerd cast.”

“I— what the hell does that even mean?” He frowned confused, amused by your brain and how actually much of an extrovert you were. Really similar to the way you text, really blunt. “And I do wear glasses, just to read and play video games.”

“Well, I kinda was right then.” You gestured vaguely toward him. “But I don’t know I was lowkey picturing you like Robbie from Victorious

Jungkook looked genuinely offended. “Should I— is that an insult or…?”

“Not really. He was cute to me.” You shrugged before nodding approvingly, looking at him again closely this time.

Jungkook was sure his heart was about to jump out of his chest any minute. His face started getting hot. Oh god, he was blushing. “What?”

“You actually look…” You squinted dramatically. “Like a stereotypical bad boy from a cheap magazine”

Jungkook blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Well, the tattoos and the piercings. The whole…” You motioned vaguely toward his black hoodie and rings, “…whatever aesthetic you’ve got going on. I bet you only wear black.”

“Of course not! I… I own other colors.” He stuttered.

“That wasn’t convincing.”

“I literally do.”

“Mhm.” You smiled. “You’re like a bad-boy from Pinterest.”

For the first time all morning, Jungkook laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it, you were so openly cute and funny, it just made the whole thing easier for him. He wasn’t dying of anxiety anymore and he now could be just himself. He was now only nervous to prove to you he was definitely as cool as you were.

“Let’s sit.”

You laughed to yourself before walking next to him to the table, finally dropping into the chair across from Jungkook, setting your bag on the floor and pushing a few loose strands of hair behind your ear. “This is so weird.”

“It is.”

“I’ve been talking to you every day for like… what? Weeks?”

“A little over.”

“And I’ve just been making up your face this whole time,” You sighed. “Now look at us. Internet friends to real friends.”

“Only few people can make that happen,” he said sarcastically.

“Well, I’m definitely glad you’re not an eighty year old man. That was my worst befriended experience ever.”

“That sounds like— Wait, what do you mea—”

“Ugh, I want a coffee too.” You pointed at him triumphantly before reaching across the table to steal the untouched americano sitting in front of him. “Can I have this? It seems you had a lot of… those.” You looked around the table, noticing his other three americanos. “Were you hanging out with your friends before?”

“Those are mine.”

“Why were you drinking so much coffe? You’re gonna have a heart attack.”

Jungkook blinked, moving uncomfortably in his seat. “Uhm… Well, I got here early,” He said, a bit shy.

“How early?”

“Early.”

“Jungkook.”

“…Thirty minutes.”

Why was he saying this to you? Jungkook couldn’t shut up. His mouth was just being too honest with you. He needed to stop.

You stared incredulous at him. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“No fucking way.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly finding the tabletop incredibly interesting. “I wanted to make sure I got a seat.”

“You got here thirty minutes early for a coffee shop?”

“Yeah.”

“You absolute loser.”

“I know.”

“No, like…” You giggled this this time, shaking your head. “That’s actually adorable.”

Adorable. Jungkook was going to think about that word together with those giggles for the next six to eight years.

Instead of answering, he picked at the cardboard sleeve around one of his empty coffee cup, hoping you wouldn’t notice that his ears had immediately betrayed him.

But, of course you noticed. “Oh my God. You’re blushing?”

“I’m not.”

“You literally are.”

“It’s warm in here.”

“They have AC.”

“They barely have it on!”

You leaned across the table, narrowing your eyes at him with exaggerated suspicion. “You’re actually shy.”

“I’m not shy.”

“You are.”

“You’re just too easygoing!”

You laughed again, smiling like it was a compliment. “You’re cute, Jungkook.”

Okay, he was definitely going to pass out.

“Shut up.”

You leaned back in your chair, still looking at him with obvious curiosity. “So…” you said, tapping your nails on the table. “What about you?”

Jungkook looked at you a little confused. “What?”

“What did you think I’d look like?”

He let out a quiet “oh,” buying himself a second. There were about a hundred honest answers sitting at the tip of his tongue, all of which would get him escorted out of the café if he accidentally said them out loud.

“I thought you’d be taller.”

You looked down at yourself. “Rude!.”

“I’m kidding.”

“Mhm.”

“I actually didn’t think of anything.”

“Liar,” you accused him.

“I’m serious.”

“You had to imagine something.”

He pretended to think about it for another second before smiling. “I imagined you’d look like someone who talks way too much. I was completely right.”

You gasped dramatically. “Excuse you?”

“I was right,” he said again.

“I’ve known you in person for thirty seconds.”

“You’ve been talking for twenty-nine of them.”

“I was being welcoming!.”

“Well, you really are. For sure.”

You laughed, pointing at him. “Okay… I’ll give you that one.”

Jungkook shrugged innocently. “I like that, you’re too friendly.” He tilted his head slightly. “I wasn’t expecting you to smile this much.”

You looked at him a little taken aback. “What?”

“You smile a lot,” he repeated himself. Jungkook remember you used to laugh a lot too, at everything. He liked that, he also was dying to let you know that for a long time, he liked your smile.

“I do?”

“Yeah.”

You frowned in genuine confusion, almost as if you’d never noticed. “I didn’t know… Is that bad?”

“No,” his answer came easily this time, and too fast he had to cleared his throat before composing himself. “I think it’s nice.”

There wasn’t anything loaded behind it, nor did he intend there to be. It came out sounding exactly how he’d meant it, honest enough to be a compliment, casual enough that it didn’t linger in the air to make you uncomfortable.

You smiled again, this time more relaxed. “Well now I’m self-conscious.”

“You smiled while saying that.”

“Fuck.”

“I rest my case.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’ve decided I don’t like you.”

“That was fast.”

“I had big expectations.”

“And I shattered them?”

“You did.”

“Ugh, I’ll never recover from this.” Jungkook said sarcastically. He could tell you liked a good banter.

“I hope you don’t.”

A comfortable silence settled between you two before Jungkook glanced at you again. There was a brief lull in the conversation, not uncomfortable in the slightest, just long enough for you to look at him again with a small crease forming between your brows.

“Can I say something weird?”

“Always.”

“I have this weird feeling we’ve met before.” Jungkook’s heart kicked so violently against his ribs that he almost threw up right there. “I swear you look so familiar.”.

Jungkook tried to keep his expression neutral, lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug despite suddenly becoming hyperaware of every inch of his body. “I was actually thinking the same thing.”

“Were you?”

“Yeah.”

“I feel like…” You squinted at him before talking a pause, eyes narrowing. “Wait—”

Jungkook held his breath as your eyes widened. His pulse immediately doubled. Did you remember? Did you remember the project? Did you actually know him?

You remembered those afternoons in the editing room arguing over the stupid assignment while you painted foam props and laughed at every stupid joke he’d made just because you laughed at everything? Did you remembered sharing cheap vending machine coffee because you’d both been too broke to buy anything else? Did you remembered sitting shoulder to shoulder on the floor of the studio at class trying to finish everything before the deadline because you lost too much time joking around?

You remembered him?

“You remember?.”

“Yes! I knew it!” You pointed at him so suddenly that he almost flinched. “You!”

He smiled before he could stop himself. “Yeah?”

“You almost fucking killed me!”

“I did— What?”

“You almost made me eat shit outside the music building.”

The smile stayed on his face for exactly one more second before it twitched. “Come again?”

“A couple weeks ago!” you said, a little too frantic. You leaned farther over the table, completely invested now. “You came flying around the corner in the hallways of the music building, smashed into me so hard I nearly ate concrete, looked me dead in the eyes and then just…” You made a dramatic gesture with both hands. “…walked away! How rude!”

Silence settled between you two for a couple of seconds. You weren’t really angry, it was obvious. But Jungkook’s brain still had quietly folded in on itself. You clearly didn’t remember and it was obvious you wouldn’t, he wasn’t that important in your life. You wouldn’t remember a simpler project and the hours you spent together in class, it had been too long ago. You just remembered him as the asshole who’d accidentally shoulder-checked you outside a building and disappeared without apologizing.

And he remember that too, he had been too nervous when he noticed he run over you, disappearing without properly apologizing. Clearly you would remember something like that— wasn’t the same day you got Chan’s numbers? Probably why you remembered every detail about it.

Jungkook closed his eyes for a second, scrunching his nose before letting out a defeated laugh.

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Dude—”

“Okay, okay,” he lifted his hands, defeated. “ my defense… I was carrying a lot of stuff.”

“No, you were carrying one backpack. I remember because I wanted to hit you with it,” you narrowed your eyes, clearly not bothered but trying to annoy him.

“Totally fair,” he nodded.

“You didn’t even say sorry properly.”

“I was going to.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“I thought about it really hard.”

“Wow. Thank God I can hear thoughts.”

“I assumed you could.”

“How?”

“Well, we declared we were each other best friends then, right? You should clearly know what I was thinking.” He said obvious, pointing at you like you were at fault.

You snorted, clearly entertained. “I didn’t know you were the guy I was talking to!.”

“Then whose fault is this really?”

“Still yours!,” you laughed at loud and Jungkook smiled at that.

He had made you laugh. A win.

He groaned, faking to be annoyed and already accepting defeat. “Okay… You’re right. I’m sorry about that, I was probably having an off day.”

You looked at him for a second before nodding, still looking bright. “I guess I can forgive you. We all have days like that.”

“You’re so thoughtful,” he said jokingly.

“That’s one of my best qualities,” you shrugged like it wasn’t a big thing. “So, tell me best friend, what is your major?”

The conversation slipped into place so naturally that Jungkook almost forgot how terrified he’d been ten minutes earlier. Every time you spoke, you somehow left him with three different ways to answer, and before he realized it you were already teasing each other as though you’d been meeting for coffee every Tuesday instead of hiding behind phone screens for weeks.

Neither of you realized you had stopped being strangers. The disappointment of you not remembering the project lingered only briefly before it was buried beneath another banter and another topic of conversation. And by the time the hours passed, Jungkook noticed he’d stopped rehearsing his replies entirely. He was just… talking, and somehow that felt far less terrifying than everything he’d imagined over the past few weeks.

didn’t even chuckle with this one but their meet up was enough okay bye!! made that robbie joke before someone sent me the victorious ask so now u understand why i was crazy excited. also, yayy she forgot about chan. okkayyy see you in 2 months!!

You slowly twirled, a movement practiced a thousand times over, effortless and elegant. Your legs extended with fluid grace, your eyes mirroring the depth of the music, and your posture remained flawless as you commanded the stage. As the final notes slowly faded, you offered three deep bows and stepped back just as the velvet curtain fell. The thunderous applause followed you all the way backstage, where your teacher and peers stood waiting.

"Brilliant as always, my dear," the head mistress praised. You tucked a stray lock of hair behind your ear, a soft blush warming your cheeks and neck as you offered a gracious smile.

You were the theater's reigning prima ballerina, the singular force that sold out every tier of the house, night after night.

Stepping into the quiet sanctuary of your dressing room, you began unlacing your satin pink gloves. The moment the door swung open, your eyes immediately found the vanity table. There it sat, a pristine bouquet of white roses, tied with a heavy black silk ribbon. Every bloom was immaculate, perfectly cultivated and fresh, looking as though they had been hand-plucked from a private conservatory moments ago.

A quiet, familiar smile touched your lips.

For the past ten years, ever since your debut, these flowers had awaited you. Every single performance, without fail, they appeared on your vanity like clockwork, a silent testament to your artistry.

There was never a card, never a name.

In the anxious hours before a show, you always resolved to catch whoever left them. Yet, amidst the chaos of backstage preparation, the mystery slipped away, leaving the bouquet to feel like a deeply personal, exclusive ovation upon your return. You had questioned the theater staff countless times, but the answer was always the same.

no one had seen a soul enter the room.

As you carefully lifted the bouquet from the vanity, the door burst open.

"Tell me he proposed this time."

You barely managed to steady your hands to keep from dropping the flowers as your closest confidante, Mina, swept into the room, the tulle of her costume rustling with her dramatic entrance.

You rolled your eyes, maintaining your composure. "For the last time, Mina, there is no he."

Mina snorted, collapsing onto the plush velvet sofa with practiced theatricality. "Please. A decade of flowers? White roses? Imported white roses, might I add. Whoever your mystery gentleman is, he is either hopelessly devoted or entirely mad."

You busied yourself setting the stems into a heavy crystal vase, arranging them with meticulous care. "It could very well be a woman," you countered.

Mina raised a single, perfectly sculpted brow. "A woman with the patience to send flowers for ten years without demanding your attention? Even the most dedicated patroness would have requested a proper introduction by now. No, it is a man, without a doubt."

"He could be an old patron," you murmured, keeping your gaze fixed on the blossoms.

"An old patron does not track your schedule after every single performance for a decade."

You offered no retort, simply because Mina was not entirely wrong.

The flowers had evolved into a sacred ritual. On grueling nights when rehearsals stretched into the early morning hours and exhaustion settled deep into your bones, the thought of returning to your dressing room sustained you. You looked forward to the roses. To the heavy black ribbon. To the silent, enduring reassurance that somewhere in that cavernous, darkened auditorium, someone had come solely to watch you move.

Mina caught the subtle shift in your expression immediately. A faint, private smile had touched your lips as you stared down at the white petals, genuinely wondering for the first time if a man truly sat behind the gesture.

"Oh my God."

"What?" you asked, defensive.

"You fancy him."

"I do not even know his name."

"Exactly," she declared, leaning forward. "You have fallen in love with a bouquet."

A sudden heat rushed to your cheeks. "Be quiet, Mina.”

°

The following week found you in the grand rehearsal hall, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling mirrors that reflected every precise, fluid movement of your practice.

Suddenly, the heavy double doors swung open, and your head mistress marched in, clutching an official parchment that bore a prominent, gilded seal.

"Y/N!" she exclaimed, her usual stern demeanor giving way to pure excitement. "You have been personally selected to perform at the Cornetthe!"

The room erupted. The other dancers cheered and applauded, but the sound felt distant as your eyes widened in sheer disbelief. To take the stage at the Cornetthe was the pinnacle of a dancer's career—the very dream you had bled for since you first laced your slippers. Every grueling hour, every bruised ankle, and every late-night rehearsal had been a quiet dedication toward reaching that sacred stage.

You caught Mina in a breathless embrace, a rare, uncharacteristic giggle escaping your lips as you jumped slightly.

Beneath the artistic triumph, however, a wave of profound relief washed over you. A performance at the Cornetthe commanded an exorbitant fee—wealth that would change everything. Your first thought flew instantly to your younger sister.

She was approaching the age to enter a proper university, and after losing your parents five years ago, the weight of providing for her had fallen entirely on your young shoulders. Every performance had been a means to ensure her security. Now, you could finally buy her the fine dresses she deserved and secure her tuition without a second thought.

"Miss Y/N?" a maidservant called out softly, knocking on the open door frame.

You stepped back from the huddle, smoothing your leotard. "Yes?"

"A parcel has just arrived for you, miss." She carefully placed a structured box onto a nearby mahogany table and offered a polite dip before withdrawing.

"A gift?" Your brow furrowed slightly.

Your head mistress gave a knowing, proud nod. "Rest now, and prepare yourself. The official itinerary will be dispatched shortly." With a final, encouraging pat on your shoulder, she swept out of the hall, taking the rest of the company with her.

Left alone with Mina, you approached the table, your curiosity piqued. The box was wrapped in immaculate, heavy cream paper and bound with a thick, silk black ribbon.

Your heart skipped a beat. The texture, the precise knot, the deep midnight shade—it was identical to the ribbons on your bouquets.

"Oh?" Mina gasped, instantly appearing over your shoulder with a delighted giggle. "Is this from your phantom suitor as well?"

"No... how could it be?" you whispered, your hand hovering over the silk.

"Of course it is! Look at the ribbon." Mina gently lifted the edge of the bow. "Did he send this to congratulate you on the Cornetthe?" she asked, her eyes wide with realization.

A chill, both thrilling and unnerving, raced down your spine. "How could he possibly know I was selected? I only just found out myself…”

You carried the elegant box home with you that evening, keeping it tucked securely under your arm. Once you were safely behind the closed door of your bedroom, the quiet of the small apartment enveloped you.

The room was modest but entirely yours, decorated in soft, faded pink wallpapers, walls adorned with vintage ballet posters, a simple iron-frame bed in the center, and a wooden dressing table positioned right by the window.

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, you finally untied the black silk ribbon and peeled back the crisp cream paper.

Inside lay a pair of opera-length gloves.

A sudden warmth bloomed in your chest. You lifted the silk-lined fabric, tracing the exquisite craftsmanship with your fingertips. The material was impossibly supple, carrying the distinct weight and flawless sheen of haute couture—the kind of luxury born from elite ateliers, far beyond what your standard wages could ever afford.

"Oh..." A soft breath of wonder escaped your lips.

You carefully slid them onto your hands, the fabric hugging your arms like a second skin. Turning toward the vanity mirror, you offered a small, private smile. As you leaned closer, your eyes caught a glimpse of something remaining at the bottom of the box.

It was a small, heavy cardstock note. On it, written in sharp, elegant calligraphy, was a single letter:

J.

Your breath hitched. J?

A hundred questions flooded your mind. Who was he? An aristocrat? A quiet fixture in the grand tier boxes?

Your gaze drifted to the vase on your windowsill, where the white roses from last week’s performance were basking in the evening twilight. A flush of heat warmed your cheeks as you approached the vanity, your fingers gently brushing against the cool, velvet petals.

Could it truly be a man? A gentleman who had watched you from the shadows for an entire decade, quietly celebrating your triumphs from afar?

You leaned in, carefully pressing a single petal to your lips to inhale the faint, sweet fragrance, your heart racing with a feeling you couldn't quite name.

°

Tonight, the veil of secrecy would finally be torn away.

The decision had been solidified the precise moment your eyes opened that morning.

As the wardrobe mistress fastened the final, delicate pearl button of your bodice, your gaze drifted toward the heavy oak door of your dressing room. Soon, if a decade of tradition held true, another immaculate bouquet of white roses would materialize upon the marble vanity, bound in that signature black silk.

Ten years.

Ten years of unyielding devotion, delivered in silence.

You had spent countless evenings painting a portrait of him in your mind. Was he a distinguished patron of the arts? A reclusive aristocrat? Someone who had caught a fleeting glimpse of you on stage a decade ago and remained forever captivated?

Tonight, speculation would end.

"Places in ten minutes, ladies!" the stage manager’s voice boomed down the corridor.

Instantly, the backstage area erupted into a flurry of motion as dancers hurried toward the wings, the ribbons of their pointe shoes trailed by the scent of powder and resin. You followed the tide, your steps clicking softly against the lacquered floorboards.

Then, you paused.

This was your moment.

Murmuring a swift excuse to a passing ballerina, you slipped away from the throng, turning down a narrow, dimly lit servants' corridor that looped back toward the private dressing rooms.

The theater was eerily tranquil here, insulated from the grand auditorium. The distant, muffled hum of the audience settling into the velvet tiers echoed faintly through the stone walls, sounding like a rising tide.

Your heart hammered against your ribs, a frantic rhythm that had nothing to do with stage fright.

As you neared your door, your pace slowed to a breathless crawl.

The door was ajar, a sliver of warm candlelight spilling across the threshold.

Someone was inside.

Holding your breath, you pressed closer, peering through the gap.

A gentleman stood before your vanity.

He was exceptionally tall, carrying an aura of effortless, old-world elegance. Even from behind, his presence was commanding; broad shoulders filled out a tailored charcoal overcoat, the exquisite cut unmistakably born from a master artisan. Dark, lustrous hair, perfectly styled, brushed the high collar of his coat.

In his gloved hands, he held the familiar, pristine arrangement of white roses.

With an almost reverent tenderness, he leaned forward and placed them upon the vanity table.

By all accounts of propriety, you should have pushed the door open. You should have demanded his name.

Instead, you remained entirely frozen, captivated.

The gentleman’s gaze swept slowly across the private sanctuary of your room. Then, his hand moved. Deliberately, he reached out for the pale silk shawl you had discarded across the chaise after morning rehearsals.

Your breath caught in your throat.

He lifted the delicate fabric with astonishing gentleness, his long fingers smoothing over the silk before bringing it toward him. For a fleeting, suspended second, he closed his eyes, inhaling the faint trace of your perfume that lingered in the threads.

A quiet, nearly imperceptible sigh escaped his lips.

It was a sound heavy with contentment, longing, and an absolute, unshakable devotion.

A sudden chill raced down your spine, yet it was entirely devoid of fear. The sheer intimacy of the gesture should have horrified a lady of your upbringing. Instead, an intoxicating warmth unfurled deep within your chest, accompanied by an inexplicable thrill that rooted you to the floor.

Who was this ghost?

As though catching the subtle shift in the air, his eyelashes fluttered.

You startled, stepping back.

At that exact moment, the grandfather clock at the end of the gallery began its deep, resonant chime.

Eight o'clock.

The curtain was rising. Your performance was beginning.

A wave of panic supplanted the spell. Without another thought, you gathered your tulle skirt and hurried back toward the stage, your heart hammering wildly against your ribs as you fled into the shadows.

You missed the way the gentleman turned slowly toward the doorway moments later. His dark eyes fixed upon the empty corridor and no one was there.

You barely managed to take your position before the heavy velvet curtains parted.

As the orchestra began its swelling overture, your body moved instinctively. Years of rigorous, unforgiving training guided every graceful extension and precise turn, yet tonight, your thoughts refused to be disciplined.

Because it had been a man.

Not a collective phantom, nor some frail benefactor hidden behind a wall of distant philanthropy.

A man.

An exceptionally handsome man.

Even now, as you floated effortlessly across the stage, the memory of him burned vividly in your mind. The pale, luminous quality of his skin beneath the warm amber lights of your dressing room. The sharp, aristocratic line of his jaw. The immaculate black coat that seemed tailored to him like armor. There had been something distinctly regal about his bearing—an effortless, innate elegance that could not be bought or taught.

And then, there was the way he had lifted your shawl.

The absolute reverence in the gesture.

The quiet, desperate sigh that had escaped him as he inhaled your scent.

A strange, intoxicating warmth spread through your chest, contrasting sharply with the cool stage air. Somewhere among the hundreds gathered in the darkened auditorium tonight, he was watching you. Watching, just as he had for the past ten years.

Your heart stuttered in its rhythm.

Without meaning to, breaking the strict discipline of your art, your eyes drifted toward the upper tiers.

And found him.

Seated entirely alone within a shadow-drenched private box, he looked almost ethereal amidst the gilded gold moldings and crimson velvet. Dressed in midnight black, he sat with effortless poise, one gloved hand resting lightly against the brass railing. His dark eyes were fixed solely on you.

It was as though he had been waiting for you to look.

The precise moment your gazes locked across the vast expanse, a violent shiver danced down your spine. You nearly faltered, your foot slipping a mere fraction of an inch on the lacquered wood before you recovered with practiced grace.

Throughout the remainder of the performance, your eyes sought him again and again, drawn by an irresistible gravity.

And every single time, he was already watching.

The sheer intensity of his unwavering focus should have unsettled you. It should have felt invasive. Instead, it made your skin prickle pleasantly beneath the layers of silk and satin.

Tonight, you danced differently. More passionately. More intimately. It was as though the grand theater had emptied entirely, leaving only the two of you locked in a silent dialogue.

When the final, dramatic note echoed through the hall and thunderous applause erupted from the stalls, you stepped forward to take your bows. Instinctively, your gaze rose toward the private box one last time.

He was still there, a solitary silhouette against the crimson backdrop.

Unable to help yourself, you allowed the smallest, rarest smile to grace your lips before lowering your head in a final, sweeping bow.

A smile meant for him alone.

°

The moment the heavy velvet curtains fell and the final, echoing wave of applause washed over the stage, you were already moving.

Ignoring the bewildered calls of your fellow dancers and the stage manager’s sharp reprimands, you gathered the voluminous tulle skirts of your costume and hurried through the labyrinth of backstage corridors. Your satin pointe shoes slipped precariously against the highly polished marble floors, but you didn't slow your pace.

You didn't stop to change into your street clothes. You didn't stop to wipe away your stage makeup. You only knew one undeniable truth: you had to catch him.

The crisp, cool evening air bit at your bare shoulders as you burst through the grand proscenium entrance of the theater. A line of pristine luxury automobiles lined the cobblestone curb, their chauffeurs waiting patiently beneath the warm pools of golden streetlight.

Your eyes frantically scanned the departing high-society crowd. For one agonizing, terrifying moment, you thought you had missed him entirely.

Then, your gaze locked onto a silhouette.

Standing beside a sleek, midnight-black Rolls-Royce, one gloved hand resting lightly on the open carriage door, was the gentleman from your dressing room.

The moment his eyes found you, he froze completely. It was the first time his unyielding composure faltered, as though he had never, in ten years, anticipated you coming after him.

And for the first time, in the clear clarity of the lamplight, you truly saw him.

He was utterly breathtaking.

The soft, ambient glow of the theater facade illuminated features so striking they appeared chiseled from marble. Dark, lustrous hair perfectly framed an impossibly handsome face, his pale skin luminous against the deep black of his cashmere overcoat.

Every inch of his bearing exuded quiet wealth—not the loud, vulgar ostentation of the newly rich, but the effortless, understated elegance that only generations of old money could cultivate. The exquisite cut of his tailored suit alone likely cost more than your entire season's salary.

For a few suspended moments, neither of you spoke, the city sounds fading into a hum between you.

Gathering the remains of your courage, you took a step closer into his space. "It was you."

The gentleman regarded you with a calm, guarded intensity.

"The flowers," you continued, your fingers clutching the delicate silk edge of your bodice. "You have been leaving them for me. For a decade."

Something entirely unreadable flickered across his dark eyes, gone as quickly as it had arrived. "I believe you have mistaken me for someone else, Miss."

You stared at him, incredulous. "Mistaken you?" you repeated, your voice breathless. "I saw you in my dressing room. Not an hour ago."

A faint, ghost of a smile touched the corner of his lips. "I was merely returning a misplaced item."

"My shawl?" you challenged softly.

He inclined his head with impeccable, aristocratic politeness. "Precisely."

"Then the flowers?"

"The theater receives many wealthy admirers, mademoiselle. I am merely one of many."

A profound confusion swirled within you. He had been caught. You had witnessed his reverence with your own eyes, yet he stood before you now, maddeningly composed, offering a flawless mask of denial.

"Who are you?" you finally whispered, the question escaping before you could stop it.

For the very first time, a genuine trace of hesitation crossed his striking features. He looked at you, really looked at you, before speaking.

Before you could press further, his chauffeur stepped forward, holding the rear door fully open. Jimin turned back to you and offered a small, old-fashioned bow—impossibly elegant, a gesture from a bygone era.

"Congratulations on tonight's performance, Miss. Your Giselle was entirely exceptional."

Your breath caught completely in your throat. You had performed Giselle only three times in your entire career, years ago.

By the time you managed to gather your scattered thoughts, he had already slipped into the darkened luxury of the vehicle. The heavy door closed with a muted thud, and the Rolls-Royce glided effortlessly into the London mist, leaving you standing beneath the theater lights, draped in tulle and satin, entirely captivated by a phantom who finally had a name.

°

The moment the heavy car door clicked shut, insulating him from the cool night air, Jimin finally exhaled.

He looked down. His hand was trembling.

He stared at his fingers in quiet, clinical disbelief. Trembling.

Park Jimin—heir to one of the realm's oldest and most formidable fortunes, a man who had negotiated multi-million-pound acquisitions before the age of twenty-five without so much as a flicker of unease—sat entirely paralyzed in the plush leather backseat of his vintage car. All because a breathless ballerina had looked into his eyes and spoken to him.

"It was you."

Her voice reverberated through the quiet luxury of the vehicle, soft, accusing, and achingly beautiful. For ten long years, he had composed this exact confrontation in the private theater of his mind. Yet, in all his carefully orchestrated scenarios, it had never once unfolded with him completely stripped of his armor, utterly defenseless against her gaze.

"Home, sir?" his chauffeur inquired, his voice a low, deferential murmur through the glass partition.

Jimin offered a curt, absent nod, his eyes still anchored to his uncharacteristic tremors.

She had looked at him. Truly looked at him, past the high society facade and the tailored armor of his overcoat. And at the end of her performance, before she offered her final curtsey to the auditorium, she had smiled.

The memory alone was enough to throw his highly disciplined heart into utter disarray.

As the gas lamps and misty London streets blurred past the tinted windows, Jimin let his forehead rest against the cool glass, allowing his mind to wander back to the absolute genesis of his ruin.

Ten years.

A decade ago, he had been dragged to the annual Winter Arts Gala solely to satisfy the unyielding social obligations of his grandmother. He had been nineteen, cynical, detached, and wholly indifferent to the arts.

Then, she had stepped onto the stage.

She was seventeen then. Nervous. Exquisite.

He remembered every microscopic detail of that evening with terrifying clarity: the pale blue tulle of her practice costume; the slight, endearing tremor in her hands before the conductor raised his baton; the exact moment, midway through her variation, when her anxiety evaporated and she surrendered entirely to the music, a radiant smile transforming her features.

Jimin had been unable to draw breath. He had never truly looked away since.

Over the years, his quiet observation had deepened into an intimate, unspoken understanding. He knew her favorite composer was Tchaikovsky. He knew she considered Swan Lake’s Pas de Deux the pinnacle of romance, and that she invariably listened to Debussy in the solitude of her dressing room before opening nights.

He knew that when she was terribly anxious, she would absentmindedly twist the silk ribbons of her pointe shoes around her slender fingers until the knuckles turned white.

He knew, because he was always there. A silent, permanent fixture in the shadows of the grand tier boxes.

The white roses had begun a mere week after that initial performance. At first, they were a gentleman’s anonymous tribute to a rising star. Then, they became a sacred tradition. Eventually, they became a necessity, the only way he knew how to breathe.

When her academy scholarship had mysteriously faced revocation due to clerical politics, an anonymous endowment had materialized the following morning. When the theater company suffered devastating budget cuts, private donations quietly restored their funding. When she suffered that agonizing ankle injury during her third season, a world-renowned specialist had arrived at her side within hours, his exorbitant fees settled by an untraceable account.

She never knew. She was never intended to know. The Park name carried a weight that would have suffocated her pure artistry, and he refused to let the cynicism of his world touch the sanctuary of hers.

By the time the Rolls-Royce glided through the wrought-iron gates of his family’s country estate, the trembling in his hands had finally subsided. Almost.

Jimin moved through the sprawling, ancestral mansion in absolute silence, ignoring the distant servants and passing beneath the stern gazes of painted forefathers lining the marble corridors. He walked until he reached the isolated corridor of the west wing—his private sanctuary.

With a heavy brass key, he unlocked the reinforced oak doors and stepped inside.

The room belonged entirely to her. It was a museum of a life preserved in meticulous, breathless devotion.

Framed programs from every single performance she had ever given lined the silk-paneled walls. Ticket stubs, obscure newspaper critiques, and candid photographs filled silver-gilt frames. In illuminated glass cases lay the retired costumes auctioned off for charity, purchased through proxies and restored by master tailors with painstaking care. Another display held every pair of satin gloves she had ever discarded in the theater bins, neatly pressed and preserved.

At the absolute center of the room hung an immense, breathtaking portrait.

Her. Painted in the dramatic, tragic costume of the White Swan. Timeless. Pure. Utterly untouchable.

Jimin stopped before it, his hands clasped behind his back in his habitual aristocratic posture. Ten years ago, he had merely thought her beautiful. Tonight, looking at the canvas, he realized he could no longer remember what his life had even looked like before her existence defined it.

His dark eyes lingered on the painted lines of her face, remembering the years of sorrow the canvas couldn't capture. He remembered the year she lost her parents; the heartbreaking performances where she danced with hollow, grief-stricken eyes and a forced, fragile smile.

He remembered the agonizing months she vanished from the playbills entirely, and the fierce, protective pride that had swelled in his chest when she returned—thinner, quieter, but possessed of a profound, unbreakable strength.

He had watched her leave rehearsals early, her shoulders slumped with exhaustion as she rushed home to raise her younger sister alone. He remembered the precise night she had finally smiled with genuine warmth again on stage.

Jimin had kept the program from that evening in a separate, velvet-lined drawer. It remained his most treasured possession.

Slowly, modern restraint warring with a decade of suppressed longing, Jimin raised his hand. His long fingers hovered just inches away from the painted edge of her cheek.

"Who are you?"

Her voice lingered in the quiet room.

He closed his eyes, a low, disbelieving laugh escaping his chest. He still could not entirely comprehend the reality of the evening. She had confronted him. She had demanded to know his name.

And for the first time in a decade, his silent devotion no longer felt entirely confined to the shadows.

°

You arrived at the theater nearly an hour earlier than usual that evening.

You told yourself it was because you wished to rehearse the difficult adagio alone before the company arrived. Nothing more. It was certainly not because a certain dark-haired gentleman had occupied your thoughts with alarming, relentless persistence over the past three days.

Stepping into the quiet sanctuary of your dressing room, you carefully hung your heavy wool coat before settling before the illuminated vanity mirror. For several moments, you simply stared at your reflection, the quiet hum of the empty theater vibrating through the floorboards.

Then, moved by a sudden, inexplicable impulse, you bypassed your usual stage cosmetic and reached for a different lipstick. A richer, deeper shade. A soft, flush-toned rose.

Your brows furrowed in the mirror. Why were you making such an effort?

The answer came unbidden, striking a chord deep in your chest.

Because he will be there.

Heat immediately flooded your cheeks, staining your skin a natural crimson. It was entirely ridiculous. You had exchanged barely a handful of words with the man in the damp night air, and yet...

Your gaze drifted toward the elegant opera-length gloves resting atop the mahogany vanity.

You hesitated only briefly before lifting the supple fabric and slipping them on. The silk embraced your arms flawlessly, smooth and impossibly luxurious against your skin. Even now, you could scarcely believe they belonged to you, or that his hands had chosen them from some exclusive atelier.

"You look unusually lovely today."

You nearly jumped as Mina entered the room, her tulle costume draped over one arm. She stopped short, her sharp eyes immediately narrowing as she took you in. "Is that a new lipstick?"

"No," you lied softly, turning your face away.

"And the gloves?"

"They're old."

Mina folded her arms, a look of profound skepticism crossing her features. "You are a terrible liar, my dear."

You busied yourself with adjusting your pearl earrings, refusing to meet her gaze. "I simply felt like wearing them tonight."

"Hm." Mina's lips curved into a knowing, maddening smile. "Waiting for someone, perhaps?"

Your heart stumbled in its rhythm. "What? Of course not."

Mina's smile only widened. "You've glanced toward the door six times since I walked in."

"I have not."

"You absolutely have."

You turned away completely before she could dissect your expression any further. Thankfully, the call for places echoed down the corridor moments later, rescuing you from her interrogation.

The familiar, cold pre-performance nerves settled over you as you took your position in the wings. Yet tonight, beneath the customary anxiety, another feeling thrummed quietly in your veins. Anticipation.

As the heavy velvet curtains rose and the golden stage lights bathed you in their artificial warmth, your eyes instinctively sought the grand private boxes in the upper tier.

And there he sat. Exactly where you had expected him to be.

He was entirely alone, dressed impeccably in black, looking like a prince of the old world. The gilded, baroque surroundings of the theater only seemed to sharpen his quiet elegance. One gloved hand rested lightly against the crimson velvet-lined railing as he watched the stage with unwavering, absolute attention.

He was watching you.

Your breath caught in your throat. For a fleeting, dangerous moment, you forgot the conductor, the orchestra, and the hundreds of spectators in the stalls entirely. Then, the music swelled, and your training took over.

Tonight, however, you danced differently. Every pirouette felt lighter, as if gravity had lost its hold on you. Every extension was executed with a desperate, fluid grace. Again and again, as the choreography allowed, your gaze drifted upward toward the shadows of the box.

And every single time, you found his dark eyes already fixed upon you. Steady. Intent. Devoted.

The sheer intensity of his focus should have unsettled a lady of your propriety. Instead, it sent a delicious, intoxicating shiver down your spine. You found yourself smiling more, performing not for the critical eyes of the directors hidden in the stalls, but for him alone.

When the final, dramatic note faded into the rafters and thunderous applause erupted throughout the grand hall, you bowed deeply, your chest heaving from exertion. As you straightened, your eyes lifted instinctively to the upper box one last time.

He remained in his seat, a solitary figure amidst the standing ovation, simply watching.

Unable to help yourself, you allowed the faintest, most private smile to grace your lips—a fleeting gesture no one else in the crowded theater could possibly notice.

But he did. You knew he did.

With your heart fluttering wildly against your ribs, you hurried toward your dressing room the moment the curtains fell, eager to escape the backstage chatter.

You pushed the heavy oak door open.

And there they were. The white roses. Pristine, dew-kissed, and waiting for you on the marble table.

A breathless smile blossomed across your face before you could stop it. Setting the heavy bouquet closer to the light, your fingers caught on something white tucked deep amongst the velvet blooms.

A card.

Your hands trembled slightly as you unfolded the heavy, cream cardstock. Written in that sharp, elegant calligraphy you had seen once before were just four words,

The gloves suited you.

— J.

For several seconds, you could do nothing but stare at the ink, the breath trapped in your lungs.

He had noticed. Amongst hundreds of spectators, beneath dazzling, blinding stage lights and layers of theatrical costume, he had recognized the very gloves he had gifted you.

A deep, warm blush spread slowly across your cheeks and neck as you pressed the note to your chest. Your mysterious patron finally had a name, and your world would never be the same.

°

Nearly an hour later, the grand theater had finally emptied.

The excited, melodic chatter of the corps de ballet had long faded from the galleries, replaced by the distant, rhythmic thuds of stagehands dismantling the evening’s scenery. In the vast auditorium, the soft, amber hum of the single ghost light illuminated the abandoned stage, casting long, romantic shadows across the velvet stalls.

You packed your belongings with slow, deliberate movements, carefully wrapping the silk ribbons of your pointe shoes before placing them into your satin bag. Yet, before zipping it shut, your gaze was drawn back to the heavy, cream-colored card resting atop your mahogany vanity.

A profound, intoxicating warmth bloomed within your chest despite your best efforts to remain disciplined. You quietly slipped the card into your vintage purse, snapping the clasp shut.

The moment you stepped through the heavy oak exit of the theater, the sheer violence of the elements greeted you.

It was a torrential downpour. Heavy, unrelenting sheets of water swept from the midnight sky, drumming a fierce rhythm against the marble steps and the ornate, neoclassical stone façade of the building. The city beyond the courtyard had dissolved into a mesmerizing blur of silver and gold reflections beneath the storm.

You let out a soft, defeated sigh. No umbrella. Truly perfect.

Resigned to wait out the tempest, you stepped back beneath the deep, sheltered architecture of the grand portico, hugging your wool coat tighter around your frame to ward off the damp chill.

Then, the low, aristocratic purr of an engine interrupted the steady roar of the rain.

A sleek, midnight-black Rolls-Royce glided silently through the mist, coming to a flawless halt directly before the portico steps. Your heart stumbled, a sudden, frantic pulse leaping into your throat.

The heavy rear door swung open. And he stepped out.

Tonight, dressed in an impeccably tailored charcoal cashmere overcoat layered over a bespoke black evening suit, he looked every bit the unapproachable patrician you had imagined. Mist and stray droplets kissed the broad, commanding line of his shoulders, yet his bearing remained entirely unbothered by the squall.

He was exceptionally tall—far taller than you had realized in the fleeting chaos of your first encounter. It was the kind of height that seemed to effortlessly master whatever space it occupied. He was elegant, intimidating, and flawlessly beautiful. Every sharp plane of his face and the quiet, innate confidence of his movements whispered of an inherited, ancient wealth.

His dark, luminous eyes swept upward through the rain, settling instantly upon you.

"Miss Y/n."

Your breath caught in your throat, the sound of your name on his lips feeling far too intimate. "You... you know my name."

A faint, nearly imperceptible smile ghosted across his lips. "I have watched you perform for a very long time. It would be impossible to not know."

An immediate, breathless heat flooded your cheeks. Of course he knew. He had a decade of your history memorized.

With practiced grace, he opened a large, black silk umbrella, stepping out into the deluge to close the distance between you. He ascended the marble steps, bringing the shelter of the umbrella over you, effectively cutting off the rest of the world.

"You will never find a carriage or make it home in this weather," he noted, his voice a low, melodious baritone.

You glanced helplessly at the sheets of rain obscuring the street. "I shall manage, I'm sure."

"You won't."

You blinked, looking up at him. There was no arrogance in his declaration—only a quiet, absolute certainty that brooked no argument.

"Allow my chauffeur to drive you home," he murmured, his gaze holding yours.

"Oh, no." You immediately shook your head, your fingers nervously tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear as propriety warred with desire. "I could not possibly impose upon your evening, sir."

"It would be entirely no imposition."

"I really do not wish to be a trouble to you."

For a brief, suspended moment, his dark eyes slowly swept over your figure. Beneath his deliberate, heavy attention, you became acutely, agonizingly aware of your appearance.

You had changed out of your heavy stage costume, opting instead for a soft, blush-pink satin tea dress that fell elegantly around your silhouette. Beneath his quiet scrutiny, the delicate, fluid fabric suddenly felt embarrassingly exposed, as though he could perceive every erratic beat of your heart.

"You could never be a trouble," he said, his tone dropping an octave, softening into something dangerous. "Besides, I would much rather not leave you standing here in the dark alone."

Your heart betrayed your outward composure with a violent flutter.

A few moments later, the spell was cast, and you found yourself seated beside him inside the luxurious, insulated cabin of the vehicle. The interior was a sanctuary of old-world opulence, rich cream leather, highly polished walnut paneling, and soft, amber ambient lighting that kept the shadows close.

And him.

His presence immediately enveloped the enclosed space, carrying a distinct, intoxicating scent. Sandalwood, rare cedar, and something deeply rich and masculine. You found yourself helplessly inhaling the fragrance before forcing your lungs to still.

"Forgive me," you said quietly, the silence between you stretching thin and heavy with unsaid words. "I only know you as... J."

His eyes flickered toward you in the dim light, a sudden depth in their corners. "J?"

You reached into your purse, your fingers tracing the crisp edges of the cardstock before retrieving it. "The note. From..."

Understanding dawned in his expression, a quiet satisfaction relaxing his features. For a moment, he simply looked at the elegant script held between your slender fingers. Then, finally, he spoke the word.

"Jimin."

The name settled with an exquisite, warm resonance inside your chest. "Jimin," you repeated softly, testing the syllables.

He looked away first, his eyelashes casting long shadows against his pale cheekbones. "You may call me that."

As the car glided forward into the rainy night, you reached across your lap for the seatbelt, but your fingers, still trembling slightly from the sheer proximity of him, fumbled awkwardly with the clasp.

"Allow me."

Before you could offer a word of polite protest, Jimin leaned across the narrow space separating your seats.

Your breath caught entirely.

He was suddenly, breathtakingly close. The world narrowed to the mere inches between your faces. At this distance, you could perceive the tiny, delicate mole resting just beneath his left eye, and the impossibly long, dark sweep of his lashes. He was close enough that his warmth radiated against your bare collarbones, close enough that his scent became an overwhelming, dizzying wave. Your lungs entirely forgot how to function.

With a deep, resonant click, the heavy metal seatbelt locked into place across your lap.

Yet, neither of you moved.

For one agonizing, suspended second, the only sound in the universe was the frantic, uneven rhythm of your breathing and the heavy patter of the rain against the glass. His dark eyes rose, locking onto yours with an intensity that made your skin prickle with a delicious, terrifying thrill. His gaze dropped to your lips for a fraction of a heartbeat before rising back to your eyes.

Slowly, deliberately, Jimin withdrew, returning to his side of the carriage, though the charged air between you remained thick enough to cut.

"Comfortable?" he asked quietly, his eyes never truly leaving you.

You could only nod, entirely unable to trust your own voice.

By the time the car left the city limits, the rain had only grown heavier.

Thick curtains of silver lashed against the heavy glass windows, reducing the world outside to little more than blurred lanterns and shadowed silhouettes. You had expected Jimin’s chauffeur to pull up outside your modest apartment complex. Instead, nearly forty minutes later, the vehicle turned sharply through towering, intricate wrought-iron gates.

Your breath caught in your throat.

Beyond them stretched a long, winding driveway lined with ancient oak trees, their grand branches swaying violently beneath the force of the storm. Soft, low-voltage amber lights illuminated perfectly manicured hedges and marble fountains, guiding the way toward an estate so magnificent that, for a moment, you genuinely believed you had stepped into a different century altogether.

The manor emerged through the mist like a living piece of history.

It was enormous. Built from weathered pale stone and crowned with ivy-covered turrets, it stood proudly atop a gentle hill, every illuminated window glowing warmly against the surrounding darkness. Grand, imposing columns framed the entrance, while towering French windows reflected the jagged flashes of distant lightning.

You simply stared, utterly speechless.

Jimin caught the wonder in your eyes. "It has been in my family for generations," he explained quietly, his tone indifferent, as though he were discussing something far less extraordinary than a palace.

Generations. Of course it had.

In an instant, everything about him fell into place. The bespoke suits. The effortless, innate refinement. The quiet confidence that required no volume. The old-world manners that seemed entirely second nature. Jimin belonged to places like this—places built on time, legacy, and silent power.

The car rolled to a seamless stop beneath the grand portico. Before you could gather your scattered thoughts, Jimin had already stepped out into the damp air, opening his large silk umbrella and extending a gloved hand toward you.

You hesitated only briefly before placing your hand in his. His grip was warm, steady, and incredibly strong. He guided you carefully through the sweeping rain and up the sweeping marble steps, shielding you perfectly from the damp chill.

The enormous, iron-studded oak doors opened before you even had the opportunity to knock.

The grand foyer stole what little breath remained in your lungs. Flawless marble floors gleamed beneath massive crystal chandeliers suspended from impossibly high, vaulted ceilings. Large, oil-painted portraits of stern-looking ancestors lined the walls, their gilded frames catching the soft, flickering glow of antique sconces. Everything smelled faintly of cedarwood, old books, and expensive, polished mahogany.

The manor was breathtakingly beautiful. And impossibly silent.

There was no distant laughter. No echoing conversation. No signs of ordinary life. Only the soft, rhythmic echo of your own damp footsteps against the stone.

"Do you live here alone?" you found yourself asking, your voice a small whisper in the cavernous space.

Jimin glanced down toward you, his expression unreadable. "For the most part, yes."

Something about the absolute solitude of his answer made your chest tighten with a strange, sudden ache.

He led you through a series of dim, elegant corridors before finally stopping outside a cozy, firelit sitting room. "I shall have something warm prepared for you immediately," he said, his eyes scanning your bare shoulders. "You must be freezing."

Before you could offer a polite protest, he stepped away briefly, returning moments later carrying a plush, heavy cream towel. He extended it toward you.

You accepted it quietly, your voice catching. "Thank you."

As the fabric transferred between you, your fingers brushed against his. The contact lasted scarcely a second, yet a sharp, electric warmth lingered on your skin long after his hand withdrew.

Shortly afterward, a maidservant entered the room silently, carrying a heavy silver tray. She placed a steaming cup of tea and a crystal glass of water upon the mahogany coffee table before offering Jimin a deeply respectful, practiced bow and departing without uttering a single word.

The room fell into absolute silence once more.

Only you and Jimin remained.

The storm battered softly, relentlessly, against the tall windowpanes. You wrapped the thick towel more securely around your shoulders, suddenly acutely aware of how terrifyingly intimate the situation had become. You were sitting alone, draped in satin, in the heart of his ancestral home. It was midnight.

And sitting directly opposite you was the mysterious man who had spent ten years watching you move through the shadows.

Jimin sat back, impossibly composed as always, his long hands folded neatly over his knee. His dark, piercing eyes met yours across the small expanse, holding your gaze captive.

For a long, agonizing moment, neither of you spoke. Neither seemed willing to break the exquisite, agonizing tension that stretched between you.

For several moments, the room remained suspended in that breathless quiet, the storm outside providing the only tether to reality as it lashed against the tall windows. You cradled the porcelain cup, the heat of the tea seeping into your palms, while your gaze repeatedly drifted to the gentleman opposite you.

Jimin appeared entirely unruffled by the intimacy of the hour. To him, inviting a ballerina he had covertly adored for a decade into his ancestral home seemed as effortless and natural as breathing.

You, meanwhile, felt as though your heart were executing a frantic, undisciplined tempo.

"So," you began, carefully setting the saucer down upon the mahogany table, your voice steady despite the flutter in your chest. "Who exactly are you, Park Jimin?"

A faint, localized smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "That is rather a broad inquiry, is it not?"

You tilted your head, a touch of playful defiance entering your eyes. "You happen to know practically everything about my life, sir. I think a little reciprocity is only fair."

Jimin leaned back against the plush velvet of his armchair, his dark eyes regarding you with quiet, unmistakable amusement. "And what precisely is it you wish to know?"

"Everything."

The demand earned you a soft, low laugh. The sound startled you; it was the first time you had heard it. It was warm, resonant, and terribly beautiful.

"Everything?" he repeated, the syllables lingering between you.

"Your family. Your position. How you spend your hours when you are not mysteriously materializing in theater wings."

Jimin’s smile deepened, though his gaze remained guarded. "My family has been entrenched in banking and high philanthropy for several generations, Miss Y/N."

"That is all you intend to offer?"

"For the present moment, yes."

You frowned slightly, unconvinced. "And your own pursuits?"

"A little of this. A little of that. I oversee the family's arts endowments."

"That is hardly a proper answer."

"It is the answer I am prepared to give."

You huffed softly, turning your face toward the hearth, which only elicited another quiet, captivated chuckle from him.

"You are a very secretive man, Jimin."

"So I have been told by many."

You turned back, studying the sharp, aristocratic contours of his face under the firelight. "Then tell me this. Why me? Out of all the dancers in city, why have you stayed?"

The question hung heavily in the air, shifting the entire atmosphere of the room. For the first time that evening, Jimin’s composed facade slipped, replaced by a profound, sudden stillness. Outside, a low rumble of thunder vibrated through the floorboards.

"You truly wish to know?" he asked, his voice dropping to a private, reverent murmur.

You nodded, holding his gaze.

Jimin’s eyes lowered briefly to his elegant, clasped hands before rising to lock onto yours with an intensity that made your breath catch. "The first time I saw you take the stage, I was nineteen years old."

Your pulse quickened.

"It was a minor variation, but halfway through, you smiled," he continued softly, his dark eyes fixed entirely on your face. "In that singular moment, you forgot the grandeur of the hall. You forgot your nerves. You forgot the audience even existed. There was only you, entirely surrendered to the music."

You remained perfectly motionless, captivated by the cadence of his words.

"I have attended countless performances in my life," Jimin murmured, stepping into the memory. "Operas in Paris, symphonies in Vienna, ballets across the world. But until that evening, I had never seen anything so purely beautiful."

A sudden, breathless heat flooded your cheeks. "Jimin—"

"You possess an extraordinary, terrifying gift, Miss Y/N," he interrupted gently, his tone laced with a decade of unspoken devotion. "Your artistry. Your fierce discipline. The absolute poetry of how you move." His eyes softened impossibly. "And you are quite beautiful."

Your breath faltered entirely. No director, no critic, and certainly no suitor had ever spoken of your dedication in such a manner. No one had ever looked beneath the performance to see you.

You lowered your gaze, suddenly fascinated by the intricate gold filigree of your teacup, purely to hide the depth of your emotion. "Thank you," you whispered into the quiet.

A thick, charged silence settled over the room once more. Then, you detected the subtle rustle of fabric.

Looking up, you realized Jimin had crossed the expanse between your chairs. He stopped directly before you, his tall silhouette blocking out the rest of the firelit room. Your heart stuttered violently against your ribs.

Slowly, deliberately, he sank to one knee before your chair, his movements possessing the fluid grace of an aristocrat. He reached out, his long, warm fingers gently taking hold of your hands.

"You wore them," he murmured, his gaze dropping to the silk.

"The gloves?" you breathed, your throat dry.

He nodded, his thumb lightly tracing the smooth fabric covering your wrist.

You swallowed hard, the proximity making your head spin. "I wanted to. For tonight."

Something dark and utterly unreadable flashed through his eyes, a hunger mixed with absolute reverence. Carefully, almost tenderly, Jimin began to slide the opera gloves from your hands. He peeled the silk away inch by inch, his touch agonizingly slow, leaving your skin tingling as the cool air of the room kissed your bare arms.

When the fabric was completely discarded, he did not let go. Without breaking eye contact, he lifted your bare hand toward his face.

And pressed his lips softly, lingeringly, against your knuckles.

A sharp gasp escaped your lips. The touch lasted only a second, yet a fierce, intoxicating warmth bloomed from the point of contact, racing through your veins and settling deep within your chest.

Jimin withdrew slowly, his head bowing slightly, though his eyes remained anchored to yours. "Thank you," he murmured against the quiet room. "For granting me that."

Your pulse thundered like the storm outside, a dizzying, reckless thought taking hold of your mind as you looked down at him—that perhaps the rain should never stop, and the carriage should never take you home.

The lingering heat from your earlier proximity followed you like a phantom as you stepped into the corridor, your fingers still tingling from where his skin had pressed against yours. The silence of the manor felt heavier now, charged with a quiet, seductive gravity that pulled the two of you closer with every step.

When the grand double doors swung open, the sheer romance of the room took whatever breath you had managed to reclaim.

The floor-to-ceiling glass ran the entire length of the far wall, a massive canvas of weeping silver and fractured moonlight. Against this backdrop of untamed storm sat the obsidian grand piano, its polished wood gleaming like liquid silk under the amber glow of the chandelier.

"It is beautiful," you whispered, the sound velvety in the vast space.

Jimin did not look at the room. His dark eyes remained anchored entirely to you, tracking the way the soft light caught the exposed curve of your collarbone. "I am glad you think so."

"You play?"

"A little."

You offered a slow, knowing smile, the flush still warm on your neck. "Somehow, I do not believe your modesty, sir."

A low, captivated chuckle escaped him. Crossing the parquet floor with effortless, predatory grace, Jimin settled onto the bench. His tailored charcoal coat parted slightly, revealing the crisp line of his waistcoat. Then, his gaze lifted, heavy and dark.

"Dance for me."

The command sent a sudden, thrilling shock straight to your core. You laughed nervously, the satin of your blush-pink dress rustling as you shifted back a step. "Jimin, I... I cannot simply dance on command. Not like this."

"You can."

The absolute certainty in his baritone felt like a physical touch.

"It is different," you protested softly, your eyes locking onto his. "There is no stage. No grand auditorium. There isn't an audience."

"There doesn't need to be." His fingers hovered just above the ivory keys, his focus narrowing until the rest of the world ceased to exist. "Tonight, I do not wish to share you with a crowded house. Dance for me alone."

The air in the room grew thick, suffocatingly warm. Your heart hammered against your ribs, a wild, reckless rhythm.

"I have already performed tonight," you murmured, a weak defense against the pull of his presence.

"And yet," Jimin said quietly, his voice dropping to a seductive, raspy register as his hands descended onto the keys, "I don't believe you have danced for yourself. Or for a man who truly sees you."

The first chords drifted into the air—rich, melancholy, and achingly beautiful. You froze, your breath hitching. It was your favorite piece, a melody you only listened to in the absolute solitude of your room. Of course he knew.

Slowly, helplessly, you stepped into the center of the room.

At first, your movements were tentative, heavy with a delicious shiver of shyness. But as the dark, swelling rhythm enveloped you, your body surrendered. The fluid satin of your dress clung to your silhouette as you turned, arching your spine with a fierce, desperate grace that was entirely raw.

You forgot the constraints of the theater. You forgot the rules of propriety. There was only the music, the storm, and the man pulling the strings of your soul.

Again and again, your eyes locked onto his across the expanse of the room. Every single time, his gaze was already waiting, burning with an unshielded, intoxicating hunger. It was a look that stripped away the wealthy benefactor and left only a man utterly consumed by what he saw.

Heat rushed to your cheeks. You spun, the pink satin swirling around your thighs like liquid fire.

Jimin’s fingers faltered, missing a minor chord.

The tiny, uncharacteristic slip sent a jolt of pure, wicked adrenaline through your veins. He was affected. Unstrung. Without a word, you held his gaze through your next extension, stretching the movement out, tilting your head back deliberately to let him see the pulse leaping in your throat.

A dark, heavy flush crept high onto his aristocratic cheekbones. His jaw clenched, his hands pressing into the keys with a renewed, fierce intensity.

The atmosphere shifted instantly. The dance ceased to be a performance and became something intensely carnal—a silent, breathless conversation between his hands and your body. Neither of you spoke. You didn't need to. The agonizing tension in the room said everything.

When the final, resonant note faded into the rafters, neither of you moved.

The rain continued its frantic assault against the glass. You stood breathless, your chest heaving beneath the satin bodice, a stray lock of hair damp against your cheek.

Jimin remained at the piano, his long fingers still resting on the keys, his chest rising and falling in sync with your own frantic breathing. He stared at you through the shadows, his eyes wild with a decade of suppressed longing, as though he had finally claimed the phantom he had chased for ten years.

And as you looked back at him, your pulse thundering in your ears, you realized you were entirely caught in his web.

Your eyes remained fixed on his, tracking the deliberate, heavy swell of his breathing and the way his tongue swiped across his lower lip as the tension in the room thickened to a suffocating weight. Guided by a reckless, intoxicating impulse, your hand reached behind your back, your fingers catching the small metal tab of your zipper.

With a slow, deliberate tug, the satin parted.

The fluid fabric of your blush-pink dress pooled around your feet, leaving you standing in the center of the polished floor wearing only your delicate, cream-toned silk undergarments.

Jimin’s breath caught completely, a low, ragged sound escaping his chest. The immaculate melody of the piano faltered, a deep chord dropping sharply out of rhythm before his hands instinctively forced themselves back into the notes. His gaze broke away from your eyes, dropping instantly to the exposed, luminous expanse of your bare skin—the curve of your waist, the long, sculpted line of your legs, and the frantic, heavy rise and fall of your chest.

A dark, fierce hunger flooded his features, his jaw clenching so tightly the muscle leaped beneath his pale skin. He couldn't believe what his eyes were showing him.

For ten years, he had imagined you in every light, but having you here, in the absolute privacy of his ancestral home, dancing for him half-clothed, felt like a beautifully wicked dream he never intended to wake from.

The final barrier fell away, and your bra slipped from your shoulders, joining the satin pooled at your feet.

Jimin let out a sharp, ragged gasp, the sound echoing loudly through the cavernous music room. The sudden, violent movement of his hands caused his fingers to slam against the keys in a harsh, discordant clash that shattered the melody entirely. The music stopped dead.

He didn't move to start it again. His hands froze over the ivory, his knuckles white as his chest heaved, breathing hard, his lungs starving for air in the suddenly suffocating heat of the room. His dark eyes flared, widening with an unshielded, almost feral intensity as they tracked the unrestricted movement of your body.

The aristocratic mask was entirely gone, burned away by the raw, intoxicating sight of your bare, luminous skin under the amber light of the chandelier.

Yet, despite the sudden silence, you did not stop.

Surrendering completely to the quiet rhythm of the storm, you continued to dance. Every movement became a masterclass in elegant seduction. Without the music, the soft rustle of your bare skin against the cool air and the quiet, rhythmic scrape of your feet against the polished parquet floor became the new melody.

You extended your arms, your spine arching with a fluid, mesmerizing grace that highlighted every taut muscle and delicate curve.

You moved with absolute, unbothered poise, a siren in the shadows of his ancestral home, keeping your eyes locked onto his unstrung, breathless form as you pulled him deeper into your spell.

Unable to endure the agonizing distance a second longer, Jimin stood up. The heavy piano bench scraped sharply against the parquet floor as he abandoned the instrument, his tall silhouette immediately overtaking the dim room.

He closed the distance between you with slow, predatory strides, his dark eyes never breaking contact with yours. As he stepped directly into your space, the sheer heat radiating from his large frame brought your elegant movements to a breathless halt.

He didn't speak. He simply reached out, his long, warm fingers wrapping possessively around your wrist, anchoring you in place. His touch was heavy, trembling slightly with a decade of suppressed hunger.

Without a word, he lifted your bare hand toward his face, his gaze locking onto yours as his lips met the sensitive skin of your wrist.

He kissed you there, a slow, searing press of his mouth that sent a violent shiver straight down your spine.

Then, he began his ascent. His lips moved seductively against the soft, bare skin of your inner forearm, each kiss deliberate, hot, and agonizingly slow. You let out a quiet, trembling breath, your fingers automatically curling into the crisp fabric of his waistcoat to keep your balance as your knees grew weak.

Jimin’s other hand slid up the curve of your waist, his palm resting firmly against your bare ribcage, his thumb tracing the frantic, erratic rhythm of your heart. He didn't rush. He lingered in the soft crook of your elbow, his tongue tracing a fleeting, intoxicating path upward along the delicate skin of your upper arm.

By the time his mouth reached your shoulder, your head had tilted back, your breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. He pressed his lips firmly into the slope where your neck met your shoulder, inhaling the raw scent of your skin mixed with the lingering trace of your stage perfume.

"Ten years," he rasped against your skin, his voice a low, gravelly growl of pure surrender. "Ten years, and you are finally here.”

Jimin’s hand shifted from your waist, his long fingers trailing a slow path up your ribcage before his palm settled gently against your shoulder, applying a firm, persuasive pressure. He guided you downward with a deliberate grace, his gaze holding yours captive until the cool, polished parquet floor met your back.

The contrast of the cool wood against your feverish skin drew a sharp breath from your lips. Jimin hovered over you instantly, his large, tailored frame blocking out the light of the chandelier, trapping you in a sanctuary of his own making.

He settled between your thighs, the heavy fabric of his trousers pressing intimately against you as he braced his weight on one forearm. His free hand reached up, his fingers gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from your damp cheek, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw with a reverence that felt entirely sacred.

"You have completely undone me," he murmured, his voice a low, raspy confession against your skin, his gaze dropped.

Slowly, agonizingly, Jimin leaned down, his breath blowing hot across your bare chest before his lips made contact with the aching fullness of your breast. A soft, breathless gasp escaped you, your fingers instantly tangling into the thick, dark strands of his hair as his mouth moved with a slow, agonizingly seductive intent.

He didn't rush. He traced the soft contour with his lips, his tongue dipping out to leave a searing, wet trail across your skin that made your core ache with a sudden, restless heat.

Every touch was deliberate, designed to unstring you just as you had unstrung him at the piano. When his lips finally brushed the sensitive, tight peak, a quiet, helpless moan broke through the silence of the room.

The sound seemed to fuel the fire consuming him. His grip on your hip tightened, his palm warm and possessive against your bare skin as his mouth trailed across to your other breast, repeating the slow, torturous adoration.

He coaxed another ragged sound from your throat, his name slipping past your lips like a prayer. The storm outside raged on, entirely forgotten, as you melted completely into the bruising, intoxicating reality of his touch.

The sound of your breathing was a ragged melody in the vast, quiet room, entirely matching the heavy rise and fall of Jimin's chest as he remained draped over you. The old-money composure he usually wore like armor had completely evaporated, leaving only a raw, unyielding focus centered entirely on your pleasure.

Slowly, his lips parted over the sensitive peak of your breast. He drew the tight bud into the heat of his mouth, sucking on your nipple with a slow, agonizing rhythm that sent a violent jolt of electricity straight to your core.

Your hips twitched off the polished floor, your fingers tightening frantically in his dark hair as a breathless, fractured moan escaped your lips. Just as the pleasure became overwhelming, his teeth nipped against the sensitive peak—a sharp, wicked bite that made you gasp, your back arching off the wood.

"Jimin..." your voice was a broken whisper, a plea for something you couldn't quite name.

"Shh," he rasped, his breath burning hot against your damp skin. He pulled back just enough to look down at you, his dark eyes dilated, heavy with a decade of unshielded desire. "Stay still for me, my darling."

His mouth began a slow, torturous descent, leaving a trail of searing, wet kisses down the center of your ribs and across the flat expanse of your stomach. Every press of his lips was a deliberate worship, making the muscles of your abdomen quiver beneath his touch.

His long, elegant fingers found the waistband of your silk shorts. With a smooth, practiced movement, he slid the final barrier down the length of your legs, casting them aside into the shadows of the parquet floor. You were completely exposed to him now, trembling beneath the amber glow of the crystal chandelier.

Jimin hovered over you, his gaze sweeping over every inch of your bare, sculpted form with absolute reverence. A dark, knowing smile touched his lips as he leaned down, his mouth brushing right against your ear.

"Ten years I watched you under the stage lights," he murmured, his voice a gravelly, deeply seductive purr that vibrated through your entire body. "So perfect. So untouchable. My beautiful Odette..." He pressed a hot kiss to the sensitive skin just behind your earlobe. "My sweet, perfect Odette. You are finally entirely mine."

The name sent a shiver through your veins, blurring the lines between the stage and the reality of his possessive touch.

Before you could gather your thoughts, Jimin slid further down, his large hands cupping the backs of your knees, lifting them slightly to open you up to his gaze. He pressed a lingering, soft kiss to the inside of each knee, his thumbs tracing the long, elegant lines of your calves.

Then, his mouth moved higher.

He kissed his way up the soft expanse of your outer thighs, his touch maddeningly slow, before his lips moved inward. His hot breath fanned across the sensitive skin of your inner thighs, ghosting over the heat gathering between them.

As his mouth pressed firmly against the tender flesh just inches from your core, a soft, helpless cry broke from your throat. Your thighs clenched instinctively around his broad shoulders, your body turning entirely slick and wet with a desperate, heavy ache that demanded everything he had to give.

Jimin slowly parted your thighs, his eyes fixated on your slick folds as he could smell the tender perfume of yours, the one he gets from your clothes and bag everytime.

He pressed his nose against your folds, slowly inhaling the pure flowery scent of your mound. You arched slightly, feeling the graze of his soft lips against your folds, aching to be kissed by him.

He held your thighs apart, enjoying himself slowly. "I can't believe you are real." He whispered yet again. You whined in response and moved closer to his mouth. He pressed his mouth against your folds, slowly sucking on your folds and licking the inside of your folds, slowly giving a long lick down to your wet hole.

You moaned out his name, feeling the ghost of touch of his mouth everywhere suddenly as he latched his lips against your mound. Your eyes rolled back in utter pleasure. "Jimin...." You gasped.

Jimin slowly kitten licked your clit, flicking it with his tongue few times before rubbing your enterance with two of his fingers. He circled it, spreading the wetness everywherre. You were a mess of moans and gasps, tugging his hair and arching into him.

He slowly pulled up. He felt a protective instict looking down at you. Under him, naked and a mess, leaking all over his floor for him. He was so turned on. You were his ruin. His obsession. He slowly dragged his eyes down your squirmy body and unbuckled his belt.

He wanted to ruin you. Make you his wholly. Make you feel the very obsession he has with you.

You gasped as you saw the tent forming in his pants. He removed his pants and boxers, his cock sprung free with pre cum leaking. Your mouth watered.

Your lips parted slightly. He fisted his cock and rubbed the pre-cum to your clit and slowly pushed inside your hole. You gasped, feeling him everywhere. Your eyes rolled back. It burned but it felt so good.

Jimin groaned, feeling how warm and welcoming you were, he almost lost it. You were his pure happiness and right now he was on cloud nine. He watched your reaction, the way your eyes watered, the way your chest panted up and down and the way your nipples were begging for attention. He leaned down and licked your nipples, sucking them slowly into his mouth and nibbling with his teeth a few times as he waited for you to adjust to his length.

“J-jimin.” You whimpered, holding onto his shoulder for support.

Jimin hummed and slowly moved, his eyes closing for a second before he locked them to your hazel eyes, drowning into the deep water. He gasped as he felt you squeeze him.

He pressed his tongue against your neck and slowly licked down to your cleavage. You felt him move, your body responding to his thrusts.

He slowly increased his pace, thrusting slowly deeper until he knew he was hitting your spot. He was going slow but deeper everytime. You were seeing stars at his pace. You wanted more.

“M-more.” You whined.

Jimin hummed again, finding your mouth to kiss you hungrily before licking your tongue with his, slowly sucking it and making you moan into his mouth. He moved his head back and smirked, the glint in his eyes unapologetic as he thrust harder this time. You let out a scream, your grip tightening on his shoulder.

“Ahh.” You whined, letting out muffled noises against his shoulder. “Please…j-jimin!”

His thrusts were faster and harder, he was panting and growling. Your eyes rolled back in pleasure, tearing trickling down the corner of your eyes. You felt the unfamiliar knot form in your stomach, feeling it tighten and snap.

Jimin felt your release. He kissed your neck, marking you and growled as he came inside you, filling you with his hot seeds.

You gasped as he pulled out completely and laid next to you. You were his utter obsession and he was sure he couldn't get rid of it now at all.

The lingering warmth of his touch still simmered beneath your skin, a heavy contrast to the sudden stillness that settled through the west wing.

As the tall mahogany doors creaked open, the air inside the room felt different—cooler, thick with the scent of aged paper, cedar, and dried lavender. You stepped over the threshold, expecting perhaps a gallery of family history or a private study.

Instead, the ground beneath your feet seemed to dissolve.

The moonlight slicing through the arched windows illuminated the space piece by piece, and with every detail that emerged, the blood in your veins slowed to an icy crawl. It wasn't horror that gripped you, but a profound, disorienting vertigo. The sheer scale of what surrounded you was staggering.

Your eyes tracked the walls. The framed programs weren't just a handful of memorable nights; they were an unbroken lineage of your entire career. Rows upon rows of ticket stubs, perfectly aligned, dated back to afternoons you had long forgotten—matinees performed to half-empty houses where you assumed no one was truly paying attention.

But he had been there.

You walked slowly toward the glass cabinets, your fingers trembling so violently you had to tuck them against your stomach. Inside lay objects that felt intensely, almost embarrassingly intimate. Your retired performance gloves, the silk still bearing the faint creases of your knuckles.

The ivory gown from Giselle, its delicate tulle preserved so perfectly it looked alive. These weren't things a casual patron could buy. These were pieces of your life that had vanished backstage, items you assumed had been discarded or lost to the theater's chaotic wardrobe department.

He had rescued them. He had treated the remnants of your exhausting, grueling labor as holy relics.

"Jimin..." The name was nothing more than a breathless exhalation, catching in the back of your throat.

He didn't defend himself. He didn't offer a charming, aristocratic excuse. He simply stood near the desk, his silhouette dark against the silver moonlight, letting you witness the full, crushing weight of his silence.

Your gaze fell to the newspaper clippings spread across the mahogany desk. When you saw the date on the central article, a sharp, familiar ache bloomed in the center of your chest. The year the world went dark. The year the plague of grief had threatened to swallow you whole, leaving you to raise your sister on nothing but sheer willpower and broken dreams.

"You disappeared for seven months," Jimin’s voice cut through the quiet, stripped of all its usual polished composure. It was raw. Fragile. "The papers called it a sabbatical. But I knew. I saw the way you had been dancing before you left—like you were trying to break yourself against the stage."

You turned around slowly, the satin of your dress whispering against the silence.

"I thought you would never return," he confessed, his dark eyes fixed on yours, completely defenseless. "And for those seven months, the world felt entirely dark. When you finally stepped back into the wings... I was in the box. I didn't care if you missed a step. I didn't care if you ever reached the principal title. I just needed to see you survive."

His voice faltered, a rare fracture in his immaculate bearing. "The first night you smiled during a variation again... I knew you were going to be alright. I kept that program in my jacket for a year."

You looked around the room one last time, the sheer magnitude of it pressing down on your chest. This wasn't the obsession of a collector. It wasn't the passing fancy of a wealthy man spending his inheritance on a beautiful dancer.

This was an entire life built quietly, reverently, in the shadows of yours. Every triumph, every heartbreak, every silent tear you had wiped away in lonely dressing rooms—he had sustained himself on it. He had anchored his soul to your movement.

"You were never supposed to see this," he murmured, his gaze dropping to the floor. "I know how it must look."

But as you stared at him—this powerful, unapproachable aristocrat looking so utterly undone before you—the initial chill in your blood gave way to something overwhelming and heavy. It was a terrifying, beautiful truth that rewrite every lonely night you had ever spent doubting your worth.

You had never truly danced in the dark. Even when the theater was empty, even when you felt entirely abandoned by the world, Park Jimin had been holding his breath, keeping the light alive for you.

The silence that followed his confession was not the warm, intoxicating quiet of the music room, but something heavier—a dense, suffocating stillness that made the air feel thin.

Your gaze remained fixed on the open chest, your eyes tracking the rows of velvet boxes. Each one represented a night you had bled for your art, a night you had collapsed into bed with aching muscles and a hollow chest, entirely unaware that a man was driving back to this colossal manor to lock a piece of his soul away in your honor.

"Every opening night," you whispered, the words tasting like lead on your tongue.

"Every one," Jimin confirmed. He hadn't moved. He stood so perfectly still he might have been one of the marble statues in his foyer, yet the tension radiating from his frame was palpable.

You looked down at the breathtaking diamond pendant resting against your collarbone. It felt impossibly heavy now, less like a gift and more like a beautifully forged anchor, pulling you down into the depths of a history you hadn't consented to be a part of.

The romance of the evening was fracturing, the smooth facade of the fairytale giving way to a jagged, disorienting reality. You had thought he was a man captivated by a dancer; you were beginning to realize he had built an altar to a phantom.

"Jimin," you started, your voice trembling as you took a half-step back, your bare heels brushing against the edge of the plush rug. "This... all of this. If I had never agreed to get into your car tonight... what were you going to do with these?"

His dark eyes lifted, locking onto yours with an intensity that made your breath catch. There was no hesitation in his gaze, no shame. Just that devastating, quiet certainty that had fascinated you from the moment he stepped out of the Rolls-Royce.

"I would have kept buying them," he said softly.

A cold shiver rippled down your spine. "Forever?"

"Until you stopped dancing." He offered a faint, almost melancholic smile that didn't reach his eyes. "And perhaps even after that."

The honesty was what unnerved you the most. If he had been a monster, if his intentions had felt predatory or cruel, you could have fled. You could have screamed for his chauffeur to take you home. But there was a profound, agonizing tenderness in his devotion that made it impossible to hate—and that was exactly what terrified you. The boundary between love and a beautiful, gilded madness had been entirely erased.

You reached up, your fingertips fumbling slightly as you touched the cool diamonds at your throat. "It's too much," you breathed, the words slipping out before you could stop them.

Jimin’s smile faded, his posture stiffening imperceptibly. The shadow that had crossed his features in the west wing returned, deeper this time. He took a slow step toward you, his hand rising as if to comfort you, before he caught himself and let it drop back to his side.

"Does it frighten you?" he asked, his baritone dropping to a private, fragile register.

You looked at the chest, then at the man who had spent a decade harboring a quiet, impossible longing for a woman he didn't even know.

"I don't know," you confessed, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. "It feels... as though I am stepping into a story that was written long before I arrived. I don't know where the dancer you've imagined ends, Jimin, and where I begin."

For the first time since you had met him, Jimin looked entirely at a loss. The quiet, inherited confidence that seemed to master every room he entered cracked, revealing something desperate and profoundly human beneath.

"You are the only reality I have ever cared about, Y/N," he whispered, his eyes searching yours with a raw, pleading hunger.

The rain outside suddenly seemed louder, a relentless drumming against the glass that underscored the sudden, terrifying distance opening up between you in the center of the room.

----

The rhythmic, sharp clack of pointe shoes against the linoleum floor suddenly sounded incredibly loud, slicing through the hazy remnants of your fairytale.

Mina’s words hung in the air between you, heavy and toxic, instantly tarnishing the bright morning sunlight that flooded the studio. You looked down at your hands, your knuckles white against the wooden barre. The diamond pendant hidden beneath your loose rehearsal leotard suddenly felt blistering hot against your skin, like a brand rather than a gift.

"He isn't dangerous, Mina," you said, your voice sounding defensive even to your own ears. You hated how small it wrapped around the vast emptiness of the room. "You didn't see the way he looked at me. It wasn't... it wasn't malicious. He was entirely undone."

Mina stopped stretching, turning her full body toward you, her expression laced with a fierce, protective gravity that pulled you right out of the clouds.

"Every stalker in history thinks they're a romantic, Y/N," she said, her voice dropping to a harsh, urgent whisper so the other dancers wouldn't overhear. "Undone? He’s a billionaire who has spent a decade treating your life like his personal gallery. He bought your costumes. Do you have any idea how much money and influence it takes to bribe a theater’s wardrobe department to smuggle out principal pieces? That isn't just admiration. That is a calculated, quiet insertion of himself into your existence without your consent."

A cold, creeping numbness started at the tips of your toes and traveled upward, settling right in the pit of your stomach.

Your mind flashed back to the music room—the dark, intoxicating friction of his skin against yours, the bruising intensity of his mouth on your collarbone, his low, gravelly whisper calling you. Odette. His Odette. At the time, it had felt like the height of passion, a beautiful surrender to a ten-year-old melody.

But looking at it now, under the sterile, unforgiving fluorescent lights of the practice studio, a sickening question took root, Had he been kissing you, or had he been kissing the phantom he had spent ten years curating in his mind?

"He said he was just a man in the audience," you murmured, desperately trying to anchor yourself to the vulnerability you had seen in his eyes when he opened that chest of unopened gifts. "He said he didn't want to presume familiarity."

"But he did presume it," Mina countered sharply, reaching out to grip your forearm. Her touch was grounded, a stark contrast to Jimin's reverent, ghostly caresses. "He collected your grief, Y/N. He watched you suffer through the worst year of your life from a dark box, keeping score of your smiles like they belonged to him. If he truly cared about you as a human being, he would have stepped out of the shadows when you were drowning. He didn't. Because a fantasy is easier to control."

The studio clock ticked relentlessly, marking the seconds as the ground beneath your feet continued to fracture.

The image of the west wing room flashed behind your eyes—not as a holy relic of his love, but as a beautifully gilded cage. The countless velvet boxes, the meticulous chronologies, the sheer weight of a man's entire life built silently around a woman who had no idea he was there. It was a terrifying realization. You hadn't just stepped into a romance; you had stepped into an altar where you were the prize.

"What am I supposed to do?" you whispered, the butterflies that had animated your morning turning into a flock of trapped, frantic things inside your chest.

Before Mina could answer, the studio doors swung open, and the sharp, authoritative clap of Madame Cornettee’s hands echoed through the space, calling the company to order.

You forced yourself to stand, your legs feeling strangely disconnected from your body as you took your place at the barre. As the piano music started, you moved automatically, your body executing the familiar geometry of the choreography. But for the first time in ten years, you didn't feel the comforting, invisible warmth of a dedicated gaze shielding you from the dark.

Instead, every time you turned toward the mirrors, you found yourself looking past your own reflection, wondering what else was watching from the shadows—and exactly what it expected you to be.

°

The heavy scent of scorched petals and smoke hung like a shroud in the small dressing room, completely suffocating the sweet, floral perfume of the remaining bouquets.

Jimin tossed the blackened, skeletal remains of the lilies into the waste bin. The metallic clang echoed through the room like a gunshot. He took a slow, deliberate step toward you, the light from your vanity bulbs catching the stark, sharp lines of his face. The aristocratic gentleman who had played the piano with such devastating tenderness a week ago was gone. In his place stood someone cold, unyielding, and utterly territorial.

"What was that?" your voice trembled, a thin thread of sound against the deafening quiet.

"They were unnecessary," he replied, his voice terrifyingly calm, devoid of any inflection whatsoever as he adjusted the cuffs of his tailored shirt.

"They were a gift from a patron, Jimin," you said, your fingers instinctively curling into the fabric of your costume, your knuckles white. "It is common courtesy to accept them. You had no right—"

"I have every right," he interrupted, his baritone dropping to a dangerous, gravelly low that seemed to vibrate the very air between you. He did not shout. He didn't have to. The quiet force behind his words was enough to make your breath falter.

He moved closer, his tall shadow stretching over you, completely boxing you in against the vanity. The proximity, which had felt intoxicatingly seductive in his manor, now felt predatory. Your back pressed against the edge of the wooden table, the lightbulbs casting a harsh, unforgiving glare over his dilated, dark eyes.

"Jimin, you are acting insane," you whispered, the small voice of doubt that Mina had planted blooming into a full, choking panic in your chest.

"Am I?" Jimin leaned down, his face mere inches from yours, his breath hot against your lips. But there was no passion in his gaze now—only a consuming, unblinking focus that made your skin crawl. He reached out, his long, elegant fingers wrapping firmly around your chin, forcing you to look at him. His grip wasn't brutal, but it was unyielding. A reminder of the strength hidden beneath his expensive silk and wool.

"For ten years, I have protected you from the dark, Y/N," he murmured, his gaze tracing your trembling lips, then moving to the diamond pendant still resting against your skin. "I watched you bleed for your art. I bought the very clothes that touched your skin. I built an entire world to keep you safe, to keep you mine. Do you truly believe I will allow another man to leave his mark on what belongs to me?"

"I don't belong to you," you breathed, a tear of pure, suffocating realization slipping down your cheek.

Jimin’s thumb caught the tear, wiping it away with an agonizing, gentle slow motion that felt entirely threatening. A dark, chilling smile touched the corners of his lips.

"You have always belonged to me, my beautiful Odette," he whispered, his voice a seductive, terrifying purr against your ear. "You simply didn't know it until tonight."

He pulled back, his eyes searching yours one last time, ensuring you understood the boundaries of the gilded cage he had built around you.

The heavy scent of the scorched lilies still suffocated the small dressing room, but the air between you had turned bitterly cold.

Jimin stood frozen in the center of the room, his long fingers tightening around the thorns of the white roses you had violently thrust against his chest. He didn't seem to feel them piercing his skin. His immaculate, aristocratic bearing had cracked entirely, leaving behind a jagged, hollow emptiness. For ten years, he had been the architect of a flawless world where he was your silent guardian; in a single breath, you had torn the foundation out from beneath his feet.

"You cannot ask that of me," he whispered, his baritone fracturing, stripped of all its terrifying authority. The sound was thin, bleeding with a raw, desperate agony that vibrated through the quiet room.

"I am asking it, Jimin," you said, your voice shaking with a volatile mixture of fear and hot, boiling anger. You stood by the open door, your knuckles white on the brass handle, your chest heaving under your costume. "I want you out. Out of my dressing room, out of my theater, and out of my life."

He stared at you, his dark eyes wide, dilated, and drowning in a pure, devastating disbelief. He looked down at the pristine white roses in his hands, then back up at you, as if waiting for the punchline of a cruel joke. He had survived seven months of your absence by living on memories, but this—this explicit, visceral rejection from the goddess he worshipped—was a mortal wound. You weren't just banning him from a building; you were ripping away the only light he had used to navigate his own darkness.

"Y/N..." he stepped forward, a blind, instinctive reach toward you, his lips parting to plead.

"Don't," you choked out, flinching away from his advance.

The movement was worse than a physical blow. Jimin stopped dead in his tracks. The realization that he—the man who had dedicated a decade to keeping you safe—was now the source of your terror seemed to age him in an instant. The unyielding, possessive predator from moments before withered away, leaving only a man profoundly, utterly broken.

A suffocating, deafening silence settled over the corridor.

Slowly, his head bowed. The man who mastered boardrooms and held the theater's fate in his hands looked small. Trembling, he clutched the rejected bouquet closer to his chest, the white petals bruising against his tailored waistcoat. Without another word, he finally took a step backward, crossing the threshold into the dim hallway.

You didn't hesitate. With a sharp, desperate motion, you slammed the heavy wooden door shut, throwing the deadbolt into place.

The sharp click of the lock echoed like a final verdict. On the other side, through the thick mahogany, there was no sound of retreating footsteps. No engine revving in the alley. There was only a heavy, lingering silence, leaving you alone in the smoke, wondering if you had finally broken the phantom who had held your world together.

°

The rain outside the west wing had slowed to a miserable, rhythmic weeping, mimicking the hollow silence that now filled the room.

Jimin sat on the cold parquet floor, slumped against the base of the glass cabinet that held your debut dress. The pristine white roses lay scattered around him, their stems broken, a few petals stained with the dark, sluggish drops of blood from where the thorns had pierced his palms. He didn’t notice the pain. The ache blooming in his chest was a vast, suffocating gravity, collapsing his entire world inward.

In his trembling hands, he held your retired performance gloves.

Slowly, reverently, he lifted the delicate silk to his face, burying his nose into the fabric. He inhaled deeply, his chest shuddering as he sought the faint, lingering phantom of you. It was all there—the scent of the stage powder, the crisp hum of the theater air, and that distinct, flowery perfume that had haunted his senses for a decade. He drank it in like a dying man in a desert, his eyes closing tight as a single, rare tear slipped down his cheek, dampening the silk.

"Y/N," he rasped into the fabric, his voice a broken, fragile string of sound.

He looked up, his dilated eyes sweeping across the dark, silver-lit room. The framed programs, the meticulously aligned ticket stubs, the towering portrait of you as Odette—everything he had built, everything he was, existed solely because of you. He hadn't just built a collection; he had constructed a sanctuary to keep himself anchored to the living world.

“You are my life,” he had told you, and it wasn't a hyperbole. It was a terrifying, absolute truth.

For ten years, his existence had been calibrated to the rhythm of your breath before a leap. He had learned to breathe when you smiled; he had learned to survive the winter of your grief by counting the days until your return. To be cut off from you, to be banned from the dark corner of the box where he spent a decade guarding your light, was a sentence worse than death. It was complete erasure.

A ragged, desperate breath escaped him. He couldn't do it. He couldn't simply stop existing. The thought of an opening night arriving without him there to protect you, without his eyes tracing the line of your spine, made his lungs seize with a pure, agonizing panic.

He didn't need to touch you. He didn't even need you to look at him again. The memory of your skin beneath his mouth, the soft, desperate whines you had made on his floor—they were a beautiful, fleeting luxury he had never dared to dream of possessing permanently. But he needed to watch.

Even if he had to hide further in the shadows. Even if he had to buy the entire upper tier just to sit in the furthest, darkest corner where the light couldn't catch the reflection of his eyes.

Clutching the silk gloves tightly against his heart, Jimin leaned his head back against the glass, staring up at your portrait in the moonlight. The polite, aristocratic mask was gone, replaced by a raw, eternal yearning. He would obey her rules. He would stay away from her door. But he would never stop watching his Odette. He couldn't.

°

The auditorium of the Grand Theatre was completely dark, a vast chasm of hushed breathing and anticipation. Way in the back, past the luxury boxes, in the deepest shadows of the highest tier where the velvet curtains met the cold stone wall, a figure stood.

Jimin did not sit. He stood perfectly still, his hands clasped behind his back, his tailored coat blending seamlessly into the dark. He had bought every seat in the last three rows under an assumed name, ensuring that no one would stumble into his sanctuary. He was a ghost in his own theater, keeping his promise to stay out of your sight—but he could not stay out of your world.

Then, the stage lights flared to life, a brilliant, blinding wash of gold and ivory.

And there you were.

Jimin’s breath caught, his chest tightening with an ache so profound it made his knees weak. This was the *Cornettee* variation. Your dream dance. The piece you had talked about with quiet, burning passion during the brief hours you had shared in his manor.

The orchestra swelled, the first notes rising like a tidal wave, and you moved.

A quiet, reverent exhale escaped his lips. You were magnificent. Any doubt, any exhaustion from the harrowing week behind you had vanished the moment your pointe shoes struck the floor. You floated across the stage with a fluid, impossible geometry, every extension a masterpiece of discipline and raw emotion.

Standing in the shadows, a fierce, overwhelming sense of pride bloomed in Jimin’s chest.

The aristocratic composure he usually wore like armor dissolved, replaced by the sheer, unadulterated awe of a man watching his universe expand. He didn't look at you with the possessive fury of that night in the dressing room; he looked at you with a pure, humbling admiration.

Your form was flawless. The delicate arch of your back, the effortless grace with which you suspended yourself in the air during a grand jeté, the absolute elegance of your landing—it was poetry in human form. You were no longer just a woman; you were the very definition of art.

He watched the way the stage lights caught the sweat glistening on your collarbone, the fierce determination burning in your eyes as you neared the climax of the piece. You were dancing for yourself tonight, completely untethered, entirely free.

And as the final notes resonated through the rafters and the auditorium erupted into a deafening, standing ovation, Jimin didn't applaud. He simply closed his eyes, a soft, melancholic smile touching his lips. He let the thunderous praise of thousands wash over him, content in the absolute darkness of his corner.

You had won. You had conquered your dream. And even if he could only ever love you from the deepest shadows of the room, he was there, holding his breath, utterly consumed by your grace.

The final, echoing chords of the orchestra were suddenly cut short by a violent, tearing screech from the rafters above.

Jimin was already turning to slip out of the exit when the grand chandelier flickered once, twice, and died, plunging the upper tier into a terrifying shadow. A heartbeat later, the first scream tore through the auditorium, sharp and piercing enough to curdle the blood. *Fire.*

Panic erupted like a physical shockwave. The audience surged toward the doors in a blind, deafening frenzy, but Jimin stood entirely frozen, his eyes locked onto the stage. Smoke—thick, chemical, and pitch-black—was already billowing from the heavy velvet wings backstage, illuminated by the sudden, angry orange glow of a roaring inferno.

Y/N.

Without a single thought for his own safety, abandoning his promise, Jimin lunged against the terrifying current of the screaming crowd. He sprinted down the stairs, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped animal. In his right hand, he still gripped the bouquet of white roses he had brought to the theater—a habit he couldn't break, even if he had only intended to leave them in the alleyway.

He burst through the backstage doors. The air here was a suffocating wall of pure heat and gray ash. Dancers and stagehands fled past him, sobbing, their faces smeared with soot. He ignored them all, shouting your name into the blinding, toxic fog, his voice tearing raw.

He reached the corridor of the dressing rooms. The ceiling above was already a lattice of roaring flame, dropping chunks of burning plaster. And there, at the very end of the hall, he saw you.

The heavy wooden door to your dressing room had warped from the intense heat, jamming you inside. You were coughing violently, trapped behind a screen of rising fire, your small hands desperately clawing at the frame.

"Y/N!"

Jimin slammed his weight against the burning wood. The heat was blistering, searing straight through his tailored wool coat. He didn't care. He kicked the door with a desperate, savage force until the frame splintered and gave way. As he lunged into the roaring heat of the room to pull you out, the edge of the collapsing ceiling rained embers down upon him.

The white roses in his hand caught instantly, the pristine petals curling into black ash, the fire licking directly across his palms. The skin of his hands blistered, a sharp, white-hot agony tearing up his arms, but his grip on you never faltered. He dropped the burning stems, wrapped his long arms entirely around your trembling, fragile frame, and shielded your head against his chest as he carried you through the gauntlet of falling debris.

By the time he burst through the final exit into the cool, rain-slicked alleyway, your head was lolling against his shoulder, your body half-unconscious from the smoke.

Jimin collapsed against the side of his waiting Rolls-Royce, his chest heaving as he carefully laid you onto the leather backseat. Looking down at your pale face, at the soot smudging your cheeks and your closed eyes, a cold, paralyzing terror seized his soul. He felt his entire life dying right there in his chest.

The universe was going silent. You couldn't leave him. You were his air, his sanity, his very reason for drawing breath. If you died here, he would simply walk back into the flames.

With trembling, blistered hands, Jimin lifted a crystal flask, pouring cool water into a glass. His fingers were shaking so violently that a few drops spilled onto the leather upholstery, but his focus never wavered from your face. He carefully hovered over you, supporting the back of your neck with the uninjured crook of his arm as he pressed the glass to your parched lips.

"Drink," he pleaded, his voice a low, ragged rasp that sounded entirely unraveled. "Please, Y/N. Just breathe."

The cool water hit your throat, washing away the bitter, scratching taste of the smoke. You coughed weakly, your chest heaving as the fresh oxygen finally revived your senses. The blurred, chaotic world of the alleyway began to steady, and the very first thing that came into focus was the stark, terrified silhouette of Jimin looming over you.

You stared up at him, your voice nothing more than a tiny, breathless thread. "You came..."

A soft, bruised smile touched your lips, defying the absolute ruin surrounding the theater. Because the devastating truth was, tonight during your dream performance of the Cornettee, the thunderous standing ovation had felt hollow. Walking backstage to an empty vanity, without his pristine white roses waiting to anchor you, without the heavy, protective weight of his shadow lurking in the back of the auditorium—you had felt stupidly, agonizingly incomplete.

You had realized, in the quietest depths of your soul, that your art had become inextricably bound to his gaze.

But seeing him here, you knew. He had watched you tonight, too. He had never left.

Your eyes drifted downward, falling onto his hands resting on the leather seat.

The skin of his palms was severely burned, blistered and raw from where he had shattered the burning door. Right beside his hip lay the blackened, charred remnants of the roses he had carried straight through the inferno just to reach you.

A profound, quiet certainty settled deep into your chest, chilling and beautiful all at once. Mina was right. This was madness. It was a terrifying, consuming, unyielding obsession that defied every rule of a sane world. But looking at the man who had willingly walked into hell just to ensure you kept breathing, you realized you didn't care about a sane world anymore.

Whatever this dark, intoxicating thing was between you two—his obsession, his insanity, it wasn't just his anymore.

It was yours.

——————————

i made hobi more insane and yoongi lowkey is the real wingman hell yeaaa. ngl laughed a little with the first tweet because wth with everything that is happening here lowkey my timing couldn’t be so perfect 😭

On paper, your life makes sense.

Your startup is thriving—your name attached to headlines as the founder and CEO of Gatherly. An app that went viral for its aesthetic at first and then as an app that turns studying into something communal, intentional, almost romantic. Eventually, the app is dubbed “Tinder for academia” as it connects people online to gather and meet — to study together. Academia loves it. Students swear by it. Investors call it visionary.

In reality, you’ve just called off your wedding.

It’s supposed to be a private decision. An ending to something that no longer fits. You announce it simply to avoid drama, no explanation beyond what’s necessary. Overnight, your name stops being attached to Gatherly first. Instead, it’s followed by words like engagement, business power couple, wedding canceled. Articles dissect the timeline like it’s a case study. Comment sections bloom with speculation. People who’ve never used your app suddenly have opinions about your life decision.

They don’t ask about the sleepless nights you spent building Gatherly. They don’t ask about the students who write to you saying your app kept them from dropping out. They don’t ask about the systems you designed to make learning feel human again.

They ask what went wrong.

They ask if you’re okay.

They ask if you’ll ever love again like that’s public property now.

Still, you smile, you stay professional, you stand at the head of glass-walled conference rooms and talk about growth, projections, and futures like your life didn’t just fall apart. Your life still works. The company is thriving. Your calendar is full. You’re successful in every way that matters to everyone else.

And yet, when the lights go out, you’re left with the realization that the thing people are most interested in is the one thing you wish they’d let you keep to yourself.

On paper, everything adds up.

In reality, something essential has been reduced to a headline and no one seems to care how much it cost you to survive it.

-

The office feels quieter after hours but it’s exactly what you need to focus on work.

You’re curled up on the sofa in your office, laptop balanced on your lap, glasses perched low on your nose. One heel has been kicked off, the other dangling uselessly from your toes. Code scrolls past your screen as you work, fingers moving non-stop, comforted by the logic of it all.

There’s a soft knock and once you give the permission, your assistant, Lucy steps in. She takes one look at you—half-curled into the cushions, hair pulled back too loosely, still working and something flickers across her face. Concern, maybe. But she doesn’t say anything.

Instead, she reports a few things about deadlines, a rescheduled meeting, a finalized contract.

“Thank you, Luce,” you say without looking away from your laptop screen. “And you can go home.”

She nods but she doesn’t leave. Instead, she drifts to your desk, quietly straightening the clutter you’ve let pile up over the week. You let her and shift your focus back on your work.

After a moment, she clears her throat. “You’re staying late at work.”

“Yep,” you simply answer.

“So it means you’ve decided not to attend the school reunion?”

“Nope,” you answer immediately, eyes still fixed on your screen.

You hate that she brought it up. You hate that you feel the need to share the reason why. You sigh and close your laptop partway, rubbing at your temple. “I’m not going because I’m not in the mood to answer questions about my canceled wedding.”

Lucy tilts her head and then shrugs. “It’s been weeks. People probably forgot.”

You shake your head. “No, they didn’t.”

She looks unconvinced, so you turn the laptop toward her and pull up the article. The headline is still there, far too interested in something that was never supposed to be public.

Lucy’s mouth tightens. “That’s… invasive.”

“It’s upsetting,” you say, irritation creeping in. “I built an app that helps people, employs people. I worked hard on it but all anyone wants to talk about is who I didn’t marry.”

You turn the laptop back, swing your feet up onto the sofa again, and resume working like the conversation never happened.

Lucy hesitates but after a while, she carefully says, “Well, at some point… you should get out there again. Date. You know.”

You don’t even look up and give a strong head shake. “No.”

She tries anyway by coyly says, “I’m sure there’s still a decent man out there.”

You shake your head for the last time. “I’m done with dating. And men.”

Lucy exhales slowly, conceding defeat. “Alright.”

Done with organizing your desk, Lucy walks away and then pause at the door. “Do you need anything before I go?”

“I’m okay. You can go home,” you assure her with a subtle nod.

She nods, knowing that there’s no way to insist you to go home so instead, she says, “Don’t stay too late.”

You give her a thumbs-up instead.

“Goodnight,” she says.

“Goodnight.”

The door clicks shut behind her and you’re alone again. The glow of your laptop fills the room as you keep working, convincing yourself that this success is enough.

-

Silence greets you as you enter your apartment.

You kick off your shoes by the door, drop your bag on the sofa, and head straight to the kitchen. You pick up the half-finished bottle of red wine and a glass, bring them with you as you sink into the sofa like your bones are finally allowed to loosen. You open your laptop again out of habit and yes, you come home only to continue working, not because you want to but because stopping feels worse.

This time, you pour yourself a glass of wine before you start and then take a sip, let the bitterness bloom on your tongue, and scroll through emails that blur together.

Lucy’s voice somehow echoes in your head.

I’m sure there’s still a decent man out there.

You almost laugh at that because the man you were going to marry had looked you in the eye and promised you a future. He’d talked about homes and children and forever like they were facts, not bait. And all the while, he was lying. Cheating. Breaking something inside you so that you’re not sure it ever grew back the same way, breaking you to the point that made you think.

That’s it. That’s the only chance you had with love.

He ruined it. He ruined everything. Your gaze drifts, unbidden, through the crack of your bedroom door, to the vanity table where the engagement ring sits there exactly where you left it, the diamond catches the light like it still has the right to be beautiful. Once, it meant trust. Commitment. Promise. Now it’s just proof of how easily those things can be destroyed. So no—you don’t believe there’s still a decent man out there for you. Not anymore.

You take another sip of wine, but it doesn’t help.

Lucy’s words echo anyway and they tangle with everything else you’ve been trying to outrun. People asking how you’re doing with that careful tone that pretends to be concern but is really curiosity. People reading articles like your heartbreak is a business update, like it’s something neat and consumable.

You trusted him with your heart. You almost gave him your forever. And now strangers get to talk about it like it’s trivia.

They don’t know how it hurt. They don’t know what it’s like to wake up every morning and realize something inside you is permanently altered. That trust doesn’t come back the same way. That love doesn’t feel safe anymore.

You close the laptop too hard, the sound cracking through the quiet apartment.

You curl into yourself on the sofa, wine glass abandoned on the table, shoulders shaking before you can stop them. The tears come fast, chest tight, breath uneven.

This is the part no one sees.

Just you, alone at night, breaking apart with the terrifying certainty that maybe this is it. That whatever part of you believed in love was shattered beyond repair. That you’ll never love again. And no matter how impressive your life looks from the outside, no matter how many things you’ve built and led and survived—

It feels unbearably empty right now.

-

The tech expo is a welcome change.

You stand backstage with a wireless mic clipped to your blazer, listening to the low hum of the crowd on the other side of the curtain. It’s loud, but not in the suffocating way boardrooms are. This noise is anticipation. Curiosity.

You like this better than meetings.

Out there, people aren’t waiting to circle numbers in red and talks about strategies that brings the company most money. They want to know you. How you did it. How you built something from nothing and kept it alive. They want to take notes, to borrow pieces of your story and see if they fit into their own lives.

When your name is announced, the applause hits warm and immediate. You’re introduced as the founder and CEO of Gatherly with the kind of reverence that still feels unreal.

You step onto the stage and smile and this one comes easily.

You talk about the story behind Gatherly, how the app goes viral quietly at first because of clean interfaces, warm neutrals and serif fonts that feel borrowed from old books. People start calling it ‘the academia app’.

Students post their “study with me” videos on Gatherly. Aesthetic accounts post their study sessions—coffee cups, annotated notes, rain sounds. And it sticks.

But the aesthetic isn’t the point—it’s the invitation.

Gatherly works like a dating app reimagined for learning. You don’t swipe on faces; you swipe on compatibility. Subjects. Study styles. Time zones. Energy levels. Goals. The app asks who you are when you’re trying, not when you’re posing.

Users find study sessions instead of profiles. They choose where they belong. The design slows people down. It makes studying feel intentional again—like pulling an all-nighter in a library that smells faintly of paper and coffee instead of doomscrolling in isolation.

Academia loves it because it respects the process. It doesn’t gamify learning. It doesn’t shame productivity. It romanticizes effort, patience, showing up—even when you’re tired, even when you’re unsure. And somehow, that’s what makes it powerful.

Gatherly doesn’t promise success. It promises belonging. Because it was never about going viral. It was about making space for people who are trying their best and reminding them they don’t have to do it alone.

Then you talk about failure, about missteps and sleepless nights and how success rarely looks the way people expect it to. You talk about resilience, about learning when to pivot and when to stay stubborn. You talk about sharing knowledge because hoarding it never made anyone powerful—only lonely.

You see people nodding, writing things down and asks questions they’re curious about. But no one asks about your personal life. No one mentions the canceled wedding or your personal life for that matter. They ask about strategy, vision, grit. They ask how to survive doubt without letting it hollow you out and you answer honestly, passionately.

You leave the stage energized, reminded why you love this part of your life so much. Here, your story is something that helps instead of something people consume.

For a moment, you forget how heavy everything else feels and you carry that feeling with you as you step offstage.

Lucy comes up to you with a bottle of water. You have a long sip of it with a straw while staying still as a staff carefully taking off the mic and wire wrapped around you.

“Do I have anything else scheduled?” you ask Lucy as you hand her the bottle of water back.

She shakes her head. “You’re clear for the next hour.”

“Okay, good.”

The expo floor is alive with screens glowing with information on the new technologies presented in each booth, conversations overlapping in every direction. You move from booth to booth, leaning in to listen, asking questions, impressed by what people are building with nothing but curiosity and persistence.

You chat with young engineers, developers with bright eyes and nervous smiles. You find yourself especially proud when you notice how many women are here—confident, brilliant, unapologetically taking up space in a field that once tried to shut them out. It feels like progress you can see.

You’re moving toward the next booth when you think you hear your name but you keep walking because the hall is loud and you probably misheard it.

Three steps later, you hear it again. A voice you haven’t heard in years, pulling itself out of memory and into the present.  You slowly turn around and for a second, you don’t understand what you’re seeing.

There’s a man standing a few steps away from you, tall, familiar in a way that doesn’t immediately land. Your brain scrambles, flipping through faces that almost fit but don’t quite click. He looks older. Broader. Different. Then he starts walking toward you.

And when he puts on a toothy grin, it finally hits.

“Aaron?” you breathe.

He laughs, eyes lighting up like no time has passed at all. “Wow. You still recognize me?”

You gasp, hand flying to your mouth. “What are you doing here?”

Of all places. Of all people. High school feels impossibly far away and suddenly right in front of you.

-

In a different building, in a much quieter space at a café, you sit across from Aaron with a cup of coffee warming your hands, still trying to reconcile the man in front of you with the boy from your memory. He’s older now with facial hair neatly trimmed, shoulders broader, dressed in a fitted shirt and a tie. Someone who grew into himself.

“So,” you say, half-laughing, half-in disbelief, “I really didn’t expect to see you here of all places.”

He presses a hand to his chest dramatically. “Wow. That hurts.”

“No—wait,” you rush to explain. “I just thought you’d still be on a field. Juggling a ball with your feet to dazzle some girls.”

He chuckles, shaking his head. “Well, I charm people into buying cars now.”

You nod. “So you’re handling the family business now?”

“It’s legacy,” he admits with a sheepish smile. “Also, because soccer was never really my thing. I wasn’t as talented as Chris.”

Your heart tightens at the mention of his name. You keep your face neutral, lift your cup, take a careful sip of coffee that suddenly feels too hot going down.

Aaron watches you for a second longer than necessary. “You still in contact with him?”

You swallow hard. Nod once. Then shake your head. “No,” you say.

Thankfully, he doesn’t push. He only nods, lifting his own cup. “Yeah. Makes sense.”

A beat passes before he adds casually, “He’s coming to the city this weekend.”

“Oh,” you say lightly. “Yeah?”

“The team he’s coaching has a match here.”

You nod, eyes on your coffee. Pretend you’re uninterested. Pretend this is just trivia.

Aaron smirks as he teases, “You’re probably too busy anyway, huh?”

You scoff. “I’m not that busy.”

As if summoned by the universe, Lucy appears beside you, leaning down to whisper, “You have to leave in fifteen minutes.”

You nod. “Got it.”

When you look back up, Aaron is barely holding in his laugh. “Not that busy, huh?”

You shake your head, conceding the loss.

He reaches into his wallet and pulls out a name card, sliding it across the table. “Call me if you ever need to buy a car.”

You smile, taking it, eyes skimming his name and number. “Do I get a discount?”

He looks offended. “I’ll double the price first. Then discount it.”

You glare at him as he laughs, and the sound of it pulls you backward to lunch breaks, noisy hallways, the humiliating walks to class with his arm around your shoulders.

And then—

Chris.

Your smile fades before you can stop it. You quickly glance at the time and stand. “I’m sorry, I really have to go.”

“It’s fine,” Aaron says easily. “I should get back to my booth anyway.”

“Next time,” you say, “I’ll treat you something better than coffee.”

He points at you. “Hey. You promised.”

You laugh, step in for a quick hug, then pull away. “It was nice to meet you.”

“It was nice to meet you too,” Aaron says back with a smile.

You wave once before turning and walking off, leaving him behind, leaving the memories with him. At least, that’s what you tell yourself as you walk away.

-

It’s been a long day but even exhaustion can’t quiet your mind.

Meeting Aaron keeps looping you back to high school bleachers. Lunch breaks in the school yard. Names you haven’t said in years. You tell yourself it’s just nostalgia but it clings to you anyway, stubborn and unresolved.

“Do I have anything this weekend?” you absentmindedly ask, leaning your head back against the seat.

“I think there’s an event. A banquet.” She pauses to reaches for her tablet. “Let me check.”

“Can I see?” You reach over and take it from her hands before she can scroll too far. There it is, a banquet, neatly slotted, labeled with polite importance.

“It’s just a social thing, right?” you murmur.

“Well, yeah,” Lucy says, unsure.

You hand the tablet back. “Can we cancel it? I want to rest this weekend.”

Lucy nods, already typing, flagging the change and alerting the organizer without a question.

“Okay,” she says.

You turn back toward the window as the car slows at a red light, the city glowing back at you. You can’t quite name what you’re feeling but there’s a pull there, undeniable, tangled with hesitation.

You know what you’re going to do this weekend. You just don’t know if you should. And the uncertainty sits with you all the way home.

-

The car has been parked for a while now.

You sit there with your hands resting uselessly on the steering wheel, Sunday afternoon light spilling through the windshield, the stadium looming ahead of you like it’s waiting to be decided on. You could still leave. You could turn the engine on, drive back home, pretend this was just another bad idea you almost followed through with. But you don’t.

What brought you here isn’t courage. It isn’t hope. It’s quiet yet persistent curiosity. The need to know that he’s okay. That despite everything, he landed on his feet.

You inhale air, steady yourself, and step out of the car. The crowd swells around you immediately as you join the queue to enter the stadium. You blend in easily, ticket clutched in your hand, heart beating a little too fast for someone who keeps telling herself this means nothing.

When your ticket is stubbed, you head for the upper rows—high enough to see the whole field, close enough to recognize faces. You sit and you patiently wait until the game starts.

When both teams are being called to the field, you raise from your feet, neck craning to find a face. After a moment, he finally appears and your heart sinks.

Chris stands near the sideline, older now—his face more defined, time etched into sharper lines around his eyes and jaw. But his smile is the same. Full. Warm. Those dimples still sink deep into his cheeks just the way you remember it.

He leans in to talk to one of his players, whispers something you can’t hear, then taps the younger man’s shoulder encouragingly. The player laughs, nods, straightening like he’s been given permission to believe in himself.

Your mouth parts before you realize it and for half a second, you almost call his name. However, the roar of the crowd swallows the impulse whole so you sink back into your seat, hands clenched together as the match begins. You really try to follow the ball, the flow of the game, but all you see is him.

Chris watches the field with total focus, shouting directions and encouragements, clapping enthusiastically, pacing the sideline. He tugs at the tie around his collar now and then, loosening it as the game intensifies with each passing second. He looks at home there. Certain. Alive.

You have to fight the urge to stand up, to run down the steps, to close the distance that ten years have stretched thin but never erased. You tell yourself to sit still, to let this be what it is. A proof that he is here, still doing what he loves — only differently.

Eventually, you manage to focus on the second half of the match. You follow the passes, the rhythm of the game, the tension that builds and releases in waves. You catch yourself leaning forward, breath held, reacting without thinking. For a while, it’s just a match again. Just soccer. Just noise and movement and hope shifting back and forth across the field. Then, the whistle blows for the final time.

Everything stills and then Chris breaks into a wide, brilliant grin. The kind that lights up his whole face. He runs straight into the nearest player and pulls him into a hug, laughing as the rest of the team swarms in. Arms tangle around shoulders. Someone shouts. Someone else jumps. They gather around him like he’s the center of gravity, like he belongs there.

You don’t think about it but rise from your seat and clap, cheering with the rest of the stadium, voice swallowed by the crowd but heart loud enough for you to hear it.

You’re happy. Genuinely, achingly happy. Because good things happened to him. Because he looks proud and fulfilled and surrounded by people who believe in him. Because whatever paths you took, whatever distance grew between you, this is something he earned.

You clap until your hands sting, smiling through the tightness in your chest and for a moment, the ache softens.

For a moment, happiness is enough.

-

The stadium has mostly emptied now and you’re back inside your parked car. Across the lot, the team bus idles near the other exit, red and black paint catching the glow of the floodlights.

You wait because you want to see him—just once, just briefly. Proof that this wasn’t only for you and that he’s real and fine and right there.

Eventually, the players spill out in small groups, freshly showered, hair damp, dressed down but still wearing their varsity jackets like a shared identity. They laugh, shove each other lightly, carry duffel bags over their shoulders.

You step out of your car before you can overthink it, you start walking. Your heart beating too loudly in your ears as you move toward the bus. You already know how this goes as Chris is always the last to come out. Always lingering, talking to someone, making sure everyone else is settled.

As expected, there he is. He stands near the exit, his stance is relaxed and confident, head tilted as he listens to someone out of frame. The sight of him draws a smile from you before you can stop it— it’s automatic, reflexive, dangerous.

You take another step and then another. Your mouth opens, breath pulled in, his name right there on the tip of your tongue—

“Chris!”

It’s not your voice and you stop short.

He turns immediately, expression softening into a smile that isn’t meant for you. A girl jogs up to him, her ponytail bouncing, laughter already on her lips.

He grins wider as he warmly says, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

She giggles, cheeks pink from the cold or something warmer. When she reaches him, he slips an arm around her shoulders without hesitation. They turn together toward the bus, talking over each other, laughing as they climb the steps.

Their voices echo briefly in the emptying parking lot and you take a step back. Then another. Your smile gone now, replaced by something hollow. You watch him disappear into the bus and the door folding shut behind them.

With one last look—just long enough to hurt—you turn away and you walk back to your car, carrying the weight of what you came here to see, and what you didn’t expect to lose all over again.

-

Another day passes, and you tell yourself that work will help you forget what you saw and heard yesterday.

You sit at your desk with your laptop open, office washed in late-morning light, Gatherly dashboards and reports waiting patiently for your attention. You should be focused. You are usually focused.

Somehow your screen shows a search result for Chris. You’re not even sure what you’re looking for anymore. Proof, maybe. Reassurance. Or punishment. You hesitate only a second before clicking the link at the top.

His social media loads and it’s mostly soccer—practice sessions, candid shots from the sidelines, photos of him standing shoulder to shoulder with his team. There’s one from last weekend, all of them grinning, arms slung around each other.

He looks good and happy. At ease. You continue scrolling and there she is. The girl who walked with Chris yesterday, you click on her profile to find out that she’s assistant coach. Still, there’s no clear sign on whether he’s married or dating someone. Nothing to confirm or deny it.

You close the page and return to the search results when you spot an older article. The one about the injury he sustained in his second year defending his university’s soccer team. A severe one to the knee and the surgeries done to it, the one that eventually forced him into early retirement.

Guilt coils tight, making you feel sick from the inside out. Your chest aches, heart shrinking as if it’s trying to fold in on itself. You stare at the words too long, each sentence a reminder of how much he lost. Of how much he gave up.

You close the tab abruptly and lean back in your chair. Maybe this is the universe reminding you of something. A boundary. A warning. That whatever this pull is, whatever thread still ties you to him, crossing paths again would only reopen wounds that never fully healed.

It’s better this way, you tell yourself.

You close your eyes, pressing your lips together as the sting builds behind them. You breathe through it, steadying yourself, forcing the tears back down.

A knock sounds at your door.

You straighten instantly, smoothing your expression into something calm and slip back into professionalism. “Come in,” you say.

Lucy steps inside with a folder tucked against her chest. She hands you documents to sign, waits patiently as you do. She lists things to approve, questions to answer, confirmations to give.

You respond but only halfway. Your voice is distant, your thoughts somewhere else entirely.

Lucy pauses, studying you. “Are you okay?”

There’s no point pretending, no point on hiding it so you admit quietly, “I don’t feel well. Is it possible for me to leave early today?”

She checks your schedule quickly. “You don’t have anything critical.”

You nod. “But let me know if something comes up.”

She smiles, gentle and understanding. “Of course.”

Lucy cradles her tablet close to her chest and offers you a soft smile, “I’ll get the car ready for you,” she says before leaving your office.

You sit there for a moment longer, alone in your office, wondering when exactly doing the right thing started to feel so heavy.

-

The elevator ride is quiet in the way that makes your thoughts louder. You lean back against the mirrored wall, watching your reflection blur past floors you barely register. You didn’t do much at work today but you feel wrung out anyway. Tired. Restless. Like your body is moving forward while something inside you keeps snagging on something.

When the doors open to your floor, you step out and walk toward your apartment on autopilot. You unlock the door and stop when you notice someone is in your apartment.

An open suitcase sits on your sofa, clothes folded inside with a care that feels almost insulting and standing beside is the last person you want to see today, of all days — Cole, your ex-fiancé.

Your eyes meet, and the air goes cold. He sighs before quickly explaining. “You told me to get my things while you were at work. I didn’t think you’d be home this early.”

You don’t answer, don’t even acknowledge him but walk past him without a word and head straight into your bedroom. You don’t want to talk to him. You don’t want to hear his voice. You especially don’t want to see that.

The engagement ring. It sits on your vanity, exactly where you left it. Small. Gleaming. A reminder why you don’t want to see him. You grab the box and turn back around.

Cole is zipping up his suitcase when you reappear. He looks surprised when you hold the box out to him.

“Take it,” you say flatly. “Take the ring too.”

He frowns and pushes it back toward you. “I gave that to you. It’s yours.”

“No,” you insist, shoving it into his chest. “Take it back.”

“I’m not taking it,” he snaps. “I meant it when I gave it to you.”

“And I meant it when I said I don’t want it.”

His jaw tightens. “You’re really going to do this right now?”

You laugh, sharp and humorless. “You’re packing up our life in my living room. When exactly would you prefer?”

He exhales, running a hand through his hair. “You’re acting like I’m the only one at fault here.”

“Oh, don’t,” you say, anger flaring hot and sudden. “Do not do that.”

“You weren’t there,” he fires back. “You were always working. Always choosing your company over us.”

You scoff. “Right. So you cheated.”

“I cheated because of you.”

You stare at him, incredulous. “Oh, yeah, right, blame my career, blame my success.”

“That’s not what this is about,” he snaps. “I always knew you weren’t sure. You never fully committed to marrying me.”

You shake your head. “Those are excuses. You’re trying to justify what you did.”

He laughs bitterly. “Fine. Yeah. I cheated. But it was because I knew you never believed I was the right one for you.”

You don’t hesitate when you retort. “And turns out I was right.”

The words land hard. Cole drops the suitcase with a thud and steps toward you, voice low and tight. “At least I’m not a hypocrite. You just don’t want to admit that I’m right. That you never been and never will be sure about me.”

Your eyes burn, your hand shoots out, pointing the front door. “Get out.”

He turns toward the door without waiting.

“Never speak to me again,” you shout, tears spilling over now. “Do you hear me?”

“That won’t be hard,” he says without turning back.

“I never want to see you again,” you shout, your voice strained in anger.

His jaw clenches like he’s holding something back but he doesn’t say it. He just opens the door, drags the suitcase behind him, and leaves.

The door clicks shut and, in that moment, you break. You sink where you stand, sobbing into the quiet apartment, grief and anger and humiliation crashing over you all at once. The life you thought you were building collapses in on itself, leaving you alone with the echo of slammed doors and promises that never stood a chance.

You cry until it hurts.

Until you’re empty.

Until the silence is all that’s left.

-

You had a hard time sleeping but you wake to the sound of the door opening.

For a moment, you don’t move. You stare at the ceiling, eyes still burn, body sore in a way sleep didn’t fix. You already know who it is since Lucy is the only other person with the spare code.

You consider staying there anyway but lying still leaves too much room for thinking, and thinking feels dangerous today. So you push yourself up, drag yourself out of bed, and tell yourself it’s better to stay busy. Work is easier than sitting alone with everything you don’t want to feel.

When you step into the living room, Lucy is already setting things down on the coffee table—your breakfast, a cup of coffee exactly the way you like it. In her other hand, she’s holding a garment bag wrapped neatly in white.

“Good morning,” she says gently, smiling like she’s trying not to startle you.

You sink onto the sofa as she hands you your schedule for the day. You lift your coffee and glance at it without really reading. She disappears into your bedroom to hang the clothes, moving around your space as it is routine to her at this point.

When she comes back, she exhales dramatically. “I almost had a heart attack when the tailor forgot where he put your altered suits.”

You hum in response, sipping your coffee. It tastes right. You barely notice.

Lucy watches you for a beat too long. “Is something wrong?” she asks in genuine concern.

“Nothing,” you say automatically, lifting the cup again. “I’m just tired.”

Lucy has been working for you for two years, long enough to notice when you’re just tired or something truly bothers you. But she doesn’t ask but looks at you, patiently waiting for you to decide whether you’re going to tell her or not.

You decide on the former, shoulders slumping just a little. “Cole came by last night and we… we had a fight.”

Lucy’s expression softens immediately as she comes to sit beside you. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” you say quickly. “Really.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t look fine. You shouldn’t be working today.”

“I can’t not work,” you reply, sharper than you mean to. “I don’t want people thinking I can’t handle this. That I’m not professional.”

Lucy meets your gaze, steady. “At the end of the day, you’re just human. You don’t have to carry everything at once.”

You shake your head. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Do you?” she asks quietly. “Can you even work properly like this?”

You open your mouth to say yes but nothing comes out. The silence answers for you.

Lucy reaches for your hand, squeezing it gently. “Take a few days off,” she says. “Go somewhere. Get out of here.”

You let out a short, humorless laugh. “You mean… A vacation?”

“Yes,” she answers without a beat.

“What about the company?”

“Herman can handle it,” she says without hesitation. “That’s literally his job.”

She’s right. You know she’s right. Herman is the COO and you’re sure he can handle the company for a few days. And still, the idea of stepping away feels terrifying and yet, oddly relieving.

You look down at your coffee, at your hands, at how tired you feel all the way through. “I don’t think I can get through today,” you honestly admit.

Lucy nods. “Then don’t.”

You exhale slowly. “Maybe I’ll go home. See my mom.”

Her smile is immediate. “That’s a good idea.”

For the first time in a while, it feels like the right decision. You haven’t taken time for yourself, not since you called off the wedding. Not since everything started unraveling.

Lucy squeezes your hand again. “Take your time. Rest. Come back when you’re ready.”

You nod.

And this time, you let yourself believe that stepping away might not be failure but survival.

-

Lucy stayed for another hour before leaving to arrange things for your absent in the company.

You pack a bag with essentials only—clothes folded without care, toiletries tossed in last, phone charger, laptop you debate leaving behind but don’t. The apartment feels strangely quiet as you move through it, like it’s watching you go. You lock the door and don’t look back.

The train station is bustling with people. You buy a ticket, board when they call your line, and sink into a window seat like you’ve been holding yourself upright for too long. When the train finally lurches forward, something in your chest loosens.

The city slowly gives way. Buildings thin out. Noise softens. The view outside the window turns into stretches of green, houses tucked into quiet corners, sky opening wider than you remember. You rest your forehead lightly against the glass and let yourself watch.

You can’t remember the last time you did this. Really watched, really sat still without checking emails, without thinking five steps ahead, without measuring time in productivity. Somewhere along the way, you stopped allowing yourself moments like this and only now do you realize how much you’ve missed.

The way sunlight hits trees at this hour. The way the world moves when you’re not trying to control it. The comfort of going somewhere familiar without needing a reason. It suddenly makes sense why you’ve been craving familiarity, why your chest aches for places and people that existed before everything became so complicated. You miss home. You miss warmth. You miss the version of yourself who wasn’t always bracing for impact.

The memories come gently, uninvited but not unwelcome. And as the train carries you farther away from the life you built and closer to the one that shaped you, you close your eyes and let the motion lull you into something that feels almost like peace.

-

By the time you reach your hometown, the day has thinned into evening.

The train, the taxi ride after, they all blur together until you’re standing on the familiar porch, suitcase at your side, heart oddly hopeful. You knock, already imagining your mom’s surprised gasp, the way she’ll scold you for not calling first and then pull you into a hug anyway. But there’s no answer.

You knock again and still nothing. The house is too quiet. You peer through the window, expecting to see a light on, some movement inside but there’s nothing. She can’t be at the bakery because it’s closed at night. A knot forms in your chest as you pull out your phone and call her. It rings and rings.

On the second try, she finally picks up. “Hello?”

“Mom,” you say, relief flooding you. “Are you home?”

There’s a pause. Then a small laugh. “Oh, honey. I’m on the cruise.”

The words take a moment to land because you don’t remember hearing your mom going on a cruise trip. “The cruise?” you repeat.

“The one you got me for my birthday,” she reminds you gently. “A day before I left, I told you on our phone call.”

You sigh, rubbing your forehead. You must have missed it. Or heard it and forgotten. Either way, it’s your fault.

She doesn’t dwell on it. “What’s going on? Why are you home?”

“I’m just taking a few days off work,” you say quickly. “I wanted to come home for a bit.”

“Are you alright?” she presses because she knows. Mothers always know.

“I’m okay,” you assure her. “I’m just needing some time alone but don’t worry about me. Enjoy your vacation.”

She sounds unconvinced, but she lets it go. “Take care of yourself. I’ll be home soon,” she says softly.

“Okay,” you reply. “Oh—do you still have the spare key somewhere?”

“Yes. Under one of the potted plants.”

You smile faintly. “Enjoy your trip, Mom.”

“I will. Bye, sweetheart.”

With that, the call ends and you crouch down by the pots, fingers brushing against cool ceramic until you find the spare key. You unlock the door and step inside, dragging your suitcase behind you.

The house wraps around you immediately. Warm. Familiar. Lived-in. Changing but also the same — in a way. You stand there for a moment, taking it all in—the faint scent of home, the quiet that isn’t lonely. Then you head upstairs, each step echoing with memory, until you reach your room.

It’s just as you left it. Your books are still lining the shelf, your desk still organized the way you like it, the bedsheets are the same but you catch the smell of detergent, your mom must have washed it like she knows that you’ll come home.

You drop your bag and collapse onto the bed, exhaustion finally catching up to you. The mattress welcomes you like it always has, and before you can think too much, you drift into an easy, dreamless sleep.

-

You wake up late the next day, sunlight spilling lazily across your room.

For a moment, you don’t know where you are and a second later, it settles. You’re home. You’re in the bedroom where you grew up with the quiet that doesn’t demand anything from you. You stretch beneath the blankets and realize, with mild surprise, that you feel… good.

It’s the best sleep you’ve had in a long time. Deep and uninterrupted, without dreams tugging you awake or your mind racing ahead to the next obligation. You lie there a little longer, staring at nothing, and it feels strange not having to immediately decide what to do next.

Your phone is silent because Lucy has always been good at shielding you when you need it most. No emails. No calls. No emergencies sneaking their way through. Eventually, you get up and wander downstairs, padding into the kitchen for a late breakfast.

You eat slowly, realizing halfway through that the fridge is mostly empty. You should probably do some grocery shopping. The thought doesn’t stress you out. It almost feels… normal.

In the afternoon, you take your mom’s car and drive with the windows down, letting the town guide you. Streets curve into familiarity, muscle memory taking over as if you never left. You pull over across from your old high school without really meaning to.

The soccer field is alive with players running drills, voices carrying faintly through the air. You watch from the car, smiling softly as memories surface. Sitting on the bleachers. Lunch breaks spent laughing. Watching Chris practice while pretending you weren’t. Aaron and Walcott being loud and impossible.

It feels distant, but not gone.

You start the car again and keep driving. You stop for a quick lunch and coffee, savoring both without rushing, then head to the supermarket, listless but content. You push the trolley down the aisles without much thought, tossing things in as they catch your eye.

Snacks you haven’t had in years. Drinks your mom always said were too sweet. Something frozen, something indulgent, something you’ll probably regret later. You don’t stop yourself. You’re not meal-planning. You’re just… choosing.

Only when the trolley starts to look a little ridiculous do you pause and squint at it. You’re grocery shopping like a kid with adult money.

“Okay,” you mutter to yourself. “Maybe some fruits.”

Balance. As someone would say.

You steer toward the fresh produce aisle, grab a thin plastic bag and start filling it with tangerines, testing their weight in your palm, choosing out of instinct instead of skill.

That’s when you think you hear your name and you ignore it because this town is full of echoes and old memories. You focus on twisting the bag closed when a trolley skids to a stop just a little too close to yours.

You slowly turn to the side and find someone smiling at you like she’s been sure all along.

“I knew it was you,” Celia says.

Your face breaks open immediately. “Oh my God—Celia!”

You step forward without thinking and pull her into a hug, the kind that’s easy and warm and unguarded, like no time has passed at all. You linger there with Celia between the rows of fruit, trolleys forgotten, talking like no time ever slipped through your fingers.

She asks about your work first and you give her the light version because you don’t want to give the impression that you’re bragging about your success, and she listens with genuine interest, nodding along like she always did.

Then she tells you about her life. About settling down. About how different things feel now, quieter but fuller. She laughs as she talks, eyes bright, and at some point she reaches out and holds both of your hands.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she says softly. “I was so surprised when I saw you.”

“I’m taking some time off work,” you explain. “Just… breathing for a bit.”

Something flickers across her face—recognition, maybe. Carefully, gently, she says, “I heard about the news.”

You don’t have to asks to know what she means. You nod once. “Yeah.”

“I’m really sorry,” she adds, squeezing your hands.

“It’s okay,” you say, and you mean it enough.

Thankfully, she doesn’t linger there. Instead, her face lights up like she’s been holding onto something exciting. “Oh! I’m having a baby shower tomorrow afternoon.”

It’s only then that you really look at her and notice the curve beneath her sweater.

“Oh my god,” you coo, instinctive and soft. “Celia. Congratulations.”

She laughs, cheeks pink, squeezing your hands tighter. “Please come tomorrow. I really want you there.”

“I’d love to,” you say, then hesitate. “But are you sure it’s okay?”

“Of course it is,” she says immediately. “It’ll be fun. Please?”

You can’t bring yourself to say no when she looks at you like that. And maybe—maybe you do need this. Time with someone who knows you, who remembers you from before everything got complicated.

For old time’s sake, you smile and nod. “Okay. I’ll come.”

Her smile blooms on the heart-shaped face, the same as it was back in high school. It strikes you then how some people don’t change much at all.

You help her load her grocery bags into the back of her car, chatting about nothing and everything. Before she gets in, she reminds you once more about tomorrow, pointing playfully at you like she doesn’t trust you not to forget.

You promise you won’t and with that, she waves as she drives off, leaving you standing there with your trolley and a warmth in your chest you didn’t expect.

Maybe coming home was the right idea after all.

-

Later that night, you eat dinner at the small kitchen table—something you cooked yourself, thrown together without a recipe or much thought. It’s probably not the healthiest thing you’ve ever made, but it’s warm and filling and yours. You actually enjoy it, which surprises you.

Afterward, you open a bottle of wine. You pour yourself a glass and carry it to the sofa, settling in with your legs tucked beneath you. It’s funny that you almost forgot how to spend your free time.

Out of curiosity more than anything else, you call Lucy and she picks up immediately. “Just so you know, the company is doing just fine without you.”

You chuckle. “I figured.”

She gives you a quick rundown anyway. Just enough to reassure you that the world hasn’t ended because you stepped away for a few days.

“So,” she says at last, “how’s your vacation?”

You swirl the wine in your glass. “I forgot I sent my mom on a cruise for her birthday, so I’m alone.”

She laughs softly. “That tracks.”

You hesitate, then add, “The bad news is… everyone knows about the canceled wedding.”

“That means you’re famous,” Lucy simply comments. “So what’s the other good news?”

You smile faintly. “I ran into a friend from high school. She invited me to her baby shower tomorrow.”

“That’s good,” Lucy says easily.

“I think so too.” You pause to put away your glass of wine. “Can you help me figure out what to get her? I’m terrible at baby gifts.”

“I’ll make you a list,” she promises. “Send you options.”

“Thank you.”

“And,” Lucy adds gently, “enjoy your time there.”

You nod even though she can’t see it. “I will. Goodnight, Lucy.”

“Goodnight.”

The call ends, and the quiet settles back in. You sip your wine slowly, alone again and then the thought slips in, uninvited.

If Celia knows about your canceled wedding… does Chris know too?

-

The bell above the door chimes softly when you step into the flower shop, the air thick with the scent of fresh blooms. You wander between buckets of flowers, fingers brushing over petals, eventually settling on something bright and gentle that feels right for Celia.

The florist wraps the bouquet carefully. You thank them, step back outside, and unlock your car.

That’s when you see him or think you do.

Across the street, between rows of small shops, there’s a familiar shape. Broad shoulders. An easy stride. For half a second, your breath catches. Your eyes follow instinctively as the man turns, the profile almost right, almost unmistakable—

But then he steps into a café and the glass door swinging shut before you can take a good look at the person. You stand there, bouquet cradled in your arms, heart thudding far too fast for something that’s probably nothing. But then, this town is full of people who resemble memories if you stare long enough. So you tell yourself it’s not him. It can’t be. It’s just coincidence. You shake your head lightly, dismiss the thought, and slide into your car.

Fifteen minutes later, you pull up in front of Celia’s house and sit there for a moment, hands resting on the steering wheel. A few cars are already parked along the curb. Laughter spills faintly from inside. You exhale, feeling suddenly out of place. Crowds like this still make you uneasy—you’d rather be in a room full of businessmen where motives are clear and conversations are transactional. This kind of gathering comes with expectations you’re never quite sure how to meet.

Still, you step inside, scanning the room instinctively for Celia first. You find her near a growing pile of gifts, glowing in a floral dress that hugs her baby bump beautifully. She’s mid-conversation when you call her name softly, trying to be mindful as to not interrupt.

Her face lights up instantly and pulls you into a quick hug, presses her cheek to yours, and laughs softly. You hand her the bouquet you picked up on the way over.

“Your baby shower gift is still on the way so I bought this,” you say apologetically.

“Thank you for even coming,” she waves it off. “And this is perfect.”

She looks around to find someone and when she finally does, she calls someone over—a tall man with kind eyes and neatly kept facial hair. She pulls him to her side before introducing you, and he smiles warmly, shaking your hand.

Celia steers you toward the refreshment table and pours you a drink. You lean closer to her, lowering your voice. “It’s funny—I ran into Aaron a couple of weeks ago.”

Her brows lift in surprise but her smile never wavers for a second.

You hesitate, then add, “I always thought you two were endgame.”

She chuckles softly. “We did pretty good. We made it through college but then broke up not long after because he got busy with his family business.”

You nod because you understand too well what distance can do. So are time and space.

Then, gently, she asks, “What about you and Chris?”

You blink, feigning innocence. “What about us?”

She scoffs playfully. “Please. There was always something about you two.”

You let out a humorless laugh. “Well, you know, nothing happened. We went our separate ways.”

Her smile softens in understanding. Thankfully, the conversation doesn’t linger. She places a comforting hand at the small of your back and guides you toward the living room where the other guests are gathering.

You recognize a few faces from high school who mostly came here with their spouses, children, or both. But the ones gathered in this room are women as the men takes over the back yard with the children.

You softly greet the people you know and offer a polite smile to the ones you’ve just met. Your smile drops just slightly when you see her. Cheryl. Older now, but the smugness hasn’t faded.

You sit on the far end of the sofa with Celia beside you, as far from Cheryl as possible. You decide to not acknowledge her presence and take a sip of your drink, briefly wishing it contained alcohol.

Conversation drifts easily but they’re mostly about children, marriages, routines. You lean toward Celia and whisper, “I didn’t know you were friends with Cheryl.”

Celia murmurs back, “She’s married to the mayor’s son so I kind of invited her out of courtesy.”

You nod, understanding.

Cheryl soon launches into a story about her family—how her son is a spitting image of his father, how accomplished her husband is, how impressive his family’s influence has become. The others nod politely, murmuring praise. And then, she turns to you.

“And you? Do you have anything to share?” she asks.

“Not much,” you reply calmly. “Work keeps me busy.”

She tilts her head, feigning sympathy. “I heard about your canceled wedding. That must’ve been… sad.”

You kind of expected that to happen because some people only change shape but they’re the same inside. And apparently, Cheryl still has a bully mentality. Instead of stooping to her level, you remain calm and unfazed.

“I appreciate your concern,” you say evenly. “But it’s behind me now. I’m focusing on my career.”

You think that’s the end of it and that everyone in this room is grown and mature enough not to cause drama.

“I think it’s just sad,” Cheryl continues, “that you don’t get to experience being a wife. Or a mother.”

Celia stiffens beside you, about to speak but you gently place a hand on her arm. Giving her a look that says I’ve got this. You meet Cheryl’s gaze and smile before speaking.

“Yeah. I’m single. Not married. No kids.” You honestly admit because there’s no need to feel embarrassed about it. “But I’ve built something I’m proud of. I created an app that helps people, employs people. My company is thriving. And most importantly, I’m no longer insecure enough to tear someone else down just to feel better about myself.”

Silence.

A few women shift uncomfortably. Someone clears their throat. Others sip their drinks, faint smiles tugging at their lips. Cheryl doesn’t say another word but you notice the way she purses her lips together like she’s holding herself back from exploding.

Celia squeezes your hand gratefully and stands, clapping her hands together. “Alright, ladies. Let’s start opening gifts!”

The room softens once the gifts are opened. You watch Celia glow as she unwraps tiny clothes and thoughtful presents, her smile full in a way that makes you happy for her without the ache you expected.

You stay for another hour after that, enjoying the food and drinks, talking with people you know from school. When the afternoon begins to wind down, you step aside with Celia.

“I had a really nice time,” you tell her honestly.

She exhales, then leans in a little closer. “I’m sorry about Cheryl.”

You smile softly. “It’s okay.”

She lowers her voice, conspiratorial. “Just so you know, most of the guests don’t like her either.”

That makes you laugh and you hold her hand as you remind her once again. “My gift is still on the way.”

She squeezes your hands back as she talks. “Thank you. Really. For even showing up and let me brag about having a successful friend like you.”

Right on cue, her husband joins you, slipping an arm around her waist. You take the chance to thank them properly—for the invitation, for the warmth, for making you feel welcome.

“Thank you for having me,” you say.

They both smile, sincere and kind. In that moment, you can see why they’re married and very certain about it.

“Thank you for coming,” Celia’s husband says with a kind smile.

You wish them a goodnight, one last congratulations, and then you’re back outside, the evening air cool against your skin. You get into your car and sit there for a moment before starting the engine, feeling lighter than you did when you arrived.

And you honestly enjoyed the baby shower. More than that—you enjoyed standing your ground. Not because you’ve been holding onto resentment, but because Cheryl pushed, and for once, you didn’t fold. You didn’t shrink. You didn’t swallow it down and pretend it didn’t hurt. Looking back at it, you don’t know why you were so afraid to stand up for yourself but now, you’re glad you did.

You smile to yourself as the road stretches ahead, then realize there’s no one to share that small, quiet victory with. So you call Lucy and put her on speaker, the phone resting in the cup holder.

The second she picks up, you don’t even say hello. “You will not believe the day I’ve had.”

She laughs. “The baby shower?”

“It was actually… really nice,” you admit. “Celia and her husband were so welcoming. They’re genuinely happy, Lucy. It was—nice to see.”

“Mmhmm,” she hums knowingly. “… And?”

You scoff. “Cheryl the bully was there.”

“Of course she was.”

“She’s still the same bitter girl,” you continue, turning onto your block. “But I didn’t let her get away with it this time. I didn’t even raise my voice. I just—”

Your words trail off as you notice a car parked outside the house. It’s one that you know for sure doesn’t belong to one of your neighbors. Your grip tightens on the steering wheel, alarmed.

“Lucy,” you say quickly, eyes narrowing. “I’ll call you back.”

“Wait, what—”

You hang up to focus on pulling into the driveway slowly, heart starting to beat a little faster now. You turn the engine off, gather your bag, and step out of the car.

You sprint to your porch so if anything happens, you’ll make it safely into your house. As you unlock the door, you’re squinting through the darkness, trying to make out the shape of the unfamiliar car. Then—

You see movements from inside the car and then a soft click. The car door swings open and someone steps out from the driver’s side.

You can’t see this person. Just a silhouette shifting, coming closer. You have your hand on the doorknob, ready to slip into the house. But then the person takes a few more steps forward, into the spill of light from your front porch.

Your heart skips a beat the second you recognize him. Chris. And your heart starts beating even faster.

You stand there on the porch as Chris climbs the steps slowly, like he’s not entirely sure that it’s really you. The porch light catches his face properly now—older, sharper around the edges, but unmistakably him. His brows knit together, eyes searching yours like he needs confirmation.

He exhales, almost to himself. “It’s really you.”

You don’t think he means for you to hear it, but you do. A smile tugging at the corner of your lips.

“Hi,” you manage, the word catching awkwardly in your throat.

“Hey.” He rubs the back of his neck, glancing toward the door behind you. “I was downtown earlier and saw your mom’s bakery was closed, so I thought I’d stop by. Didn’t expect to—” He trails off, gesturing vaguely at you. “—see you.”

Oh, God, you were right. It was him you were seeing earlier downtown. You hold back from smiling and calm yourself down. “I’m taking a few days off work,” you simply explain. “I’m home for a bit.”

He nods, and something softens in his expression—surprise, yes, but also relief. “I’m… glad you’re here.”

You swallow and mindlessly answer, “Me too.”

The awkwardness settles between you, thick but not unpleasant. It makes sense. Years don’t disappear just because you’re standing on the same porch again. He seems to feel it too, letting out a quiet chuckle.

“I should probably go.”

“Do you want to come in?”

You and Chris say at the same time and a second later, you both burst into soft laughter.

“You first,” he says with a soft, almost shy smile.

“Do you want to come in?”

He looks at you, then grins. God. You missed that grin. “I think this has been sufficiently awkward for one night and I parked too long outside your house so I should probably go.”

You laugh softly. “Yeah. Fair.”

He hesitates, then looks at you again. “What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah. If you don’t have plans. We could… try this again.” He pauses. “Or if you do have plans—”

“I don’t,” you say too quickly. “I don’t have anything planned.”

His smile widens. “Cool. Tomorrow afternoon works for you?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

“I’ll pick you up then,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Yeah,” you echo.

He looks like he wants to say more from the way his mouth opens, then closes. Instead, he steps down one stair, turns back, and says quietly, sincerely, “I’m really happy to see you.”

Your voice trembles just a little. “I’m really happy to see you too.”

Your eyes meet, and the moment stretches—full of everything you don’t say, everything you’re afraid to name. Then he smiles, softer now.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

He walks down the rest of the steps. You stay where you are, watching as he reaches his car. Before getting in, he turns back and lifts a hand in a small wave.

You wave back and don’t move until his car pulls away and disappears down the street, leaving you alone on the porch with a racing heart, a promise for tomorrow, and the unmistakable feeling that something long buried has just begun to breathe again.

-

The next day, afternoon slips by in a blur of indecision.

You change outfits more times than you’d ever admit to anyone, muttering under your breath as you stare at the limited selection hanging in your childhood closet. You curse yourself for not packing more or better clothes. And you don’t even know what this is. A hangout. A reunion. Something in between. Is it casual or…

Anyway, you don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard. But you also don’t want to look like you didn’t try at all.

Eventually, you settle on something simple—a floral dress and white sneakers. Casual but also cute. For the first time in a long while, you actually do your hair, blow-drying it carefully, watching yourself in the mirror with a focus you haven’t given your reflection in months.

You’re not sure what time Chris will come by, but you want to be ready anyway.

So you wait downstairs. You snack on grapes straight from the bowl, pacing between the kitchen and the window, glancing outside far too often. You repeatedly tell yourself that this is probably nothing. Just two old friends catching up. Dinner, maybe. Conversation.

That shouldn’t make you this nervous but when a car finally pulls into the driveway, your heart lurches violently. You nearly choke on a grape, coughing as you scramble for a glass of water to wash it down. You smooth your dress, wipe your hands on your jeans, and school your expression into something calm like you absolutely did not just wait for him for the last hour.

The knock comes and you wait a beat to seem normal before opening the door with a smile. “Oh,” you say lightly, feigning surprise, “you’re here.”

Chris grins. “Hi.”

“Please, come in,” you say as you step aside, opening the door wider. And it feels strange to say it since Chris used to come in like he owns the house.

He walks in, and for a second, the air is thick with things that you can’t name.

Before it can turn awkward, you offer quickly, “Do you want anything?”

“No, thanks,” he kindly refuses with a soft smile.

“Well, uh… I just need to grab my bag upstairs,” you tell him.

“I’ll be waiting.”

With that, you head up the stairs. In your room, you pause at the vanity, applying a fresh layer of lipstick, spritzing a little more perfume than necessary. You grab your bag and take a breath before heading back down. Your heart starts to race again when you see him waiting at the base of the stairs.

He looks good—effortlessly so—in a dark sweater and blue jeans. You stop for a moment, just long enough to take him in, before continuing down. He looks up and smiles when he sees you.

“Ready?” he asks.

You nod, pulse fluttering in your chest. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

-

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The hanok in Andong was supposed to be empty.

That was the whole point of booking it months in advance for seven days. All you wanted was just seven days of no work calls, no calendar notifications of when your next meeting would be, and no one asking you to explain something about work in a 30-minute meeting that could have been a short email. You needed this time alone to yourself. Just you, a stack of unread books that has been sitting around in your to-be-read list, and a wooden veranda that overlooked a persimmon tree.

You did not expect your ex boyfriend, Kim Namjoon, to be standing in the backyard of the hanok when you arrived with a duffel bag slung over your shoulder. And Namjoon was staring at the same booking confirmation on his phone that you had opened on yours. 

Neither of you said anything for a good one minute.

“It’s you again,” Namjoon said. 

And you just nodded at him because what the heck were you supposed to say to an ex you hated with your guts?

Thankfully the host came out just in time, wiping her hands on her apron, and she was very cheerful. Only because she had no idea what she just did. What booking you and Namjoon in her two-bedroom hanok at the same time would do to the peaceful area of Andong. 

"Oh good, you're both here! I ran this as a two-bedroom stay during the off season, but I forgot to change the description in that new website! If you expected to have the whole hanok to yourself, I am so sorry! I swear it was the new website and it's a new update! And I didn't think two separate bookings would land the same week. Lucky you, though, the whole place is yours," the middle aged host said. She was still very cheerful even though she acknowledged she made a mistake. 

Lucky would be the very last word you would describe this situation, you almost laughed at the host. 

Namjoon just stayed calm. You figured it was the media training of being in BTS for years that he managed to stay so calm. He is the leader of the biggest boyband in the world, he probably has faced more awkward situations than this. 

But you knew deep down how Namjoon felt. The two of you despised each other and you really didn’t want to go deep in history to explain to the host in front of you why this was a bad idea.

"I can find somewhere else," Namjoon finally said. Gosh, it has been so long since you’ve heard his voice. Years ago you would have been so wet down there just by listening to him talk, but now, you were trying so hard not to vomit. 

"Everything's booked out for the festival," the host replied, "you'll be fine, you'll be fine. The rooms have their own doors and modern bathrooms, you will only have to share the kitchen."

“Are you sure the whole area is booked? I just don’t want this young lady to feel awkward having to share this space with a male stranger,” Namjoon said to the host.

“Yes. I run most of the other places too, and they are all booked. Let’s ask the young lady then, would you be okay spending the next seven days sharing a kitchen with this man? He looks nice to me and looks familiar too!” the host said, smiling at you.

“As long as there is a key to lock my bedroom at night, I don’t really care,” you said, shrugging at the host. But when you turned to look at Namjoon, you showed him a gesture that expressed how you wanted him, the richest and most connected person out of you both, to find another place. 

Namjoon understood your gesture. How could he have not? You were his first love, someone whom he had a very, very hard and long time forgetting. But he didn’t care about what you were asking him to do, he booked this place because of how serene and peaceful its location is. Plus, the hanok was featured in an Architectural Digest, it has a beautiful architecture hence why the place is usually booked out. Even as Namjoon of BTS, he couldn’t book it up until now. So no, he wasn’t just about to throw it all out for his ex-girlfriend.  

“Well there you go! The key and lock work just fine and I do have CCTV outside of the bedroom, so you will be safe and sound! And there are security guards guarding this neighbourhood 24/7. If you just shout, they’ll come right for you! But I doubt you’ll need them, since this good looking young man doesn’t seem to be the type to hurt others!” the host said, smiling at Namjoon and you.

You couldn’t help the mocking laugh that came out of your mouth. This lady didn’t know how the good looking young man in front of her has put you in so much misery. 

“Well then that settles it. How long will you be staying here?” Namjoon said to you. It was the first time he was addressing you, the elephant in his room.

“I booked for seven days,” you replied. You didn’t bother asking him the same question, because you heard the lady say something about having to share the same kitchen for the next seven days.

You assumed there was one thing Namjoon still excelled at: hearing only the parts of a story that suited him.

It reminded you of the final month before your breakup, when he accused you of being too close to a co-worker. What he never understood was that your co-worker had come out to you and was going through a very difficult time. It was not your secret to share especially when your friend had specifically asked you not to tell anyone. Being gay in Korea was not easy, and your friend trusted you with something deeply personal that you were not about to share with any soul.

Back then, you tried to explain. You asked Namjoon to listen to your side of the story, you asked him to trust you, but he did not want to hear or trust you, he never did.

It’s really true that men never change.

“Seven days it is,” Namjoon nodded.

“Enjoy your stay,” the host said, waving at the two of you as she left the hanok.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

The hanok has two bedrooms which are separated by a wall so thin you could hear Namjoon breathing on the other side of it.

You forgot how every hanok has this really thin wall so every king and queen whose bedrooms were separate could still talk to each other. You used to think it was romantic, but now, having Namjoon at the other side of the wall just feels more like punishment.

You dropped your bag on the floor of the room because you didn’t even have the energy to unpack. You sat at the edge of the mattress and you could hear Namjoon doing the exact same thing. You could hear the thud of his duffel bag and the creaking of the bed as he sat down. 

You have to spend the next seven days with your ex-boyfriend. It would be fine if it was any of your other ex-boyfriend. But not this one, not Namjoon. 

It’s just seven days, what could go wrong really? You can survive seven days of anything. 

You’ve survived worse, you technically have survived him and that counts for something. 

You never planned this trip around meeting him. You didn’t choose Andong to torture yourself. You chose it because you saw this hanok featured in a magazine, and your coworker mentioned about her trip here once and how peaceful and lovely her trip had been. So you listened to the reviews you have seen online and from your own friend. You didn’t think in a million years that the dates you picked were the exact same one Namjoon had chosen for his own separate getaway. 

You expected some quiet. 

And you did not, under any circumstance, expect Namjoon. 

And yet here he was, on the other side of a wall thin enough you could hear each and every movement he makes. It was as if the universe had a sense of humor you will never once find funny.

You thought about calling the host back out, asking if there was truly nothing else like a motel, a shared room for backpackers, or even a bench in some park that is safe at night. But the host already left to wherever she had to go, and it was nearly dark, and some stubborn, tired part of you decided you would rather sit in silence next to a man who used to love you like you were the only thing keeping him alive. 

Well, that was before he eventually found your presence hard to be around.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

Nothing much happened on the first day. 

Thankfully, you woke up first before him and could occupy the front yard before he could. And Namjoon, to his credit, understood that you being there meant he would be spending most of his time sitting in the backyard. So neither of you saw much of each other.

And when you did happen to see each other. It was during dinner, and even then, you barely really spoke to each other. 

One of the complimentary amenities they give when you stay in the hanok is free dinner because no restaurant around here is open at night. The staff or host, you couldn’t tell since you were too busy resting and reading on a picnic mat in the front yard, left a pot of corn soup, bread, and different types of sides. They also left a note that said: ‘help yourselves, we will pick up the food in 30 minutes so please eat before then and do not eat in the bedroom for cleanliness.’ 

You found Namjoon already in the kitchen with his sleeves pushed up, ladling soup into his bowl.

"Leave some for me," you said.

Namjoon didn't look up as he said, "Didn't know you had a voice."

You tilted your head at him, “Were you waiting for me to talk to you? That’s new.”

"You wish," Namjoon snorted, setting the bowl down on the counter, hard enough that some of it sloshed over the rim, "I was only saying that because you are usually so loud."

You rolled your eyes at him and grabbed a bowl from the cabinet. You filled the bowl without a word and sat down at the opposite end of the table, putting as much space between you as possible.

Towards the end of your relationship, Namjoon never waited for you. He could go days without calling, texting, or meeting-up, and whenever you brought it up, he always had the same answer; he was busy with everything except you. At first, you tried to understand him. You told yourself he was under pressure and that loving someone meant being patient when life got difficult, especially when his life as an idol is so different from life of most people. So you waited for the calls he promised to make after work, for replies that arrived hours later, sometimes the next day. And you waited for him to notice that you stopped telling him about your day because there was never a good time to say anything.

Eventually, you stopped waiting altogether. So you did the same to him. You gave him a taste of his own medicine; the distance, unanswered messages, the quiet indifference he once made you endure. 

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

"You’re eating like it's a race," you said, watching him finish half the bowl in what felt like four bites.

"I have things to do," he said.

"Of course, the always busy man. "

"Last time I checked.." Namjoon said, stopping before finally looking up at you just to say, "That used to be your excuse too. "

You didn't have an answer for that one, so you ate your soup in silence and let the silence do what it does best. Because Namjoon was right. You did to him what he did to you, but you did not regret it. He needed that wake-up call, although it didn’t change anything in your relationship. 

Namjoon finished first, and rinsed his bowl at the sink with his back to you. You didn’t mean to watch him but the view from where you were sitting was to the kitchen. You couldn’t help but see what was happening there. You remembered this view from three years ago, when the two of you were still together.

You shook your head immediately as the thought of your past relationship crept up your mind.

Remember, your life was a living nightmare with him. 

You somehow just noticed that his hair was shorter, and without meaning to, your thoughts slipped out of your lips, "You cut your hair," you said. 

You regretted it the moment you said it. You hoped he didn’t hear it, but of course he did.

"Two months ago," Namjoon said, still rinsing his dishes, "you're behind."

"I wasn't exactly keeping up," you snorted.

"Could've fooled me, aren’t we in this situation because you knew I’d be here?” Namjoon said.

“Did you develop narcissistic personality disorder after being in the spotlight for too long? I have a life I love that does not involve you at all. I couldn’t care less whether you keep your hair short or long,” you said angrily. 

Namjoon would be lying if he claimed to not winch when he heard what you said. But he shrugged it off, you are someone he could care less about. “You used to like it long," Namjoon said quietly, just like you, he didn’t mean to say it out loud. 

"Well, apparently I liked a lot of things that didn't stick around," you said, and you felt a sense of regret the second it left your mouth.

Namjoon turned the tap off, set the bowl in the rack as he said, "Goodnight.”

Then he left the kitchen without looking at you.

You sat with your half-empty bowl a while longer, listening to his footsteps go down the hallway, the sound of his door sliding open, and silence was all it followed.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

That same night, through the wall, you heard him on the phone to Jimin. 

“Hey Jimin. Yeah, the mixup by the host is crazy, I didn’t expect to be stuck in this hanok with her.” 

There was a pause, probably Jimin telling Namjoon to find some other place. 

“I tried, even my manager tried too. It’s just fully booked everywhere.. No, no, you don’t need to come. I’m fine. I just need the week to rest and write, it’s still really nice out here in Andong. It’s peaceful, which is something I really need. Yeah. I know. We thankfully don’t really interact much. It should just be during dinner and that’s because the place only has a 30-minute dining timeslot since they have to pick up the leftover food. Yeah, it sucks, but the place is really nice.”

Then Namjoon went silent for a few minutes and you thought his phone call with Jimin was over but then you heard him say, “Jimin, it’s not because of her that I’m staying here. As much as I dislike that woman, I have been waiting for too long to stay in this hanok and the scenery and ambience is something I do not want to give up. So don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Okay, thank you. Good night to you too, bye.”

That woman?!

Is that what he just referred to you as? Just some woman? You snorted at how ridiculous it was. Did Namjoon forget the two of you spent three whole years together? 

What a fucking prick.

You thought about the last time you heard him talk like that, and how it used to be you he was talking to on the other end of the phone. But one of your last conversations with him on the phone wasn’t really something as warm as his conversation with Jimin.

“I know, babe. I know I said I'd be there. I'll make it up to you, ____”

Namjoon was always so good at saying he’ll make it up to you when he never did. 

Kim Namjoon is a prick and all of his fans would find him disappointing once they knew that he is just a man. 

You rolled onto your side now facing the wall, and let yourself feel the hatred towards your ex before finally falling asleep. 

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

The second day, you woke up to the sound of Namjoon doing pull-ups on the old wooden beam of the veranda, which was, you thought, an incredibly on-brand way for Namjoon to process anything uncomfortable. 

You used to find that endearing, now you just found it loud and annoying. Especially since it is still way too early and you were still tired.

You laid in bed a while longer than you needed to, listening to the creak of the beam, Namjoon’s controlled exhale on every pull, the small grunts he lets out on each pull that he probably didn't know he makes. You used to find his grunts hot and it used to turn you on.

Now you were just irritated. 

You got up before the sounds he make could turn your irritation into anything more complicated.

You walked to the kitchen through the front yard, avoiding the side of the house Namjoon was in, and made your coffee black. You sat at the dining table, facing the backyard which was close enough to see Namjoon through the paper screen yet far enough that he wouldn’t have noticed you were there.

Namjoon eventually finished his workout routine and came into the kitchen. His breathing was shallow and fast. His shirt had gone see-through, sticking to his well-built figure from the sweat. His arms looked fuller after the workout, muscles still tense beneath his skin as he reached for a glass filled with water. He stood by the sink with his back to you as he drank. The pull-ups left his biceps, shoulders, and his overall figure look way more shredded, and his veins were faintly visible along his forearms. 

It was a view that once would have driven you insane.

You immediately looked away before your thoughts spiral into even more nonsense.

“You’re up early,” Namjoon said, still not turning around to look at you.

“You are very loud,” you answered, “it’s hard to stay asleep when a man is having a breakdown on a pull-up bar.”

“You could’ve said something,” Namjoon replied.

You took a sip of your coffee, “Would you have listened to me?”

“I’m listening now,” Namjoon said, finally turning around to look at you.

You looked at him over the rim of your mug, “That’s a little late, don’t you think?”

"That's rich," he said quietly, "coming from the person who canceled on me six times in one month because work got busy."

"You were on tour for eight weeks straight, Namjoon. Do you really want to talk about who canceled on who?"

"I was working," Namjoon said, defending himself.

"So was I," you said, scrunching your face in disbelief.

"Not the same kind of work. Your job was-" 

"Don't," you said, standing up so fast your chair scraped out loud against the floor, "don't you dare tell me my job mattered less or whatever the fuck you said to me then. I’m so sick of hearing you say that shit to me."

Namjoon didn't say anything. He just looked defeated, and mostly because he didn’t know what to say to you. He never meant to make you feel like your job mattered less and he never remembered saying such a thing, but Namjoon understood why you would remember it that way.

Your hands were shaking around the mug, so you set it down before you dropped it and you turned away before he could see your face properly. You did not look back at him as you walked down the hallway and shut your bedroom door behind you harder than necessary, but still not hard enough to feel satisfying.

Through the wall, you could hear him sitting down on the dining chair.

And neither of you said sorry, neither of you ever did.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

By the afternoon, you went out to the backyard, where Namjoon was already sitting on the raised wooden veranda of the house. He barely looked up when you spread a picnic mat beneath the tree. You were there to read, while Namjoon was on his laptop with one earphone in his ear. 

"Isn’t this a holiday?" you asked, not looking up from the page of the book you were reading.

"I have responsibilities," Namjoon answered.

“You know you’re allowed to exist without making everything productive,” you didn’t have any spiteful intent behind what you said, you genuinely wanted him to take rest too.

His fingers stopped typing whatever he was typing on his laptop, “And you need to stop looking for something to comment about,” he replied bitterly, "you used to just let things be things."

"I used to let a lot of things slide," you sneered, "look how that turned out."

Namjoon exhaled through his nose, his thumb dragging across the edge of the keyboard as if he was trying to find something to hold on to, “You don’t have to keep dragging what happened between us into everything you say.”

“I made one comment,” you snorted and sighed as you closed your book, “and I actually was trying to be nice.”

“Well, I guess you don’t really know how to be nice to me anymore,” Namjoon said, finally looking up at you.

You stared back at him, unwilling to let him have the last word, “Maybe because every time I tried, you found a reason to make it sound like an attack.”

Namjoon said nothing to that.

After a while, he put his earphones back in and turned his attention to the laptop again, and the sound of his typing continued, but quieter this time.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

The third day, avoiding each other was something intuitive for the both of you. You took your coffee at seven, Namjoon didn't come out of his room until eight. You read on the veranda facing the front yard in the morning, while Namjoon occupied the veranda to the backyard.  

The two of you should have felt relieved, but somehow, deep down, you were both still feeling restless.

By late afternoon, you were about to cook some ramen when you accidentally went into the kitchen when he was already there. Namjoon was making eggs, the way he always had, too much heat and with not enough patience for someone who always seemed to preach about being mindful.

"You're going to burn those," you said, before you could stop yourself from commenting on what he was doing. You really didn’t want to start another bitter conversation ending with ugly remarks from you or Namjoon. 

"I know how to make eggs," Namjoon replied.

"Do you know? I remember you used to struggle a lot when making eggs, you once set off a smoke alarm trying to make eggs," you let out a small laugh remembering the event that happened in the past.

The corner of Namjoon’s mouth twitched and he eventually gave in and smiled, "That was one time."

"It was still memorable to this day," you said.

"We had a good run didn’t we?" he muttered, flipping the eggs.

"Oh, be careful, Joonie," you said, leaning against the counter with your arms crossed, "you're one comment away from being nice to me."

"God forbid," he chuckled.

"God forbid," you agreed.

For a second, one single, traitorous second, it almost felt like the fun and loving relationship you two had before it all went down. Like the version of the two of you that used to burn eggs together on purpose because neither of you cared about the egg, because doing the activity together was always the whole point.

You went back to the dining table, waiting for him to finish cooking his lunch before taking your turn. Then Namjoon plated the eggs, and nodded at you as he left the kitchen without another word.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

The host left dinner on the table before the two of you even noticed her come in. Tonight’s dinner menu was grilled mackerel, side dishes in small mismatched plates, and a pot of rice still steaming under a cloth. Tonight, the two of you sat down to eat at the same time.

"She made too much again," Namjoon said, nodding at the food on the table as he sat across from you.

“She thinks we’re about to get together,” you replied. It was not exactly a lie because the day before, when you had gone alone to the nearby shop, the owner asked why you didn’t bring your soon-to-be boyfriend with you. When you asked what she meant, she looked at you as though the answer were obvious. 

Apparently, your host had told everyone in the village you were staying there with your soon-to-be boyfriend.

“At this point,” you added, “the whole village probably thinks so too.”

"Let them think what they want," Namjoon flatly replied.

“Easy for you to say,” you said, before adding, “you’re not the one who has to keep correcting people since you’re not exactly going to be walking around the village, are you? Celebrity status and all.”

"I didn't realize being mistaken for my girlfriend was such a hardship," Namjoon said looking at you.

"It is," you said, accidentally filling your bowl with more force than it required, "it's just inaccurate and I don't love inaccurate things being said about me."

"You didn’t use to mind what others were saying about you," Namjoon said quietly. 

"I used to do and put up with a lot of things," you said, setting the ladle down hard enough to rattle the pot of rice, "doesn't mean I have to keep being that person just because you got comfortable with her."

Namjoon looked up at you, something changed in his face. You could tell Namjoon was furious, “You are being ridiculous. I never said I wanted you to stop being yourself.”

"You didn’t have to say it,” you answered, “you made it clear in every other way.”

"That's not fair,” Namjoon said as he set his chopsticks down, hard enough for it to make a loud noise, "What do you want me to say, exactly? Nothing I said could have fixed anything back then. I don't see why it would now."

"I don't want you to say anything," you snapped, “I want you to stop acting like you were the only one who got wronged here, the only one who got hurt. You canceled on me too, repeatedly. But somehow, in your head and in your version of the story, you're still the only victim."

"I'm not the victim of anything. I'm just tired of being the only one who remembers trying."

"You never even tried, Namjoon," you said with a blank stare. 

He picked his chopsticks back up but he didn’t eat anything. He only held them with so much force that his knuckles went pale around wooden chopsticks.  

"You actually really think that? That I never tried? I wasn’t the one getting too close to a coworker after I already told you it made me uncomfortable," he said, visibly pissed off. 

“Right, because I was the only one who ever made you uncomfortable,” you snapped, “as if you didn’t do the exact same thing with that fucking girl from Twice!”

Namjoon’s expression changed and he was about to speak but you cut him off first before he could get any word out.

“And for the record, my co-worker was suicidal. He was in and out of hospital because he was a closeted gay man who had no one else to talk to, no one else to turn to. I couldn’t tell you because it was his secret to keep and was not mine to tell. I am loyal to my friends the way I was loyal to you.”

You watched the colour drain from Namjoon’s face.

Namjoon never knew any of that.

He never knew that your co-worker had come out to you, or that the constant messages were not some secret relationship unfolding behind his back. He never knew the man had been scared and alone, trusting you with something that was not yours to share. 

All Namjoon had known was that he was texting you every day. That he had called when you were with Namjoon and you always picked up. On his last night before leaving for a world tour, you answered someone else’s call instead of staying with him. Namjoon thought you were already tired and bored of waiting for him and so you went looking for someone who was easier to be around, someone who did not keep leaving you.

And Sana, nothing had happened with Sana. Namjoon and her had gone to a bar behind your back, and that was it. But he did that because he was angry at you. Because some part of him wanted to prove that he could do the same thing to you. Because Namjoon wanted you to feel even a fraction of what he felt when your co-worker’s name kept appearing on your phone.

God, Namjoon really fucked it up. 

You asked him multiple times to trust you, he remembered that now. Namjoon remembered how frustrated you sounded, how many times you tried to explain before he stopped listening. Still, he wasn’t completely irrational, was he?

He was hurt, Namjoon was insecure. He was about to leave for two months, and you seemed farther away than ever.

But being hurt did not make Namjoon right.

If anything, refusing to hear you out then had turned his fear into something much uglier.

You didn't touch the rest of your food. Just sat there, angry at the situation the world has given you on your holiday off work. Namjoon wasn’t touching his food either, and both of you were too stubborn to be the one who leaves the table first.

But you got up anyway, because you couldn’t stand the sight of him any longer. So you went to your room without another word shared between you.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

If you thought the passive-aggressiveness had peaked during last night’s dinner, day four proved you wrong.

It started with nothing, or something small enough to be nothing. 

You left your shoes unorganised by the door, a habit you were never able to break since you were a kid. It used to make Namjoon laugh, but this morning, he tripped over them on his way out to the front yard.

“Could you not leave your shit everywhere?” he snapped as you walked past the door and towards the kitchen.

“They’re shoes, Namjoon, not a crime scene,” you said, matching your tone to the way he was talking to you.

“It’s the same thing it always was,” he shot back at you, “you take up space and expect everyone else to adjust around you.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” you said, confronting Namjoon.

Were you in the wrong? Yes, but It was one fucking pair of shoes and you did not deserve this much anger over one pair of shoes.

“Oh, you want to talk about adjusting?” you pointed at him, “I adjusted my entire life around your schedule for our whole relationship. I adjusted dinners, weekends, holidays, and my friends' weddings. I even missed a fucking job interview because you only had twelve hours before you had to leave again.”

“I adjusted too,” Namjoon barked.

“You didn’t adjust anything,” you rolled your eyes at him, “you kept doing exactly what you wanted. You chose your career every single time, then you thought feeling guilty about it afterwards made it count as compromise.”

“And don’t act like I forgot about Sana,” you continued, “you went to a bar with her behind my back. Just the two of you then I had to watch people gossip about the two of you everywhere while we were still in a relationship, Namjoon. And you do not understand how hard it was trying to survive a breakup with a fucking celebrity whose face is every fucking where.”

Your throat tightened, and out of anger you said, “I wish we never fucking met.”

“That’s not fair,” Namjoon said, the tone of his voice dropping which was somehow worse than him yelling, “I know I went with Sana out of spite and I was in the wrong, I admit that. But I didn’t know what was happening between you and that fucking co-worker. How was I supposed to know there was nothing going on? Can you really blame me for feeling insecure?”

“It wasn’t my place to tell you, Namjoon. All you had to do was trust me, the woman you claimed to love.”

You laughed bitterly before continuing, “You want to talk about fairness? Well, it wasn’t fair that I had to watch you choose work over me every single time.”

“You could have told me what you wanted from me,” Namjoon said.

“I shouldn’t have had to tell you,” your voice humiliatingly cracked, “that was the whole fucking point, Namjoon. If I had to ask you to try, then it stopped meaning anything.”

Namjoon didn't answer you again as he just looked at you before finally walking out into the garden, leaving the door open behind him like he couldn't be bothered to close it gently either.

You stood there a long time, staring at your own shoes, hating both of them a little for starting this fight. Hating yourself, really.

You thought about the night your relationship had actually ended. It wasn’t dramatic, which was always the part nobody believed when you talked about it later on. There was no shouting or any insults involved. There were only two exhausted people sitting on opposite ends of a couch, each waiting for the other to say the thing first, until you finally did.

You remembered saying; “I don't think this is working out.”

And Namjoon didn’t argue, even when some small part of you wished he did. But he didn’t fight for it at all. He just nodded, like you did something he already privately decided too, and all he said was, “Yeah. I think you're right.”

You remembered cursing him in your head when you realised he wasn’t going to fight for you. Because you wanted, more than anything, for him to be the one who tried and fought for the relationship first for once. And when he didn't, some old and stubborn part of you decided that meant he never would have, not even if you stayed.

Namjoon probably remembered it differently. He probably remembered the months before that, all the times he asked you to make time and all you replied was: “soon”. You did that out of spite, you wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine. And maybe in his version, he was the one who kept reaching out, and you were the one who kept pulling away first. When in reality, you only gave him the same energy he was giving you. 

It was funny how the two of you shared three years together, yet left with a different story, and both of you were convinced yours is the true one.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

That night, Namjoon could hear you were still awake through the wall, he could hear the repetitive sounds of short videos playing from your phone bleeding through the thin wood wall between your rooms. He knew you were doomscrolling, you’ve always done it when your mind was too loud for you to fall asleep.

For years, Namjoon told himself that whatever existed between you and him ended because it was supposed to, that too much had happened; too many things were badly said and too many moments were missed. But seeing you again after years, made something painfully clear.

Namjoon has never stopped loving you, and he has always loved you deeply.

He could still read you the way he did back then, even after you’ve spent years apart. And he remembered all of your habits and worse, some part of him still wanted to be the only person who noticed these things about you.

He imagined knocking on your door softly, asking if you were okay, and you letting him in and telling him to sit beside you. The way he imagined it to go almost made Namjoon get up to join you. He imagined taking your phone from your hand and hearing you laugh at something stupid he says, the way you used to when the world had not yet become so difficult between you.

But wanting you again felt cruel. 

How selfish would it be for Namjoon to suddenly realise how deeply he loved you only after losing the right to do anything about it?

So that night, Namjoon stayed where he was supposed to.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

The next morning felt different somehow, though neither of you could have pointed out exactly why it felt that way.

You woke to the smell of coffee, so you headed down to the kitchen and found a cup of coffee just sitting there on the kitchen counter with a note next to it that said: I made too much coffee, feel free to drink this one.

You sighed as you wrapped your hand around the warm cup of coffee. 

This had always been Namjoon’s version of an apology. He was never good at walking up to you and saying the words ‘I’m sorry’ outright. Instead, he would cook you something, bring home your favourite snack, or leave a coffee waiting for you as though food could say what he could not.

You found him on the veranda, staring out at the garden. He looked like he barely slept, and you probably looked no better. You sat next to him, just a short distance away, far enough not to pretend things were fine but close enough that it did not feel like you were strangers.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

"I called my sister this morning," you eventually said, breaking the silence, “she asked how the trip was going."

"Ah, what did you tell her?" Namjoon said, lifting his cup of coffee to his mouth.

"That it was complicated," you said, looking down at the coffee in your hands, "she laughed at me and said that's basically been the answer to every question about you since… you know."

"Fair," he replied quietly, "what did you use to tell people? About us, I mean, after we broke up?"

"That it just didn't work out," you said as you shrugged your shoulders, "nobody needs to hear the long version. Plus a toxic relationship doesn't really make a good story."

"I see. Well, me either," he admitted, "I always ended up saying we just had different visions.”

You turned to look at him, “Different visions?”

“It sounded better than the truth,” Namjoon said with his gaze fixed on the garden in front of him.

“And what was the truth?” you asked curiously and without malice.

You expected defensiveness, an excuse, or something about work, expectations, and pressure of being Kim Namjoon. You expected anything that would make it easier for him to avoid admitting what he had done. 

But Namjoon’s fingers tightened slightly around his cup before he finally said, “The truth was that I kept asking you to make room for my life when I barely made any room left for you in it.”

You went silent for a while, and couldn't really believe what you were hearing. “You could have said that back then,” you said, “you could have told me how you felt, you could have listened to me when I asked you to trust me, you could have tried more instead of making me feel like I was asking for too much.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know it then,” Namjoon replied quietly.

His voice was quiet enough that you almost missed it, so you just nodded while staring at the cup in your hands, “You didn’t make too much coffee, did you?” you asked.

He let out a small and humourless laugh, you just always know what he was thinking about, “No, I made exactly two cups.”

“Is this supposed to be your apology?” you asked, looking at him. 

“No,” he replied, turning his head to look at you, “it’s supposed to be me trying to figure out how to start one.”

“Well, you should start with the words itself,” you answered, smiling at him.

Namjoon looked back out at the garden, his shoulders dropping slightly. 

“I’m sorry,” he said after a long pause, “I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to earn space in my life. I’m also sorry for not trusting you enough and acting out of spite to hurt you.”

You didn’t say anything back at him, you just nodded and gave him a small smile.

The rest of the afternoon was neither warm nor cold. You both kept to yourselves, doing what you had come here to do in the first place. Namjoon stayed on the veranda with his laptop, while you wandered between the garden and your room with your book. Whenever your paths crossed, neither of you ignored the other completely; a glance, a small nod, or a quiet “sorry” when one of you had to pass.

And the air now felt less hostile than before.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

By evening, something in the air between the two of you had changed enough that when he set two glasses and a bottle of soju on the dining table, you didn't immediately think it was a bad idea. 

You almost skipped dinner that night and told yourself you would just eat something small in your room to avoid the whole exhausting event of sitting across from a man who apparently still has the ability to unravel you in under ten words.

But Namjoon was in the kitchen when you came out to get water, and saw him setting a bottle of soju and two glasses on the dining table.

"I'm not trying to start anything," Namjoon said, before you could even say a word, "I just.. I don't want to spend two more days pretending you're not here or pretending as if there is nothing for us to talk about."

You hesitated at first because it could go bad really quickly, but you knew even if it does, all you would have to do is stand up and walk away, "One drink," you finally said, “and that's it."

"Yes, one drink," Namjoon agreed.

You sat down across from him, as Namjoon poured the soju on the glass. When he filled yours up, you drank it way too fast, the way you always do when you are bracing for a conversation you didn't actually want to have.

"So," Namjoon said, refilling your glass without you needing to ask, "are we going to talk about it, or are we just going to keep circling it for two more days?"

"Talk about what exactly?" you answered, though you knew exactly what he meant.

"What happened to us,” Namjoon said, in a very non-chalant way that almost pissed you off.

You sighed as you looked out at the persimmon tree outside, "Fine, then you can talk first."

Namjoon went quiet for a moment, turning his glass in his hands, "I used to think you left because you stopped loving me," he said finally.

"I didn't stop loving you," the words came out before you could stop them, "that was never it. I just got tired of being the only one who kept trying to fix things. I was so tired, Joon."

"I was trying too," he quietly said.

"Were you? I don’t know. I mean yes, you always felt bad about it afterwards, you feel bad about missing things we’ve planned and tried to make it up in your own ways. But you know, your guilt was still not the same as your presence."

He flinched, just slightly, "That's harsh. You did the same too the last few months, you were around yet somehow never around.”

"Well, I was petty then, I wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine,” you replied.

He nodded slowly, looking down at the table, "Yeah I kinda knew that now. I thought it was not like you to act that way; to always have some excuse. It felt like every time I needed you to just be there, you had somewhere else to be."

"Well, I also had a life, Joon. I wasn't going to put it on hold indefinitely waiting for you to have room for me in yours," you said, giving him a small smile.

"I know," he said it so quietly you almost missed it, "I know that now."

"What has changed? How do you realise it now but not then?" you asked curiously. 

He thought about the question longer than you expected to.

"Time, I guess, and distance too. Sometimes you just start seeing things clearer once you're not standing so close to the person you hurt anymore," he said as he turned his glass slowly on the table, watching the liquid move around, "I spent a long time telling myself the story where I was the one who tried harder, it was just easier that way. Easier to be the guy who got left than the guy who let something special slip out of his life because he was too busy chasing something else. But now, I don't think you were as absent as I made you out to be in my head and I don't think I was as present and innocent as I told myself I was, either."

You thought about what he said for a moment, surprised by how open Namjoon was to you. This was the Namjoon you knew the first two years of the relationship, the only difference is that he did seem a lot more mature now. 

"I’m sorry about the co-worker thing. I really didn’t have the right to tell you what he was going through. I was the only person in his life who knew. He is now married to his husband and has moved out of the country. He’s happier and we’re best of friends now. I don’t think he would have made it out alive if I wasn’t there for him. I just couldn’t tell you then.." you said. 

“Yeah.. I should have trusted you more,” Namjoon said.

“And I should have convinced you harder,” you admitted.

“I’m sorry about the Sana thing, I never wanted to be that guy but I did it out of anger and spite.. I’m really embarrassed of myself to this day that it ever happened.”

“Yeah, I figured you did it just to rile me up. You were never the type to do something like that,” you said, before taking another sip of the glass of alcohol in your hands, "Do you regret it?" you asked, "us breaking up, I mean."

Namjoon didn’t have to think about the answer because he has thought about it ever since the two of you were broken up, "No," he said, before adding, "I don't think I do. I think we would've just kept hurting each other even more. I understand why it happened. I get it now, in a way I didn't back then."

"Yeah," you replied, agreeing with him, "me too."

Namjoon poured another round of drinks and the two of you drank slower this time as the conversation drifted somewhere different. The old memories neither of you meant to bring up, the trip you two had to LA, Tokyo, and Singapore, the time the two of got lost trying to find a bookstore that turned out to be permanently closed, the time where you tried teaching him how to drive only for him to hit someone’s bins, the stories of your families and friends that the two of you have missed, the new music you both listen to, and the ugly ceramic bowl with the crack near the rim that you still refused to throw away.

"You still have that bowl?" he asked, surprised.

"It's a favorite bowl of mine, do you think I would just throw it away?" you said with a smile on your face.

"It's an ugly bowl, and you know how I appreciate artists more than anyone you know, but that bowl is just something else that I cannot even defend," Namjoon said.

"It's an ugly bowl I like," you said, defending yourself and the artist.

The two of you laughed, and the conversation drifted from the ugly bowl to the artists and writers you had both been following lately. Namjoon told you about an exhibition he wanted to see but never found the time for, while you complained about a novelist whose latest book disappointed you after years of being your favourite. For a while, it was easy. 

"Can I ask you something?" he said after the two of you just finished debating whether J.K. Rowling would ever write anything that could surpass Harry Potter. "Did you see anyone else? After we broke up?"

“I went out with a few but only dated one guy for about eight months. He was.. " you paused, searching for the right word to describe your other ex, "easy. As in everything was just so easy with him."

“That sounds nice,” Namjoon said, though the slight tightening of his jaw betrayed the jealousy he was trying to hide.

"It was boring," you admitted, surprising yourself with how honest you were to him, "I hated how easy it was. I kept waiting for it to feel like something and it never did. I think I broke up with him because I just missed having something to fight for."

"I think about that sometimes," he said, "whether we would've been better off if it had been easy between us. But then maybe having it easy is just not what we were built for."

"Maybe not," you said, before adding, "maybe we were always going to be difficult. I just wish we had gone through the difficult times together instead of being difficult at each other."

"Yeah," he said quietly, agreeing with you, “me too."

By the fourth glass, or maybe the fifth, you really have lost count, the bitterness in the air shifted into something closer to the version of the two of you that used to sit and talk all night long.

"I missed this," he said, and then, drunk Namjoon, without him probably realising it, confessed, "I have missed you ever since."

You went very still in your seat. Namjoon didn't seem to notice what he just said. His eyes were already heavy, glass tipping slightly in his hand, and the soju and the exhaustion of four bitter days have finally caught up to him all at once.

"Joon," you said softly and when you looked over at him, you found him slumped slightly against his chair with his eyes closed. 

You sat there for a while, still with a glass in hand, looking at him in the dim light of the kitchen, "Me too," you whispered to no one, to Namjoon who passed out in front of you, "Me too, Joon."

You got a blanket from his room and draped it over him where he was sitting and sleeping, careful not to wake him up.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

Namjoon woke up the next day in the kitchen with a headache and a blanket he didn't remember getting, and the dread of a man who knew he said something the night before but couldn’t fully remember what. Namjoon got off the chair, folded the blanket, and went looking for you.

You weren’t in the kitchen, and the door to your room was open with your bed already made. He panicked at first, wondering if you had left. But he continued searching for you and he finally found you in the backyard under the persimmon tree, sitting on a stool, with a book open in your lap. 

Namjoon walked over to you with his hands in his pockets, "Good choice of book," he said, nodding at the book.

You looked up at him and gave him a small smile before saying, "Thank you."

Namjoon chuckled and let the silence sit for a second before he said, "I'll be checking out early at 4 AM tomorrow."

"I’ll be checking out tomorrow as well," you said looking at him.

"Alright," he nodded, “it's been nice seeing you, ____."

You laughed at him before saying, "Crazy how one night could change the first four days huh? But yes, it’s been nice seeing you too, Joonie.”

Namjoon reached his hand out before he could think better of it and ruffled your hair, the way he used to and you let him.

Then Namjoon walked back towards the hanok, and you watched him go until the sliding door clicked shut behind him.

You just sat there a while longer under the tree, some fruit were starting to drop around you, one by one, and you could hear the soft thuds against the ground. 

You weren’t sad, because you knew the past few days had only been an accidental closure for the two of you.

And it was never meant to be anything more than that.

♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

Three Months Later - Seoul International Airport, 11:47 AM

South Korea was not small enough for this to not be fate. 

A country with millions of people, and somehow it kept finding ways to place the one person you had tried hardest to forget directly in front of you. 

You had stopped thinking about Andong. At least, that was what you kept telling yourself. Six bitter days and one drunken confession had not undone everything that happened between the two of you. But they had changed something; how you see Namjoon, and how he sees you.

You saw him before he noticed you were there.

Namjoon was standing by the magazine rack, with sunglasses pushed up into his hair, flipping through something he clearly wasn't reading. He looked good and you hated that you noticed. 

Just as you considered turning away, Namjoon looked up from the magazine, and your eyes met. The moment Namjoon saw you, everything in him went still as if time had stopped.

After that night where he drank soju with you, he told himself that Andong had given both of you what you needed: an ending that did not involve slammed doors, unread messages, or either of you pretending not to care. The stay in Andong gave the two of you closure and that was what it had been. 

Namjoon left at four in the morning exactly as he said he would. What you didn’t know was that he had stood outside your door for longer than he cared to admit, his hand hovering near the wooden door, before deciding against knocking. You both already said what needed to be said and anything more than that would have been selfish of him.

So Namjoon left.

But, you didn’t know that Namjoon had convinced himself that if it was meant to be, if the universe really wanted the two of you to try again, then Namjoon will be seeing you again. 

And now you were there.

Standing right in front of him with your handbag over one shoulder and your other hand on the handle of your carry-on luggage, looking just as startled as he felt.

For one second, Namjoon wondered whether he had imagined you. Whether the lack of sleep, the long flights, and the stupid hope he carried with him since Andong had finally caught up with him.

Then you shifted on your feet, your fingers tightening around the strap of your bag the way they always did when you were nervous and did not know what to say, only then Namjoon realised you were real. 

Namjoon put the magazine back on the rack, though he had no idea which rack it belonged to. The airport was still moving around the two of you, you could hear the suitcases rolling over the floor, the announcements over the speakers, and people rushing into their gates, but it all sounded far away to the both of you.

Namjoon spent three months telling himself that, if he ever saw you again, he would not waste it. 

So he stepped away from the magazine rack and walked closer to where you were standing.

“Hi,” Namjoon greeted, his dimples appearing as he smiled fondly at you.

You gave him a small smile back before answering, “Hi.”

"You look good," he said.

"So do you," you answered, letting out a small laugh.

“Are you leaving somewhere?” Namjoon asked, still smiling at you.

“Yeah, I have a flight in..” you checked your phone to see the time before saying, “in about an hour.”

Namjoon nodded, his eyes dropping briefly to the carry-on luggage you had with you before staring back into your eyes, “Then I guess I caught you at the right time,” he said.

You frowned slightly at him, not understanding what he meant, “The right time for what exactly?”

“For coffee,” he said, “before your flight.”

You glanced at the departure board, then back at him, “One coffee,” you said, saying yes to his invitation, “that’s all I have time for.”

The airport cafe was crowded and loud, which didn’t influence how easily the conversation flowed. You talked about the ordinary things at first; work, travel, mutual friends, the books you had both been reading. Namjoon told you about a museum exhibition he was preparing for, and you complained about a project at work that had been taking up too much of your time.

It was strange how natural it still felt. And by the time your boarding call appeared on the screen, both coffees had gone cold.

Namjoon walked with you towards your gate, neither of you mentioning how none of really wanted the conversation to end.

"Text me when you land," he said.

You looked at him, all confused before saying, "You don't have my number anymore."

"Well, I could get it."

"You could," you said, smiling as you pulled out your phone and giving him your phone number.

And then, just like that, the two of you had to part ways. You walked towards security while Namjoon walked towards his gate, glancing back to each other more than either of you would admit.

You were two people who once tried to be everything to each other, failed and even hated each other for it.

But somehow, years later, after spending an accidental few days together in Andong, you two found something worth sitting down and trying for.