zen!

Upon stepping outside, the warmth of the afternoon was softened by the impeccable shade of the main porch. The table, dressed in linen and porcelain beneath the pergola, already gathered the three men of the family, who interrupted their conversation the moment the soft clink of the china announced the arrival of the women.

Jungwon did not wait for the servants to step forward. His gaze found you instantly among the group, cut with that natural elegance he had commanded since childhood, dressed in the measured comfort of high society. He rose with a fluid motion and pulled out the chair beside his own, extending a hand toward you in an open invitation to take the place reserved at his side.

“At least I can rest easy knowing my daughter is in the hands of a true gentleman, someone who will know how to take care of her as she deserves,” your father commented, directing a satisfied smile at Mr. Yang as he observed the scene from the opposite end of the table.

Jungwon did not lose his composure for even a fraction of a second. He kept his attention firmly on you, yet answered toward Mr. Kwon with that nuance of respectful charisma he handled to perfection, charming the elders without ever sounding arrogant.

“Of that you need not have the slightest doubt. I will make certain to treat your daughter as the exceptional woman she is, today and always,” he assured them in a serene voice with a thoroughly mature inflection.

While he spoke those words with impeccable social sobriety, you began settling into the chair. Then he leaned in to adjust it with soft precision, and without rushing, took the cloth napkin, unfolded it, and placed it carefully over your lap. His fingers brushed the fabric of your dress before he took your hand with delicacy, raising it to the height of his face to press a firm, lingering kiss upon your knuckles.

“I missed you all morning,” he whispered very close to your ear, in a tone so low and rough that the rest of the table could barely perceive the movement of his lips.

An instant warmth rose up your neck to your cheeks, forcing you to offer a discreet smile. Though Jungwon’s constant attention had never been foreign to you—since the complicity you shared had been taking shape long before their surnames signed an official engagement, the transition to being betrothed had given a different weight to every interaction. You knew well that this attentive, gentlemanly facade that dazzled both sets of parents was nothing more than the deceptive cover of a book whose more intense, and frankly less proper, chapters were read only by the two of you when no intrusive gazes were present.

In any case, lunch unfolded pleasantly, amid the subtle clink of cutlery against porcelain and a fluid conversation, punctuated by the complacent laughter of both families. Preparations for the engagement occupied the center of the table, until your mother brought up the evening’s gathering: a prenuptial reception that the Yang family would host at the residence to officially present the union before their closest circle. Mr. Yang was quick to nod with satisfaction, underscoring the importance of formally introducing the two of you to strategic partners and investors whose influence, sooner or later, would be at the disposal of both of you as future heirs.

“Do you have your suit ready for tonight? I don’t want to see you rushing at the last minute, Yang Jungwon,” his mother interjected, turning an inquisitive look toward him.

Jungwon finished savoring a final cut of his juicy steak, chewed with deliberation, then set his utensils on the plate before answering with the impeccable composure that characterized him.

“I’ve been overseeing a couple of matters with Father and Mr. Kwon since this morning, so I forgot to stop by the tailor’s. But I’ll go pick it up in a moment, there won’t be any delay, I promise,” he admitted, offering his mother a reassuring smile, and then turned in your direction.

“I can go with you if you’d like,” you offered at once, seeking his gaze naturally. Jungwon watched you for a second, and a spark of mischief crossed his dark eyes before he gently shook his head.

“The idea tempts me, because nothing is better than your company, love. But I’d rather build anticipation,” he replied, keeping a tone steeped in affection as genuine as it was calculated. “I want to surprise you tonight, just as I know you’re going to leave me breathless when I see you in whatever you’ve chosen.”

Behind the courtesy of his words, the nuance in his voice transmitted a clear and implicit message: “It isn’t wise for us to be alone just yet.” You knew perfectly well what he meant; proximity without witnesses would only complicate the restraint both of you were trying to maintain, and which already hurt so much. You smiled with complicity and slid your hand across the table to brush against his.

“All right, I’ll wait. Though I can already imagine how handsome you’ll look, babe,” you accepted with simulated docility, and he curved his lips into a faint smile. A gesture of discreet approval.

Taking advantage of the fold of the tablecloth that hid the lower half of the table, he slid his other hand beneath it. Without any of those present suspecting a thing, his fingers pressed firmly against your thigh, ascending dangerously close to that place which family etiquette had forbidden him to desire before the marriage certificate was signed. The contrast between the coldness of protocol and the heat of his grip made you hold your breath for an instant. In the eyes of your parents and his, it was nothing more than a tender exchange between two young people in love and destined to be together.

Ah… if only someone knew…

But anyway. The afternoon dissolved into a whirlwind of impeccably coordinated activity. The residence staff came and went adjusting the floral arrangements, verifying the garden lighting, and polishing every corner of the mansion. In the room that had been assigned to you (yes, they had granted you an individual space, arranged under the strict premise of avoiding “temptations” prior to the wedding), the styling team hired by your mother-in-law put the final touches on your hair and makeup.

When at last you were alone, you studied yourself in the mirror. The pearl-white satin dress fell with exquisite fluidity over your figure, secured at the neck and leaving exposed a pronounced back neckline that supplied the exact dose of elegance and sensuality. It was not a revealing design, yet you were absolutely certain it would steal every gaze… and, above all, shatter Jungwon’s self-control. You finished the look by fastening your heels and applying to your wrists and neck a few drops of the perfume he had given you the night they became engaged.

With the scent still fresh on your skin, you stepped into the hallway and walked directly toward your fiancé’s room.

Inside the chamber, the silence was broken only by the soft tick of the watch Jungwon was finishing adjusting on his left wrist. In front of the full-length mirror, his figure was far from the polish he displayed before the adults: the white shirt remained unbuttoned, leaving visible the firm, defined contour of his chest and abdomen; the black silk tie hung untied over his shoulders, and the dark slacks rested unfastened at the hips, hinting at the elastic of his boxers and the descending line of his member beneath the fabric.

A couple of soft knocks on the wood broke his concentration.

“Come in, it’s open,” he indicated without fully turning, assuming it was one of the household attendants. Yet when your figure reflected in the glass, the air caught abruptly in his throat. He went completely still.

The sight of you crossing the threshold, wrapped in the pearly fall of satin that molded your waist and exposed the clean curve of your shoulders, erased at once any executive or familial thought he might have had. You looked simply divine, like a vision conceived solely to disarm him.

And as if that were not enough, he noticed at once the faint blush that tinged your cheeks upon finding him half-dressed, and that reaction of yours was the final trigger. Forgetting the tie, the watch, and any trace of the prudence he had so firmly preached during lunch, he turned completely and closed the distance between you with firm, inevitable steps.

“My God…” he murmured in a husky voice, stopping mere centimeters from you while his eyes traveled over every detail of your face before descending along the neckline of the dress as you turned to show him every detail. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you look? Are you aware that you’re going to drive me insane before the night even begins?”

A soft laugh rose from your throat, a low and melodious sound that resonated in the intimacy of the room with open coquetry, without the slightest trace of regret.

“Oh, believe me, I know perfectly well. I’m not unaware of my own actions and decisions,” you answered with a challenging nuance in your voice, finishing the turn. Then you closed the remaining gap until you stood a breath from his chest.

Your gaze descended without any modesty, traveling slowly over the anatomy you knew by heart: the toned firmness of his torso, the subtle relief of his pectorals, and the defined line of his abdomen that dipped toward his hips, partially hidden by the edge of his underwear and the unbuttoned waistband of his trousers. Nor did you overlook the evident reaction of his body; the accumulated tension beneath the fabric of his pants traced a firm silhouette that left nothing to the imagination.

Jungwon followed the direction of your eyes, and a dark smile, steeped in self-satisfaction, curved his lips.

“If you keep devouring me with your eyes like that, I swear I’m going to forget there’s a hall full of people waiting downstairs for us to pose as the saintly couple everyone thinks we are,” he warned in a voice rough with need. Yet his actions immediately contradicted the sense of his words.

His hand circled your waist with possessive firmness and pulled you against him without ceremony, pressing your body to his so that you could feel with total clarity the devastating effect your mere presence had on him. He slid his other hand to your back, cupping his palm over the bare skin exposed by the dress’s neckline. The smoothness beneath his fingers ignited a violent impulse in his mind: the almost uncontrollable temptation to turn you, pin you against the mattress, and strip away the dress until you were naked and entirely at his mercy, collecting with interest everything he had spent hours imagining doing to you.

The atmosphere between the two of you grew so dense that the air seemed to weigh in the lungs, an electric tension that increased with every shared breath.

“I can’t help it, my love. Truly… I can’t help looking at you and wanting you this way,” you murmured almost against his lips, letting your warm breath brush him, while you brought your left hand to the nape of his neck. That was the drop that overflowed the glass.

Jungwon eliminated any remaining space and tilted his face to capture your mouth in a kiss that bore not the slightest relation to the chaste, reserved propriety both of you displayed before the public eye. It was a hungry, wet, and hot encounter, where tongues sought each other with fierce urgency, fed by the restrained longing of the day and the frustrating weight of family restrictions.

Still wrapped in the frantic rhythm of the kiss, Jungwon took your right hand and guided it firmly downward, pressing your palm directly over the rigid prominence marked in his boxers so that you would feel the magnitude of his hardness. Immediately afterward, his own hand descended to the curve of your backside, molding your cheeks over the dress with a possessive squeeze that lifted you slightly against his hip while his lips left yours to descend blindly, scattering burning kisses and sucking at the sensitive skin of your neck.

A broken moan escaped your lips, murmuring Jungwon’s name in a visceral reaction to the searing brush of his mouth and the firm contact of his hands on your body. He interrupted the path along your neck to ascend the line of your jaw, depositing short, heat-laden kisses before stopping millimeters from your mouth.

“You’re not helping me at all to maintain the posture of a gentleman and respectful fiancé…” he murmured in a rough voice, his agitated breathing striking your skin. “You really shouldn’t have come in like this, sweetheart.”

You answered him with a smile as sensual as it was defiant. Far from stopping, you continued rubbing your open palm over the bulge in his boxers, exerting measured pressure on the rigid silhouette of his cock, which molded itself to your hand, savoring the almost direct stimulation you were giving him. A soft gasp escaped him at your boldness.

Without breaking the fluidity of the moment, he turned you firmly, leaving you with your back to his torso. He inclined his face to place a trail of deep kisses on the exposed skin of your spine, while both his hands advanced forward to knead your breasts over the satin. Instantly he noticed the absence of a bra when the fine fabric could not hide the way your nipples hardened under his touch. With an instinctive movement, he pressed his hips against your ass, rubbing rhythmically against you so that you would feel the weight and hardness of his member with greater insistence.

The acceleration of their breathing marked a point of no return. You knew that a few more seconds in that position would ruin any possibility of maintaining composure. So, from one second to the next, you gently freed yourself from his hold, turned around, and put a couple of steps between you, bringing your fingers to your lips to slow the pace of the scene.

“We have to calm down now, Wonie,” you sighed, trying to regulate your own breathing. “If we keep going at this rate, the last thing we’ll do is go down to the reception. Besides… at any moment someone could come looking for us.”

Jungwon let out a low growl of frustration, but conceded the point reluctantly. He ran a hand over his face and proceeded to adjust his underwear and zip up his trousers, making a conscious effort to ignore the painful erection that still gripped his groin. He tucked the tails of his shirt into the waistband, buttoned the garment with a certain haste, and fastened the leather belt over his waist.

While he dressed, you took the opportunity to smooth the invisible wrinkles from your dress and carefully check your reflection in the mirror, making certain the lipstick had not smudged after the whirlwind of kisses. Once your appearance was verified, you approached him. Without a word, you stretched out your hands to adjust the collar of his shirt and took the ends of the silk tie to tie the knot with skill. Jungwon did not waste the closeness; he circled your waist with one arm, holding you pressed to his body while he watched the concentrated movement of your fingers.

A couple of dry knocks on the wood interrupted the silence, and immediately the door opened. Jungwon’s mother crossed the threshold, stopping when she saw the image of the two of you in the center of the room. Something that, at first glance and without prior context, appeared entirely innocent.

“But what a marvel… You both look impeccable. Definitely, my dear son, you already have an exceptional wife at your side,” she commented with a moved smile, clasping her hands.

Jungwon did not look away from your eyes for even a second. He kept his arm firm around your waist and offered his mother a measured reply, steeped in a double meaning that only you could decipher.

“I agree, Mother. I am an extremely fortunate man,” he answered with charisma, though the curve of his lips and the inquisitive gleam in his gaze carried an openly suggestive nuance.

Mrs. Yang advanced a couple more steps into the room and took you delicately by the arm, inviting you to separate from him. “Well, dear, since you’re already ready, it would be ideal if you come downstairs with me so I can introduce you to some of the family’s partners and friends who are arriving.”

You glanced sideways at Jungwon and then at your mother-in-law, searching for a diplomatic excuse to gain more time at his side. “Actually… I would like to go down with Jungwon; I would feel much more comfortable. Besides, I was only helping him finish adjusting his suit,” you explained in a sweet tone, offering your best smile and praying she would swallow the excuse.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Yang clicked her tongue lightly and shook her head in a dismissive yet affectionate gesture.

“He can finish on his own, dear. He’s not a little boy. Come, let’s not keep the guests waiting.” Without giving room for further objections or excuses, she guided you toward the hallway, leaving Jungwon alone in the middle of the spacious room.

Silence settled once more in the place. Jungwon remained motionless, watching the open door through which you had left, before shifting his gaze to the full-length mirror. The prominent and evident bulge beneath his trousers was still exactly there, intact and unrelenting. He let out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair to clear the frustration.

Definitely, that was something he would have to take care of by his own means before daring to go downstairs.

On the other hand…

The ground floor of the enormous Yang property had been transformed into the epicenter of a majestic event, packed with guests distributed almost everywhere. Circular tables with elegantly upholstered chairs filled the indoor space, all wrapped in an impeccable décor that fused good taste with the ostentation characteristic of their class. Consequently, the glass doors leading to the rear garden remained wide open, revealing how the exterior housed even more groups of attendees and floral arrangements that decorated the evening under the light of the garlands.

It was precisely in that outdoor area that Mrs. Yang decided to take you as if you were her most prized trophy, dragging you from one group to another and introducing you to an endless list of people. From distant relatives you had never seen in your life, through influential business partners of her husband, to old friends from high society.

At some point during that social parade, the pain in your feet began to become unbearable because of the heels. On the verge of exhaustion, you discreetly turned toward where your parents were standing, casting them a silent and urgent look that pleaded for help. However, they merely returned rehearsed expressions of encouragement and support, urging you with subtle gestures to keep smiling and interacting as protocol dictated. Sighing imperceptibly, you rolled your eyes the moment they turned their backs and, with all the diplomacy you could muster, briefly excused yourself from your mother-in-law and her circle of friends to take a breath.

Intending to rest, you headed toward the main table that had been designated exclusively for Jungwon and you. Yet the moment you took your seat and unfolded a decorative fan resting on the tablecloth to cool your face, the figure of your fiancé finally appeared among the crowd. In that same instant, his father’s voice resonated through the space, calling you to join Jungwon once more at the center of the scene and proceed with the long-awaited official presentation before everyone present.

Fulfilling the expectations of his lineage, Jungwon delivered a brief yet masterfully rehearsed introductory speech. He spoke with the ease and composure of someone who had spent his entire life preparing to lead, presenting himself as the legitimate heir of the Yang family and assuring, with magnetic charisma, that he would be as relentless and competent in the world of business as he would be in his romantic commitment.

Immediately afterward, he yielded the floor to you with an elegant gesture; your intervention was far more concise, presenting yourself with firmness and grace as the heir of the Kwon family, limiting your words to what was strictly necessary without losing a single ounce of sophistication.

Once the formality concluded, the two of you were finally able to return to your table. Before enjoying the seats, you first had to deal with the insistence of a professional photographer who kept demanding various shots and angles to immortalize the event, and afterward with the constant procession of guests who approached to congratulate you and exchange a few words. Tolerating the bustle surrounding you was genuinely exhausting, though at least the dinner was exquisite and you enjoyed the privilege of being the sole occupants of your table. Thanks to that, Jungwon took advantage of the intimacy of the tablecloth to rest one of his hands on your thigh, offering you silent support throughout the evening.

“Why did you take so long to come downstairs?” you reproached him in a low voice, leaning slightly toward him while maintaining a smile for the rest of the room. “If you’d delayed five more minutes, I swear your mother would have forced me to shake hands with the president himself, if he’s around here somewhere.”

An authentic, low, and raspy laugh escaped Jungwon’s lips at your complaint. He found it frankly amusing to hear you exaggerate the situation, though deep down he knew you weren’t far from the truth, considering how extremely sociable and calculating his mother could become at events of this kind.

“I’m truly sorry for the delay, baby,” he replied, drawing close enough for his breath to caress your ear. “Believe me, I wanted to be down here right away. However, I found myself obliged to take a good moment alone to solve the ‘little problem’ you caused and left unresolved inside my pants.”

The surprise disarmed you for an instant, your eyes widening at his boldness before a stifled giggle escaped you. “You’re a complete pervert, Wonie~” you whispered, shaking your head, still smiling in amusement.

“I’m the pervert?” he countered immediately, arching an eyebrow with malice. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were the one who walked into my room and didn’t show a single drop of shame while looking me over, much less when you touched my cock while we were kissing. You were devouring me, and now here you are, sitting so properly, pretending to be a chaste and decent lady…

He made a tactical pause, sliding his fingers a little higher up your leg before delivering the final blow.

“When in reality, you’re the same girl who just a couple of nights ago was moaning my name at the top of your lungs, begging me to give it to you harder while I buried myself to the hilt and pulled your hair. Not to mention how afterward you were riding me as if your life depended on it.”

The impact of his words, summoning such raw and heated images in the middle of a reception like this, flushed your cheeks scarlet in a second. Because inevitably, the familiar sensations awakened in your body, and the blood rushed through you. To make matters worse, your panties were already a mess beneath the dress, soaked since the moment you had been in his room, and only growing unbearably sticky against your most intimate place.

Completely flushed, you reacted by giving him a discreet but firm little smack on the arm in an attempt to silence him. The sudden movement did not go unnoticed, immediately capturing the attention of some nearby guests who, far from suspecting the explicit nature of the conversation, merely interpreted the touch as a charming and complicit gesture, typical of two young fiancés hopelessly in love.

As the evening progressed, glasses of champagne continued circulating amid refined conversations and a brief moment on the dance floor where the two of you shared a measured dance. However, the constant proximity and the restriction imposed by the watchful gazes of those present only fueled a voracious hunger, making restraint a practically impossible task.

Seizing a moment of collective distraction, Jungwon slipped through the crowd with the ease of someone who knew every corner of his home, staying clear of fixed stares. Moments later, he locked eyes with you and gave you a subtle gesture, a silent cue only you were equipped to interpret. Without thinking twice, you stood and made your way among the guests, sweetly excusing yourself with the pretext of heading to the powder room to retouch your makeup.

Following the invisible trail he had marked for you, you entered one of the mansion’s secondary hallways. Jungwon emerged from the shadow of a column and, with a firm nod of his head, indicated a door concealed in the wall paneling, an access clearly not intended for ordinary visitor traffic. You crossed the threshold and immediately faced him with curiosity.

“What is this place?” you asked in a whisper, observing the narrow, sober corridor.

“A private passageway,” Jungwon answered, offering a calm smile as he took your hand firmly to guide you through the dimness. “It connects the ground floor directly to the upper wing.”

You climbed a series of hidden stairs with agility until you reached another small door at the end of the stretch. When he pushed it open and stepped forward, the surprise left you momentarily speechless: you had just emerged, nothing more and nothing less, into the very same individual room your mother-in-law had assigned you for the stay.

“I never would have imagined this room had an access like this…” you admitted, looking around with disbelief. Jungwon closed the hidden panel behind him and gave you a sly smile, charged with charming self-assurance.

“It was my ace up the sleeve, my love,” he confessed, closing the distance toward you. “I planned to sneak in through here later, once the party was over and my parents were deeply asleep. That way we could make love all night long without worrying about anyone’s restrictions or schedules.”

He turned for a second to head toward the main entrance of the bedroom, sliding the bronze latch with a dry, definitive click that sealed the isolation of the place.

“But… I’m afraid I find myself in absolute need of advancing the plan. Because frankly, I can’t stand even one more second,” he continued, turning back to you with eyes darkened by desire.

Before you could articulate a response or attempt a joke, Jungwon took you by the waist and pulled you abruptly against his torso, capturing your lips in a kiss infinitely more hungry and voracious than the previous one. The impact of their bodies made the urgency contained for hours detonate without remedy.

Your hands, already restless and desperate to feel the heat of his skin, immediately sought the buttons of his shirt to undo them in haste, while his hands rose to the nape of your neck to skillfully undo the fastening that held the dress at your throat.

The satin tie gave way and the upper part of the dress fell, leaving the bare skin of your chest at the mercy of Jungwon’s hands. He did not waste a second in kneading your breasts with hungry urgency, squeezing them, brushing the nipples with his fingertips until they hardened against his palm. The contact tore a muffled sigh from you that was lost against his neck when you tilted your head to bury your lips in his skin, scattering hot, wet kisses over his accelerated pulse. Your fingers finished freeing the last buttons of his shirt, pushing it downward to strip his torso completely bare.

He interrupted the contact with your breasts only long enough to shed the shirt and toss it aside. Without the barrier of fabric, he wrapped both arms around your back and pressed you firmly against his naked torso. You felt the direct heat of his skin, the firmness of his muscles tensed by excitement and, lower down, the evident hardness of his erection brushing you through the cloth. You circled his neck with your arms, continuing the trail of kisses along his jaw and neck, while his hands descended over your figure. He guided the fabric of the dress over your hips with deliberate slowness, caressing the curve of your ass as he went, until the garment finally fell to your feet, leaving you only in a pair of white lace panties.

Without breaking the current of electricity that enveloped them, he gripped your backside firmly, squeezing the flesh between his fingers, and lifted you into the air to carry you straight to the wide bed. He laid you on the mattress and positioned himself over you, touching your face with unhurried caresses while his kisses descended again toward your mouth, deeper, more demanding, his tongue brushing yours with promise.

“We have to be quick, love. It won’t be long before they notice neither of us is in the hall and start looking for us,” he murmured against your lips, his breathing ragged yet maintaining that intense, possessive gaze. Until he made a brief pause, leaning in to delicately bite the lobe of your ear before whispering into it, his voice hoarse with desire : “That said… I guarantee I’ll fuck you again later, when we no longer have commitments to fulfill or authority figures prowling the house. I won’t have to hold back then. Though I don’t plan on holding back right now either.”

A playful smile curved your lips at his warning.

“At least the promise of a second round leaves me more at ease. One is never enough,” you answered with sarcasm, running your hands over his abdomen without any modesty. And taking advantage of that closeness, you descended toward the waistband of his slacks, unbuckling the leather belt and freeing the main button.

You lowered the zipper with deliberate slowness, feeling the heat and hardness of his cock through the fabric, before beginning to slide his trousers down his hips. Yang, noticing the haste with which you were trying to undress him, let out a low chuckle and gently caught your wrists to move your hands aside.

“Don’t get desperate, beautiful lady~” he teased, winking at you with malice, though the tension in his jaw betrayed how much it cost him to restrain himself.

You gave him a playful little smack on the chest in response, rolling your eyes with amused indignation. “You’re the one who just told me we had to hurry, idiot,” you retorted, consternated, and poked him in the side with your finger.

Jungwon released a low laugh and rose so he could quickly remove his shoes. And just like that, without wasting more time, he pulled off his trousers and boxers in a single motion, discarding the last garment. He stood completely naked before your eyes: the imposing figure, the defined muscles, and his thick, hard cock, erect against his flat stomach, reaffirming without reserve the desire he felt for you. Once free of restraints, he positioned himself again on the bed, looming over your body, the tip of his member brushing the fabric of your underwear while his eyes traveled over every centimeter of you, ready to take what was his.

From one second to the next, he leaned over the mattress, shifting his body downward until he settled firmly between your open legs. With a precise movement, he hooked a finger in the edge of your lace panties and shifted them aside, exposing your wet, glistening pussy, shiny with arousal. The cool air brushed your most sensitive skin for an instant before the heat of his gaze replaced it. He let out a low growl, a mixture of possessiveness and pure delight at contemplating how your swollen, slick folds betrayed how much you wanted him and how ready you were.

Without hesitating a second, he pressed his lips against your mound in a burning, open-mouthed kiss. Immediately afterward, he unfurled his tongue to trace a warm, firm, slow stripe from your entrance to your clit, carefully parting your folds. The taste of your arousal coated his tongue as he enclosed that small bundle of nerves between his lips and sucked it with skill, dragging his tongue in precise circles. The direct stimulation made your body react instantly; you moaned his name aloud, your back arching, and you tangled your fingers in his hair, instinctively lifting your hips off the mattress in search of more friction, more pressure, more of that hot tongue that was covering you entirely.

However, Jungwon interrupted the oral torture and rose onto his knees. The sheen of your wetness still glistened on his lips. He took his erect member in one hand, pumping it just a couple of times; the thick vein pulsed under his fingers and the tip already shone with a thread of precum. He used the hot, slick head to give you a couple of playful taps against your clit, rubbing it up and down, before aligning himself at your entrance. Without too many contemplations or detours, he thrust his hips forward and sank into you completely in a single deep stroke. You felt how he opened you, how every centimeter of his thick, hard cock slid pushing against your wet walls until he was fully buried, the bone of his pelvis colliding against yours.

A coordinated gasp escaped both of you. The heat of his body filling you, the intense stretch, the pulse of his length inside you. Without wasting time, he gripped your legs and raised them until they rested on his broad shoulders, achieving an angle that allowed him to penetrate you even deeper. He began thrusting without the slightest hint of gentleness; driven by need and the explicit intention of making you lose control, he drove into your body with force and constant rhythm. Every thrust was deep, wet; the obscene sound of skin against skin and of his cock entering and leaving your soaked pussy filled the room. He sought to make you completely drop the composed young-lady façade you had worn all afternoon. The intensity of his movements made your breasts bounce with every thrust, the hardened nipples trembling, a sight that finished clouding his judgment.

Even with your legs up, you moved your hands and lowered them into the gap between your thighs until you reached his defined abdomen and pelvis, caressing the tense, hot skin that collided against yours, feeling how the muscles contracted with every thrust. Jungwon lowered his gaze to your fingers and a malicious, fascinated smile curved his face.

“It’s obvious you can’t keep your hands off me, is it?” he teased in a ragged voice, without slowing the strokes in the slightest. Every thrust pushed you a little farther into the mattress, the head of his cock brushing that sensitive spot inside you that made you tremble.

He noticed at once how your eyes drifted, fascinated, toward your feet resting on his shoulders and then descended over the relief of his torso, admiring the way his pectorals defined themselves more sharply from that angle, the skin glistening with sweat, the muscles tensing.

“And apparently… Neither can your eyes. You’re a complete pervert, my love, admit it,” he added with smugness.

“Shut up… you… you’re no better than I am. You were the one who corrupted me,” you managed to articulate between broken moans, deliberately tightening your walls around him, feeling how he pulsed harder inside you.

Your beloved fiancé let out a low, raspy laugh, throwing his head back for a second before delivering a particularly hard and deep thrust that tore a sharp moan from you. He filled you completely, the impact making your clit rub against the base of his cock, forcing you to dig your nails into his abdomen in an attempt to anchor yourself to the pleasure that washed through you in waves.

In response to your grip, he firmly took both of your wrists and guided your hands upward, pressing your palms directly against the hot, sweaty skin of his chest. You felt the accelerated heartbeat under your fingers, the hard muscles against your hands.

“In that case… touch whatever you want, gorgeous,” he ordered in a demanding tone, locking his dark eyes on yours while maintaining the relentless rhythm of his hips. Every thrust was deeper, wetter, the sound of your bodies joining growing more and more obscene. “Put your hands wherever you please, because for this I’m yours… I’m your man and very soon your husband.”

He leaned his torso closer to your ear, letting his breath scorch against your neck while he continued fucking you hard, the weight of his body pressing you into the mattress, his cock striking that precise point over and over.

“Get used to it, Mrs. Yang, because this is exactly how I’m going to have you almost every day once we move in together. Just you and me. I plan to take you on every damn surface of the house we’re going to share.”

Following his words, he tilted his face to place kisses on each of your ankles before sliding his hands along the inner sides of your legs, his fingers advancing over the sensitive, trembling skin. He spread your thighs firmly, securing his grip as he rose onto the bed, his dark gaze fixed between your legs.

“Come for me, my love,” he demanded in a rough, raspy voice dominated by desire. “I can feel how tight and hot you are, how you squeeze me every time I push in… I know perfectly well how close you are to falling apart.”

In an instant, he sat back on his heels and shifted your legs from his shoulders to the height of his forearms, opening you even wider to his gaze. With a firm tug, he lifted your hips above the mattress, leaving only your shoulder blades resting against the sheet. The change in angle made his thick, slick cock brush an exact, deep point inside you. The head pressed against that sensitive place with every millimeter, tearing a sharp moan of pure pleasure from your throat.

“Don’t stop… It feels so good like this, Wonie… I’m so close,” you pleaded with broken breathing, while at the same time holding your breasts in your hands, playing with them.

Responding to your plea, Jungwon brought one of his hands to the place where their bodies joined. He felt the soaked heat of your pussy, the lips that parted around his cock. With the pad of his thumb he began pressing and rubbing your swollen clit in a rapid, precise rhythm, sliding his finger in firm circles, determined to give you the orgasm first. His own ragged breathing and the tension in his thighs betrayed that he wouldn’t last much longer either; the base of his cock pulsed inside you, bathed in your fluids.

That double stimulation was the final trigger. You moaned his name at the top of your lungs as the climax hit you fully. Your interior contracted furiously around his cock, the walls squeezing him in rhythmic waves, milking him, sucking him. A warm rush of your arousal soaked the base of his cock and slid down your thighs. Your entire body began to tremble under Jungwon’s grip; your legs turned to jelly, the muscles shaking uncontrollably while the spasms of orgasm swept through you from head to toe.

Yet he was not willing to give you even a second of respite. He pulled out of you abruptly with an obscene sound, then stepped down from the bed, standing at the edge of the mattress. Taking you by the ankles, he pulled you forward until you were at the very limit of the bed, your ass almost hanging off. He immediately leaned over your face to capture your lips in a desperate, hungry kiss, plunging his tongue into your mouth to drink the sighs that still escaped your chest, the salty taste of your skin mixing with his.

“I’m not finished with you yet, Mrs. Yang,” he murmured, brushing your cheek as he pulled away, his voice hoarse.

Without waiting for a response, he took you by the waist and flipped you over on the bed with almost ridiculous ease, dominating your body entirely at his will. He let out a sigh of fascination at seeing how you obeyed, ending up with your ass raised, your back pronouncedly arched, and your hands held docilely against the small of your back. Your already-used pussy was completely exposed in that position, a thread of your fluids sliding down the inner side of your thigh.

Jungwon contemplated the scene for a couple of seconds, admiring the erotic vision you gifted him: the arch of your back, the residual tremor in your thighs, the glistening of your open, soaked pussy.

“You’re so beautiful…” he praised in a deep voice, before raising his hand and delivering a firm spank to your right cheek. The dry, fleshy sound echoed through the room; the impact left a burning pink mark on your skin, the flesh trembling under his palm. “You look so sexy like this for me.”

Without further delay, he aligned the head of his cock against your entrance. He pushed and sank into you again in a single deep stroke, opening you all at once once more. The wet, obscene sound of his cock driving fully into your soaked pussy filled the air: a fleshy, slick slap as his pelvis collided with your ass. You felt every vein, every centimeter of his thickness sliding through your still-sensitive and contracted walls, stretching you, filling you to the hilt. Holding you firmly by the hips, his fingers digging into your flesh, he resumed a hard, fast, relentless rhythm.

Every thrust was a deep blow, the sound of skin against skin and of his cock entering and leaving your soaked interior setting the pace. He was shamelessly chasing the point of no return, determined to reach his own orgasm inside you.

The constant overstimulation and the implacable rhythm of his thrusts dragged you, almost involuntarily, into coming apart again. Your entire body contracted in a second violent climax; the walls of your pussy clamped around him in tight, rhythmic waves, milking him, while a new warm rush of your arousal soaked his length. Jungwon received every spasm with a mixture of pride and absolute possessiveness, showering you with rough, explicit praise against your skin, murmuring how good you felt squeezing him, how perfect you were coming around him.

Right afterward, he finally found his own release. With one last brutal thrust, he buried himself in you to the hilt, the bone of his pelvis slamming against your ass, and held himself there. A deep, ecstatic growl left his lips as he threw his head back. You felt the first hot, thick spurt of his cum shoot into the deepest part of your interior, followed by another and another, filling you in pulses while his cock throbbed and contracted inside you. The heat of his release expanded, thick and abundant, mixing with your own fluids until you felt completely soaked and full of him.

Little by little, the intensity of their breathing began to ease. Jungwon let himself fall gently onto your back, embracing you around the waist while scattering warm, unhurried kisses along your spine, still trembling slightly from the residual of his orgasm.

“Are you okay, darling?” he asked in a voice still roughened by the effort, brushing his cheek against yours with genuine concern. “Tell me I wasn’t too rough… I know I got carried away, and considering how little time we’ve had since our intimate life started in secret, I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

An exhausted yet deeply satisfied smile curved your face. You could still feel his hot, thick cum inside you, an intimate, viscous reminder of what you had just done.

“I’m perfect, you don’t have to worry,” you answered softly, turning your face a little to seek his lips and leave him a short kiss. “In fact, this was the best thing in the world. And if it’s like this now, I can already imagine everything we’ll do once we have no rush and no fear of being caught”

Jungwon smiled against your skin, pulling you a little tighter against his chest.

“I love you,” he murmured with a sincere sweetness that contrasted with the savagery of moments ago. “I promise you that later, when we’re alone, I’ll take all the time in the world to be better, go slower, and spoil you the way you truly deserve.”

“And I love you, Wonie. I really love you so much,” you whispered, feeling your heart melt a little more for him.

He began to slide out of you with infinite care. His cock, still semi-hard and glistening with the mixture of both of you, withdrew with a soft, wet sound; as it did, a thick thread of his cum immediately slipped from your entrance, warm and viscous, sliding down the inner side of your thigh. He was ready to curl up beside you even if only for a couple of minutes. However, reality did not take long to assert itself.

A few dry knocks suddenly resonated against the main door of the bedroom, making both of you tense instantly, freezing in place. The alarm was total when, from the other side of the hallway, a single call was heard.

“Daughter, are you in there?” asked the unmistakable voice of your mother, sounding clearly through the wood.

They stared at each other for a second of absolute panic, eyes wide. Neither of them made a single sound. When she received no immediate reply, your mother did not call again; instead, a metallic noise froze them completely. The doorknob began to turn and was rattled up and down, being forced from the outside in a silent but insistent attempt to enter the room.

Moving on pure survival instinct, both of you rose from the mattress in all haste. Jungwon gathered his scattered clothes from the floor in record time and, buttoning his shirt halfway and with his shoes in hand, cast you one last warning look before disappearing into the dimness of the secret passageway through which you had arrived.

For your part, you slipped back into the satin dress with agile, trembling hands. It was only then, while readjusting the straps at the neck to return them to their perfect place and finally answer.

“Yes, Mom, I’m here!” you exclaimed, raising your voice enough for her to hear, trying to make your tone sound as casual and calm as possible. “I’m coming out now, I had to use the bathroom in this room because the ones downstairs were all occupied, and I took the chance to do a quick touch-up as well.”

In front of the mirror, your hands worked with millimeter precision while you spoke. You reapplied lipstick to cover any trace of the hungry kisses, wiped with a tissue the small spots where sweat and makeup had mixed, and arranged a couple of rebellious strands that had come loose from your hairstyle. Every movement made you aware of the cum that continued to slowly slip inside you, a secret, obscene reminder of what you had just shared. Once you looked as impeccable as at the start of the night, you walked with forcibly steady steps and unlocked the latch.

When you opened the door, your mother looked you up and down. Fortunately, she seemed to suspect absolutely nothing of what had just occurred mere meters from her.

“Well, hurry up, sweetheart. We need you downstairs right away,” she urged, taking you by the arm with a certain impatience to pull you out of the room. “They’re about to make the final toast in your honor and, to top it all off, we can’t find Jungwon anywhere.”

You chose not to make any comment regarding your fiancé’s whereabouts. The residual heat between your legs and the thick wetness soaking your underwear were secrets only the two of you shared.

“Then let’s hurry, we shouldn’t keep the guests waiting,” you answered naturally, offering a rehearsed smile. You took your mother’s arm and accompanied her downstairs.

Upon reaching the ground floor and advancing toward the open glass doors that led to the garden, Jungwon’s figure emerged in an extremely timely manner from the hallway that connected to the passageway. He looked neat and perfectly put together, as if nothing had happened.

Feigning impeccable surprise upon locking eyes with him, you went straight to meet him. Under the pretext of an affectionate greeting and the relief of having found him, you approached to very discreetly adjust the collar of his shirt and align the knot of his tie. Jungwon caught the hint immediately; he circled your waist with a strategic embrace to disguise the closeness, pressing his forehead to yours.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, baby. I was starting to believe you’d abandoned me to my fate,” he murmured in a tone loud enough to convince those present, though the sly smile on his lips was only for you.

Your mother, seeing them reunited, hurried them with a gesture of her hands, indicating that they should go out into the garden once and for all.

They were escorted to their special table, where the glasses filled with champagne already awaited them. The final toast proceeded under the warm lighting of the night, with all the guests raising their glasses in blessing for the prosperity and success of the future marriage. Both of you acted with the naturalness and grace expected of you, thanking them with courteous bows.

Yet in the eyes of the guests, you were the perfect picture of high society: two graceful, well-bred heirs destined to be together. But while you raised your glasses and the applause resonated around you, a shared glance over the rim of the crystal and a faint smile held the only truth that mattered to you: the certainty that this engagement was not a cage, but the perfect excuse to belong completely to each other, tonight and for the rest of your lives.

I came home smelling like someone else’s night.

The penthouse was dark except for the soft amber glow from the city bleeding through the floor to ceiling windows. Seoul glittered far below like it was still celebrating without me. My heels clicked once on the marble before I kicked them off, the sound too loud in the silence. My dress… short, black, backless… was wrinkled from dancing, from bodies pressing too close in the heat of the club. My lipstick was smudged. My hair smelled like expensive perfume that wasn’t mine and the faint chemical sweetness of whatever had been floating through the air in that velvet draped room full of black and gold balloons and bass that never stopped.

House of balloons. That’s what the invitation had called it. Balloons drifting against the ceiling like they were trying to escape, champagne that never stopped pouring, bodies moving like they were trying to forget the week. I’d told Jungwon I was just going for a few hours. That was six hours ago.

He was on the couch.

Not sitting. Waiting. Hoodie off, black shirt stretched across his shoulders, elbows on his knees, phone face down on the glass table. The second the elevator doors opened, he looked up, and the quiet in his eyes was the kind that made the air feel heavier.

I dropped my bag by the door and tried for a smile. “Hey. You’re still up.”

“You’re late.” His voice was low. Controlled. The kind of controlled that meant he was holding something sharp behind his teeth.

I walked closer, the soft pad of my bare feet on the cool floor. “The party ran long. You know how those things are. Everyone was—”

“I know how those things are.” He stood. Slow. “I saw the stories.”

My stomach dipped. Of course he had. Someone always posted. Blurry videos of the dance floor, gold balloons catching the light, my laugh caught mid song while some guy’s hand rested too low on my waist. I hadn’t even noticed at the time. Or maybe I had and just didn’t care enough to move it.

“It was nothing,” I said, softer now. “I barely even talked to him.”

Jungwon’s jaw flexed. He stepped into my space until I had to tip my head back to meet his eyes. He was close enough that I could smell the clean scent of his skin under the faint trace of the cologne I’d bought him. Close enough that the heat of him made the air from the party still clinging to me feel cheap.

“You smelled like him when you walked in,” he said. “Whoever he was. And you still have glitter on your collarbone from someone else’s hands.” His fingers lifted, brushed the shimmer on my skin, then dropped like it burned him. “You told me a few hours. You came home at three in the morning looking like you belonged to that room instead of this one.”

The argument started the way they always did with him… quiet at first, then sharper.

I snapped that he didn’t get to decide where I went. He snapped back that he didn’t care where I went, he cared that I let someone else put their hands on what was his and then walked through the door like it didn’t matter. My voice rose. His stayed low and dangerous. I accused him of being controlling. He accused me of liking the attention too much to push it away. Somewhere in the middle of it I shoved at his chest, not hard, just enough to create space, and the second my palms touched him something in his expression cracked.

“You’re still wearing the dress he touched you in,” Jungwon said, almost to himself. Then louder, voice rough with something that sounded like possession and hurt twisted together, “Take it off.”

“No.”

He moved so fast I barely had time to gasp. One second I was standing my ground, the next his hands locked around my thighs and the world tilted hard. He threw me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing, one arm strapped tight across the backs of my legs, the other hand already sliding up under the short hem of my dress to grip the bare curve of my ass. The air left my lungs in a startled sound as he carried me straight through the living room toward the hallway that led to the master suite.

“Jungwon… put me down—”

“Quiet.” The word was almost a growl against my hip. “You spent the whole night letting strangers look at you. Letting them touch what’s mine. Now you’re going to remember.”

He didn’t set me down gently. He dumped me onto the massive bed hard enough that I bounced, the silk sheets cool against my skin. Before I could scramble up he was on me… knees holding my hips, one hand pinning both of mine above my head against the mattress, the other yanking the zipper of my dress down in one sharp motion. The fabric gave. He peeled it off my body like it offended him, leaving me in nothing but the thin black lace I’d worn underneath and the faint glitter still clinging to my collarbones.

His eyes dragged over me, dark and hungry and jealous. “Look at you. Still dressed for them.”

I opened my mouth to argue again and he kissed me instead… hard, almost punishing, tongue pushing past my lips like he was trying to erase the taste of the night from my mouth. I bit his lower lip. He bit back harder, then pulled away just far enough to speak against my mouth, voice low and final.

“You belong to me.”

The words hit harder than the kiss. Simple. Absolute. Like he was claiming every hour I’d spent under those balloons, every hand that had brushed my waist, every laugh that hadn’t been for him.

He didn’t give me time to answer. He shoved my thighs apart with one knee and dropped his head between them, yanking the lace aside with his teeth. The first long, filthy lick from my entrance to my clit made my back arch off the bed. Jungwon didn’t tease. He ate me like he was angry about it… tongue thrusting deep, then flattening against my clit and sucking hard enough that my hips jerked. His hands locked around my thighs, keeping them spread wide even when I tried to close them around his head.

He stayed there for what felt like forever.

His tongue worked me open with slow, deliberate strokes, then switched to short, rapid flicks that made my thighs shake. He sucked my clit between his lips and hummed, the vibration shooting straight up my spine. When I tried to rock against his face he held me down harder, pinning my hips to the mattress so I had no choice but to take whatever pace he set. He licked into me like he was trying to taste every second I’d spent away from him, tongue curling deep, then dragging up to circle my clit again and again until I was panting his name.

“Jungwon… please—”

He ignored me. Two fingers slid inside without warning, curling against that spot that made my vision blur, while his mouth stayed locked on my clit. The wet sounds were filthy… his tongue, my slick, the obscene squeak sound of his fingers thrusting deep and steady. He added a third finger and stretched me open, scissoring them while he sucked harder, and the double pressure had me sobbing into the sheets. Every time I got close he slowed down, pulling back to give me long, broad licks that kept me hovering right on the edge, then dove back in with brutal intensity.

I came the first time with a broken cry, thighs clamping around his head, but he didn’t stop. He kept licking through it, softer now, almost gentle, drawing out every aftershock until I was whimpering and oversensitive. Only when I tried to push his head away did he finally lift up, mouth and chin shiny with me, eyes almost black in the low light from the windows.

“Still think coming home late was a good idea?” he asked, voice wrecked. “Still think you can walk in smelling like that party and pretend you don’t belong to me?”

I could only stare, chest heaving. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then crawled up my body and kissed me hard, forcing me to taste myself on his tongue. While he kissed me he shoved his own pants down just enough to free his cock… thick, flushed, already leaking at the tip. He rubbed the head through my soaked folds, coating himself, but instead of pushing in he moved higher, straddling my chest.

“Open your mouth.”

I did. He guided the head past my lips and I took him in, tongue swirling around the tip, tasting him mixed with my own slick. He groaned low and started fucking my face… slow at first, letting me adjust, then deeper, one hand fisted in my hair to hold me still. I hollowed my cheeks and sucked hard, looking up at him through my lashes as spit ran down my chin. He watched every second of it, jaw tight, eyes burning.

“That’s it,” he muttered. “Take it. You spent the night letting other people look at this mouth. Now you’re going to choke on me until you remember the only one who gets to have you like this.”

He pushed deeper until the head nudged the back of my throat. I gagged around him, eyes watering, but I didn’t pull away. I relaxed and took more, tongue working the underside the way I knew he liked. He cursed under his breath and started thrusting in more purposefully… shallow, controlled strokes that still made me struggle for air. Spit dripped down my neck. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. He pulled back just enough to let me breathe, then pushed in again, slower this time, letting me feel every thick inch.

I sucked harder, hollowing my cheeks, and the broken sound he made went straight between my legs. He only lasted a few more thrusts before he pulled free with a wet pop, breathing hard, cock glistening with my spit.

“On your back. Legs open. Wide.”

I scrambled to obey. He settled between my thighs again, but instead of pushing inside, he dropped his head once more. I cried out when his mouth found my clit again… still sensitive from the first orgasm… and he licked me open with long, filthy strokes like he hadn’t just spent ten minutes doing the exact same thing. He pushed two fingers back inside and curled them while he sucked, and the overstimulation had me twisting under him, half trying to get away, half pushing closer.

“Jungwon… I can’t—”

“You can and you will,” he growled against me. “You’re going to come on my tongue again. Then you’re going to come on my cock. And you’re going to remember who you belong to every single time.”

He kept going… relentless, focused, like he had all night and nowhere else to be. His tongue worked my clit in tight circles while his fingers thrust deep and steady. When I started shaking he sucked harder, and the second orgasm hit me so hard my vision went white. I sobbed his name, thighs clamping around his head, and he licked me through every wave until I was trembling and boneless.

Only then did he finally push inside me.

The stretch burned in the best way. He didn’t give me time to adjust. The second he was buried to the hilt he started fucking me… hard, deep strokes that made the headboard knock against the wall. One hand braced beside my head, the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise as he held me exactly where he wanted me.

“This is what you get,” he gritted out between thrusts. “Walking in smelling like someone else’s party. Letting them touch you. Making me sit here imagining every second of it.” Another sharp snap of his hips made me cry out. “You wanted rough? You got it. Because you belong to me. Not them. Not that room full of balloons. Me.”

He flipped me onto my stomach without warning, dragged my hips up until I was on my knees, face pressed into the silk sheets, and slammed back in. The new angle let him go even deeper. Every thrust punched a broken moan out of me. His hand came down on my ass… not hard enough to really hurt, but sharp enough to sting… and the sound of it mixed with the wet slap of skin on skin.

“Jungwon… ah… fuck—”

“Louder,” he ordered, fingers digging into the meat of my hip. “I want to hear how much you like it when I stop being nice. When I remind you who you belong to after you come home smelling like balloons and strangers.”

He reached around and found my clit again, rubbing tight, vicious circles in time with his thrusts. The double stimulation was too much. I came again with a sob, clenching hard around him, and he fucked me straight through it… relentless, almost punishing, until I was shaking and oversensitive and still somehow begging for more.

He pulled out abruptly. I made a desperate sound at the loss, but he was already flipping me onto my back again, climbing up my body until he was straddling my chest once more. His cock… slick with my come… brushed my lips.

“Open. One more time.”

I did. He pushed into my mouth in one smooth motion, not stopping until the head nudged the back of my throat. I gagged around him, eyes watering, but he only groaned and started fucking my face with the same controlled intensity… shallow at first, then deeper, one hand fisted in my hair to hold me still. Spit ran down my chin. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. He watched every second of it, jaw tight, eyes burning with leftover jealousy and something darker.

“That’s it. Take it. You spent the night letting other people look at this mouth. Now you’re going to choke on me until you remember.”

He pulled back just enough to let me breathe, then pushed in again, slower this time, letting me feel every inch. I hollowed my cheeks and sucked hard, tongue working the underside, and the broken sound he made was almost enough to make me come again untouched. He only lasted a few more thrusts before he pulled free with a wet pop, breathing hard.

“On your back. Legs open. Wide.”

I scrambled to obey. He settled between my thighs again, hooked one of my knees over his elbow to open me wider, and drove back into me in one brutal thrust. The new position let him grind against my clit with every stroke. He leaned down, mouth finding the side of my neck, and bit down just hard enough to leave a mark while he sucked hard on the skin. His other hand slid between our bodies again, fingers working my clit in tight, merciless circles.

“Come again,” he ordered against my throat. “One more time. On my cock. I want to feel it. I want you to forget every hand that wasn’t mine tonight. Say it.”

I was already so close it hurt. The combination of his thick cock stretching me, the relentless pressure on my clit, the wet heat of his mouth on my neck… it all crashed together. “I belong to you,” I gasped, the words breaking on a moan as the orgasm tore through me, walls fluttering and clenching around him.

He followed me over the edge with a deep, guttural sound, burying himself deep and spilling inside me in hot, pulsing waves, hips stuttering through it until he was spent. “That’s right,” he murmured against my skin, voice rough and almost tender now. “You belong to me.”

For a long moment the only sound in the penthouse was our shared breathing and the distant hum of the city far below. Jungwon stayed buried inside me, forehead pressed to mine, still holding my leg open. Eventually he eased out carefully, watching the way his come leaked out of me with dark, satisfied eyes. He collapsed beside me, pulled me into his chest, and pressed a softer kiss to my temple… the first gentle touch since he’d thrown me over his shoulder.

“Next time you walk into that party,” he murmured against my hair, voice still rough, “you come home earlier. Or I come find you and drag you out myself. Because you belong to me.”

I laughed weakly, still trembling, and nuzzled closer, the glitter on my collarbone now mixed with the marks he’d left. Outside the windows the city kept glittering, indifferent. Inside, the air still smelled faintly of the party I’d left behind… and of him.

“Promise?” I whispered.

His arm tightened around me. I felt him smile against my skin.

“Promise.”

THE END

Just something quick! Jungwon was always the jealous type, so I thought it fit! Hope you guys like this short fic!

wonluvzu taglist ;)

The night was warm, the people around you mingled and drank to their heart's desire, you were caught up in the midst of it all as bride, sitting by the table, the feast in front of you, the lingering scent of meat and spices reaching your nose. You've never had the big appetite, but even the most picky of eaters could find something for themselves in the abundance of food that was prepared, you enjoyed the sweet aroma of a ripe fig, its sugary taste a heaven on your tongue.

With an idle mind you resorted to watching the guests, slowly becoming aware of the mirth in their eyes now that the night was nearing its end, the consummation of your marriage awaited. You knew that well yet you chose to place trust in your now husband, for sure he would find a way to stain the sheets crimson other than with your blood. You were lucky to be married to a man your age, because an older one wouldn't show such restraint, you thought and what violence should such an innocent looking creature even possess? Jungwon's presence showed nothing but gentleness, his eyes deep wells of kindness, sparkling with youthfulness and sympathy.

Only if you knew of the monstrous desire lurking beneath his saintlike demeanour. Even though you thought this union was a coincidence, it was actually perfectly orchestrated by him, he imagined it the moment he has seen you at church the first time he saw you, a divine vision meant for him only. From that day onward, he battled with impatience, with hunger for just a little taste, but the societal norms granted him no mercy. He was barely constraining himself during the whole ceremony, the brief meeting of your lips left him trembling with passion, it evident on the sweat collecting at his brow, but it was summer so none suspected it.

He was an image of propriety but inside of him a war raged on, he was unnerved by the length of the whole ordeal, the congratulations and the smiles all irking him further. He just couldn't wait for the darkness of the room to swallow you both.

─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ✮ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──

The silence of the room was being interrupted by the sound of crickets outside, the window was slightly ajar letting in the mild wind into the room which carried a scent of the stars. The only light cast a warm glow over the furniture, the mirror was dim and full of shadows, you were reluctant to look at your reflection, the image painted there was one of innocence waiting to be touched. Your hair was let down, the locks flowing freely, in your eyes you could make out sparks from the flame of the candles, but the longer you looked, the more a sense of foreboding enveloped you.

In the crevices of your heart doubt crept in, an unsettling feeling in your bones, what if? That damned question crawled its way to you and you felt nauseous all of a sudden and as if it was an omen, footsteps resounded in front of the door. They were determined and powerful, no doubt belonging to a man, an it wasn't any man, it was your husband.

That title although it should, under different circumstances, didn't bring you any comfort, you cast your eyes outside the window, glancing at the stars, only to find out that a dark cloud covered them.

Caught up in your thoughts you hadn't even noticed the door opening and closing, you just sensed a presence in the room, the sound of breathing and a creak in the floorboards, there in front of you Jungwon stood. Outside, wind picked up its speed, rustling the leaves, the curtains danced for a moment and the candle by the bed went out, startling you. Finally, you looked up to the figure shrouded in the black that was towering over you, you couldn't recognize it, as if the man from the dinner was replaced by a phantom.

With a trembling hand you reached out, searching for the matches, striking one, the light exploded for a second, illuminating the space around you, revealing two eyes that were now staring at you from a very close proximity. While you were fumbling in the dark, Jungwon crossed the separating distance between the two of you. You stared at him back, no words coming out, the match in between of you, slowly burning, carefully he took it from your fingers and lightened a candle, restoring the atmosphere in the room.

Uncomfortable with barely there gap between you, you tried moving further away, only to be stopped by the hand weaving itself around your wrist, the hold he had on you was strong like a vice, you dared to look up at his eyes again. The flame reflected in them, otherwise they were completely black, like looking down into a deep well, the one that they warned you about in your childhood, one that carried a danger with it.

With a small voice you uttered his name, trying to break the grip around your hand, but to no avail, there was no doubt a bruise forming, but your strength was no match for his.

He came even closer, inhaling deeply, letting his nose trail the column of your neck, your body reacted at the tingling contact, erupting in a powerful shiver that reached the tips of your toes.

"Don't you know.", his voice was quiet, but deep and rough, his hold on you was still unrelenting and seemed to increase in its intensity when he uttered the next words.

"You are mine now.", then as if to seal the meaning, he left a scorching kiss on your collarbone, the warmth and wetness of his mouth paired with the softness of his lips made a quiet flame start to lick at the base of your spine despite the fact that you were still struggling with his strength.

Finally, he freed your hand, redness blooming along your skin, a tell tale mark of his possession of you, then his hand moved to your shoulder, pushing you down onto the mattress. Your shock filled eyes stared up at him, while he gazed at you with the eyes of a vulture, thirst and hunger reflecting in them. Afraid, you cast your gaze away.

That seemed to anger him, for he pulled his hand up, cupping your face with barely contained roughness, preventing any movement, forcing your eyes on his again, he leaned down to your ear, whispering, "Be good for me, will you?".

His breath tickled you and some hidden part of you keened in delight, the depth of his voice was enticing and the weight of his body pressing on yours was making your hands twitch against your sides, as if on instinct you wanted to wrap your arms around his shoulders. Instead, you chose to grip onto the sheets, bunching them tightly in your grip.

Sensing your pliancy, Jungwon hummed in approval, his thumb coming to rub gently against your cheek, it trailed small circles on your flesh until it traveled to your lower lip, pulling it back and playing with it. His finger demanded entrance and you granted him that, opening your mouth in obedience.

His eyes focused on the way his thumb disappeared into your cavern of warmth, satisfied with the sight and the sensation he moved his index finger too, putting it in as well, pressing down onto your tongue. You were perplexed as to why it felt so good, him exploring your mouth like that, you were not taught about it at all, you were informed only of the basics, but little did you know the night was full of suprises ahead.

He pulled out his fingers, them glistening in the dark, and trailed them along the expanse of your chest, leaving a wet trail, you shuddered at the striking sensation against your skin. Your nightdress was basically useless, see through and slipping down your shoulders, he pulled it down even more, exposing you to the damp air and his hungry eyes.

Jungwon visibly swallowed, greeted by your bare chest, his touch was feather light, mapping out your skin, and then his mouth followed, nibbling all over your breasts, awakening a warm feeling in between your thighs which only intensified when he licked one of your perk nipples, your hands were still rumpling the sheets, even harder then before. Inside you weren't sure if you wanted this but the pleasure he coaxed out of you, the strength which he emitted while treating you, was slowly erasing the reluctance from your mind.

When his hands came to grip at your hips, bunching up the fabric and pressing down with possessive hold, you finally let go and moved your fingers, tangling them in the hair at the nape of his neck, it was slick with sweat, the summer air no doubt taking a toll on him, but in the back of your mind you knew it was something else too. He was breathing hard, barely containing himself from completely ruining you all at once, he was getting tired with all the teasing touches and caresses, impatience growing inside of him but he had to seduce you somehow into obedience. He wanted urgently but he was no beast.

That thought seemed to morph into an affirmative sentence the moment he pulled the hem of your nightdress further up, exposing your damp thighs and the place of which he dreamed of, abundant with warmth and wetness. He couldn't help the groan he let out in the night when his hand greeted the heat of you, dipping into your entrance, his resolve was gone by then.

With clumsy fingers he undid the front of his pants, freeing himself of the shackles that forbid him from having you completely. He was stiff with desire and need, burning up from inside out. With no room for pleasantries or sweetness, he pushed into you, filling you all at once, you let out a gasp, fingers digging into his neck, deep enough to draw blood. Nothing could prepare you for this, nor for what is to come.

He basked in your warmth for a moment, but he couldn't wait anymore, with you gripping him so tightly, he could tell you've only been his and no one else's before. He was pleased to no end, pulling out and then slamming back in without any gentleness. His pace was animalistic and consuming, he was pouring in all of the frustration he had to face ever since he saw you for the first time.

For poor you, it was too intense, small hiccups leaving your mouth in tandem with his thrusts, you didn't know anymore what you were feeling, was it discomfort or pure pleasure, it was all mixed together in the haze of your joining. Your insides began to clench, something was clawing its way up your whole body, a feeling so violent, a consequence of his rough ministrations. You tried to warn him somehow, tried to utter his name but it crashed over you in intense waves, a pleasure so blinding, at that moment you could feel all the love he wanted to fuck into you.

All his passion and obsession, all his restless nights spent thinking about you, he wanted you to taste it too, to be as consumed as he was. He was watching every twitch of your body, satisfied that it was all his doing, no force could stop him now, he was on the top of the world, he met eyes directly with God while taking in the sight of you.

♥️

You trail behind your friend, who’s already a step ahead, swinging her bag with energetic frustration. “Come on, (name)! Don’t just walk like a zombie,” your friend teases. “There’s this new cafe near the park. They have-”

“I don’t feel like it,” you interrupt softly, feeling the words escape before you can stop them. You shrug, hiding behind a small smile. I didn’t even do anything today. Your friend stops, tilting her head, eyes narrowing in disbelief. “Seriously? You’ve been stuck in your room all week, and now you’re too tired to get out?”

You shake your head, your fingers brushing against the strap of your bag. “It’s not- I’m just tired. That’s all.”

You walk in silence for a few steps. Your friend hums, trying to break the heaviness blanketing the air. “You know,” she says after a pause, softer now, “sometimes I think you push yourself too hard… or you don’t give yourself credit. You do stuff, you… don’t notice it.”

You swallow. You don’t answer. You don’t know how to explain that everything you do feels meaningless, even the things you’re proud of. The hallway goes on. You notice some guy now, a few steps ahead, laughing with his friends. He seems so certain, so loud, so alive… and yet, you think, he probably doesn’t feel it either.

Your friend bumps your shoulder lightly, pulling you back from your spiral. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah,” you mutter, but you feel bad lying to your friend like this. I’m tired, and I haven’t even done anything worth being tired for. They reach the corner of the school, the chatter of other students fading behind you. Your friend glances at you, eyebrows raised, searching. “(Name), I know you’re thinking about something. Wanna talk?”

You let a breath slip. “It’s nothing. I’m tired, like I said.” Your voice falters, but you hide it behind a nod. Your friend doesn’t push further, instead looping her arm through yours. “Okay… well, whenever you want, I’m here. Even if it’s to sit in the park and do nothing.”

Your chest tightens at the words, a strange comfort in the simple offer. Even doing nothing with someone doesn’t feel pointless. That’s… new.

In that moment, for a second, the heavy loop of your day feels a fraction lighter.

♥️

Jungwon moves through the school with his shoulders back and laughter easy. His friends flit around him, teasing while bumping into him with the kind of closeness that feels effortless to outsiders. “Bro, did you see my dunk yesterday? It’s good, right?” one asks, nudging him.

Jungwon chuckles. “Yeah, man, you crushed it,” he replies, because that’s what you say when you’re part of a group. You agree, encourage, and belong. Yet even as they walk, his mind fades, as if his body is there but not him. Every compliment, every cheer, every high-five is a mirror showing someone he doesn’t recognize. Is this me? he wonders, watching his reflection in the polished lockers. He’s doing everything, excelling at everything, yet he feels like a blank canvas where the strokes aren’t even his.

His friends start joking about weekend plans. “You in, or are you gonna ghost like last time?” one teases. Jungwon smiles because he’s expected to say yes, but inside, he shrugs. What am I even signing up for? It’s not laziness. It’s not boredom. It’s the gnawing sense that nothing sticks, that everything done is just… done.

Somewhere in the crowded corridor, a student walks past. A girl, head slightly bowed, energy quiet but deliberate. He doesn’t know the girl. He doesn’t even register her as a person yet. Only a passing figure in the blur of bodies. That’s it. Nothing more.

The group moves on, laughter and chatter bouncing off the walls, and the moment disappears entirely. She was gone from his awareness, as if she had never been there.

♥️

The door clicks shut behind you, and the world outside shrinks into nothing. You lean against it, letting the weight of the day settle into your bones. Your bag slides to the floor with a thud. You slowly change out of your uniform, each movement deliberate. The fabric falls away, and with it a part of the mask you’ve worn all day. Standing there in silence, you wonder: Does it even matter?

Finally, you sink onto your bed, the sheets cool against your skin. Your phone rests in your palm, but you don’t scroll. You stare at it, the blank screen reflecting your own tired eyes at you. You talk softly, almost to yourself. “What am I even doing…?” Your voice sounds small in the quiet room, swallowed by shadows. “I wake up. I go through the motions. I sleep. I do it all again and… nothing sticks.”

You prop your head on your hand, the other hand tapping the bed unconsciously. Am I the same as yesterday? The day before? You think about the people you passed in the corridors, the friends laughing, the boy whose face never quite stays in your memory, and a strange feeling of envy and pity settles in your chest. They have… something. I don’t even know what I have.

Your thoughts drift further, spiraling but controlled, like a slow eddy in a wide river. “Do I want anything?” you whisper. The question is dangerous because it has no answer. You imagine possibilities but immediately crush them with indifference. I don’t want. I can’t want. Nothing will change anyway.

A sigh slips out, and you turn your gaze back to the ceiling, looking at the familiar shapes of your room you’ve seen a thousand times before, yet nothing feels like home. Does it even matter that I’m tired? That I exist in this loop?

You shift slightly, hugging your knees to your chest, and finally admit the truth aloud. “I’m existing but not really living it.” Your phone vibrates once, a message from your friend. You glance at it but don’t respond. You know you can’t explain this yet. Not now. Not to anyone. Not even yourself completely.

In the silence that follows, you let yourself sleep, somewhere between thought and nothing, letting the ache of simply being here fill the room.

♥️

The door clicks shut behind Jungwon, but there’s no moment to breathe. He drops his backpack by the side, already reaching for the sports bag slung over his shoulder. Every day has a cycle: practice, training, and study. Even home is just another arena to move through.

He pulls off his shoes, loosens his tie, but the motions are automatic. Every item removed feels like shedding armor rather than comfort. His muscles ache, not from exertion, but from repetition, from the relentless expectation to perform. Who am I beneath all this? he wonders, standing in front of the mirror. This is not him at all.

He flops onto the bed, still in uniform, and stares at the ceiling. His phone lights up with notifications, his friends asking about weekend plans, reminders about club schedules, and messages from family. He scrolls mechanically, reading each line without processing a single word. Every ping reminds him that the world is moving, and he is moving along, but not with it.

He mutters to himself, almost in disbelief, “I do everything… and I’m still not anything.” His voice is low. He imagines all the achievements he’s collected: medals, accolades, compliments, but they’re distant, as if someone else earned them. All of this… and I don’t know who I am.

He sits up, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands. Calloused from practice but empty. Am I just this version of me for everyone else? The thought hangs heavy. He wants to scream but there’s nowhere to release it. A sigh escapes him. He tosses the phone aside, letting silence fill the room.

Maybe no one knows me.

Lying there, staring at the ceiling tiles, Jungwon realizes the truth. He has always been moving, always showing, and yet he’s never truly known himself.

♥️

The clock ticks.

click… click… click

The ceiling stares back at you. Sleep refuses you, a stubborn passenger refusing to leave the car. You swing your legs off the bed and move on autopilot, pulling on a hoodie and shoes. The streets are quiet, and you walk without purpose, only following the pull of a neon light in the distance. Going to a small shop that is open all night, full of cheap snacks and drinks stacked on shelves. You like it. It feels like a secret space that exists for people like you. The tired, the wandering, the restless. You wander the aisles, fingers brushing the packaged goods. Your eyes settle on something small, sweet, and cheap. You grab it, ignoring the burn of exhaustion in your legs.

The cashier, a sleepy-eyed young man with a thin smile, nods at you. “Long night?”

You shrug. “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep.”

He nods. “It’s always like that at this hour.” His voice is soft. You nod in return, slide the money across the counter, and leave without another word. Outside, you find a corner by the curb, sitting on the cold concrete. The package rests in your lap. You open it, take a bite, and the simple sweetness of it feels almost sacred.

Then it comes. The tears. It felt hot and uninvited. They spill down your face in uneven tracks. You don’t know why. You don’t have a reason. You cry. The exhaustion, the emptiness, the existence without meaning. It all comes out at once. You whisper to yourself between sobs, “I’m so tired… I don’t even know why I’m like this…”

Your hands shake as you clutch the snack, grounding yourself in something tangible, something yours. For a moment, the world stops.

♥️

Jungwon didn’t know where he was going. The streets were empty. His sneakers scuffed softly against the pavement, echoing in the quiet. He didn’t know how long he had been walking. Minutes? Hours? Time had no meaning anymore; the routine of doing everything, achieving everything, and still feeling nothing had stripped it away.

He thought about turning back, about climbing into bed, but sleep had long stopped being a refuge. The night seemed easier to bear than another day of smiling and pretending, but then… he saw you.

You were sitting on the curb. A snack in your hands, your hoodie pulled tight, tears tracing your cheeks. He froze, hesitating a step away. Should I…? The question didn’t even form into words. He didn’t know you. He didn’t know if he should look, move, or care.

Though something, he didn’t know what, pulled at him. He stayed where he was, watching, merely witnessing your existence could somehow matter. The tears, the shaking hands, the solitude, it all felt foreign and familiar at once. Why is she crying? he wondered, though he knew the answer wouldn’t matter. Some pain didn’t need understanding. Some pain only existed.

His hesitation continued, long enough for him to notice how fragile you looked, how small and human. The urge to move closer battles with the caution in his chest, with the unknown barrier of silence. For now, he stays there, strangely aware that this moment means something he cannot yet name. After a while, he finally steps closer, keeping a respectful distance. His voice is unsure, as if speaking too loudly would shatter the fragile bubble around you. “Hey… are you okay?”

You flinch at the sound, turning your head enough to see him. Your hands clutch the snack tighter, your breath catching. You don’t answer immediately. The tears keep coming. Finally, you mutter, almost to yourself, “I… I don’t know.”

You almost regret it the moment the words leave your lips. You could have said you’re fine. You could have said nothing. Let him walk away, leave you alone. You could have maintained the quiet solitude of the night, but you didn’t. You said it, and now it’s out there.

He nods slowly, because that’s all he can do. “Yeah… me neither,” he admits. His own voice is softer now, a mirror of your uncertainty. “Sometimes… I don’t even know what I’m doing with myself. I walk, I move, I… exist, and it’s like nothing sticks.”

You glance at him with recognition, not of him personally but in the way he speaks. Your shoulders sag slightly in relief at being understood, even by a stranger. “You think anyone notices?” you whisper. “Or… cares?”

He shrugs, letting his words come deliberately. “I don’t know. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, but even if no one sees it, even if it doesn’t change anything… what you feel still exists.” You stare down at your hands. For the first time tonight, the emptiness feels slightly less absolute. “Thanks,” you murmur, not knowing why, not even sure you mean it.

He gives a small nod. “Don’t feel like you have to explain it. Not to me. Not to anyone.”

There, on the sidewalk, two strangers sit together in shared solitude. Neither saves the other. Neither fixes anything. For now, all he can do is stay, letting the silence hold them, letting your sniffles reach his ears.

You wipe your cheeks with the back of your hand. “I know it’s ridiculous,” you whisper to yourself. “Crying in the middle of the night, holding food.” A shaky laugh escapes you. You take another bite. The tears keep falling, but now there’s a strange relief in it. You haven’t cried like this in a while. Not since everything started feeling like a loop you couldn’t escape. “I don’t even know why,” you admit, almost surprised at yourself. “I’m not sad. I’m just tired. Tired of everything. Tired of feeling like I’m moving and yet not going anywhere. Perhaps that’s it.”

Your hands shake as you hug the snack to your chest. The world is still empty. The streets are still quiet, but for a brief moment, letting it out, letting yourself be completely exposed in this ridiculous, lonely way, it feels… human. Maybe it’s okay to feel this. Maybe it’s okay to exist like this for a moment without pretending.

The soft shuffle of someone approaching makes you glance up. He’s still there, respectful at a distance. He doesn’t say anything. He hears you… and for now, that is enough.

He exhales softly, unsure if his voice will make it worse or better, but the words slip out anyway. “You don’t have to be alone,” he says. “Even if it’s stupid or messy, you don’t have to do it by yourself.” You glance at him, startled. You open your mouth to respond, but no words come. Your throat feels tight, raw from crying and unsaid thoughts.

He moves slowly, then sits down on the cold pavement a little ways from you. After a moment, he murmurs again, “I don’t know you. I don’t even know why you’re crying, but I think it’s okay to feel like this. To just let it out.”

“I don’t- I don’t even know why I’m crying,” you admit.

He nods, as if understanding more than words can say. “Sometimes you don’t need a reason. It doesn’t make it any less real or wrong.”

You inhale shakily. He doesn’t say more. He sits there, letting the night hold you both, letting your tears fade into uneven sniffles. You wipe your cheeks again and finally find your voice. “Why are you walking around in the middle of the night?”

He didn’t expect that question. A small silence went between you. Then, slowly, he realizes that maybe he needs to answer. Not for you. Not to explain, but because you let yourself be open first, because the night feels safer somehow, even with a stranger beside you.

“I don’t know,” he admits, almost surprised even to himself. “I just walked. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know how long I’ve been walking. I guess I just needed to move. I needed to feel something that isn’t noise.” His hands rest on his knees, fingers tapping against the fabric of his pants. “I didn’t expect to talk about it… but… you made it feel okay. Weirdly, I feel like I can say it here, now.”

You glance at him, listening.

“I do everything,” he continues. “Sports, clubs, school, friends… and none of it feels like me. I’m always doing, but I don’t know who I am when no one’s watching. That’s why I walk.” He then stares at the ground, not at you. “I didn’t think I’d say this to anyone tonight. Least of all, to someone I don’t even know. Although it feels right, I guess because you… you’re here. And you said what you said. And now I… don’t know. I just felt like I could.”

Silence settles again. For a moment, it’s just two strangers, sitting side by side in the emptiness of 4 am, both unburdening pieces of themselves that the world never asked to see. You sniffle one last time, wiping the corner of your eyes with the back of your hand. “I’m (name),” you say quietly.

He is surprised, not by the name itself, but by the ease it brings, the permission it gives him to put a word to you, too, finally. “I’m Jungwon,” he replies, the name awkward in his mouth at first. He glances at you briefly, then looks down. Saying it feels strange, but somehow right.

“You don’t have to say anything else,” you murmur, a small, shy smile tugging at the corner of your lips. “I just thought you should know who you’re talking to.” He nods slowly. “Yeah, me too. Makes it feel less like I’m just floating alone out here.”

You hesitate for a moment, then hold it out toward him. “Do you want some?” you ask softly. He freezes, surprised by the offer. Then he shakes his head slowly, a small, amused smile tugging at his lips. “You brought food to cry over?” he teases gently.

You snort, covering your mouth with your sleeve. “Hey… it’s… comforting,” you say, cheeks pink.

He laughs, low and unexpected. “Comforting? I guess… I can see that.”

The sound of your laughter fills the quiet street. For a few moments, the weight of the day, the exhaustion, the emptiness all fade just slightly. You sit there, side by side, sharing a simple snack and a laugh, two strangers who have, in a strange, fleeting way, found a tiny fragment of understanding in the middle of 4 am.

You finally set the snack wrapper aside. “I should probably get back,” you murmur reluctantly. He nods, slowly standing, the ache of connection tugging at him. “Yeah, me too,” he says, not moving closer, letting the space between you remain respectful.

For a moment, you both hesitate, the unspoken understanding comforting. You had shared pieces of yourselves tonight, and that was enough. Neither of you needed more. You stand first, brushing the crumbs from your hands, and offer a small wave. “Goodnight Jungwon.”

“Goodnight (name),” he replies.

Then, without another word, you turn in opposite directions.

♥️

The sun felt a little too bright today for your tired eyes. You moved with the same way you always did, feet brushing the floor in the familiar drag of routine. Classes, assignments, the chatter of other students, it all felt slightly lighter, though you couldn’t explain why.

Your mind kept going, unpredictably, to that night. The sidewalk, the cheap snack, the stranger who had listened. You remembered the way he had sat, hesitant but present, the soft timbre of his voice, the way he didn’t try to fix you or demand anything from you. The memory made the heaviness of your days feel a little more bearable.

Across the school courtyard, Jungwon moved among his friends, though even in the middle of the day, between classes and routines, his thoughts wandered unexpectedly to you, the girl on the curb, the one he had sat beside in silence. The image of you, fragile but steady in your vulnerability, had planted itself quietly in his mind.

Neither of you spoke of that night again, well, not that he has any contact with you whatsoever, considering that he just met you once, but it was nice.

You glanced at the clock, chewing your lip slightly. Thinking that he was likely somewhere in some school already, moving through the motions of his own life and yet… you couldn’t stop thinking of him, the memory of his hesitant presence threading through your day.

He, too, felt you. Your absence, your quietness, your honesty. The world felt slightly less empty, slightly more… possible. For a brief moment, in the middle of the monotony of school, both of you, separately, were thinking of each other, feeling that small, inexplicable warmth that comes from being seen, even once, in a way no one else had.

Weeks later…

You ducked into the small school library to escape the noise of the busy campus, hoping for a few minutes before your next class. Shelves lined with books and the faint sound of the air conditioner… this was your refuge, your corner of solitude. You turned the corner near the reference section and froze. Jungwon?….

He was there too, leaning over a table stacked with textbooks, flipping through pages with that precise attention he always seemed to have. He looked up, and their eyes met. For a long moment, neither spoke. Surprise mirrored in their expressions, recognition flashing between them. “You go here?” you asked softly.

He was caught off guard, then a small, half-smile tugged at his lips. “I didn’t expect you here.”

Your fingers fidgeted with the strap of your bag. “Yeah… I guess we’ve never… crossed paths before. I mean, the school is huge, but…” You trailed off, laughing softly at the absurdity of it. He chuckled, the sound relieved. “Right. Crazy, I keep thinking about that night, and now… here we are. Same school.”

You nodded, a small smile playing at your lips. “Here we are.”

He closed his textbook slowly and looked at you. “Do you want to go outside for a bit?”

You were surprised by the invitation, but nodded. “Sure… I guess a little fresh air wouldn’t hurt.”

You walked out together, the campus grounds quieter now between classes. The noise of students far ahead felt distant, and for the first time in days, the world felt normal. “So… same school?” he said, trying to keep the conversation light. “I really didn’t expect to see you here.”

You laughed softly, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. “Me neither. Honestly, I thought we’d never cross paths again. The city’s huge, and you seem like you move through it all so fast.”

Jungwon smirked. “I try, but apparently, I move too fast to notice the important things,” he teased, glancing at you. “like library corners with snacks or… unexpected people.”

You rolled your eyes playfully. “Hey, I wasn’t expecting to meet someone I… you know… shared a midnight snack with, in my own life either.”

He laughed. “Yeah, that was weird, huh? In a good way, I guess.”

You walked along the path in comfortable silence for a moment. Neither of you felt the need to rush, to fill every space with words. “So, do you come to the library often?” he asked. You shrugged. “Not really. Only when I need a place to escape… everything else. Apparently, it works for me except today, since I ran into you.”

He laughed softly. “Yeah, lucky me,” he said, shaking his head. “I was trying to find somewhere to focus. And instead, I found… well, you.”

You tilted your head. “I feel honored.”

Then you muttered, “It’s weird, isn’t it? Running into someone at 4 am on the street… and then here. In the same school. It’s like the universe is messing with us.”

He chuckled. “It just reminds us that the world is smaller than we think.”

You smiled faintly, glancing at him, then looking away. “Yeah, smaller, but still big enough to surprise us.”

You walked in silence for a bit longer, both feeling it. Neither brought up the idea of meeting again, but both knew they’d remember this unexpected encounter. Finally, you stopped near the edge of the campus. “I guess I should head to class,” you said, trying to sound casual, though your heart felt lighter than it had in days.

He nodded, a small smile still on his face. “Yeah, me too. See you around, (name).”

“See you,” you echoed, and with a final glance, you parted on separate paths, but a quiet thread now tied between you both.

♥️

The day had been loud in a way that clung to you long after classes ended. Teachers talking, chairs scraping, friends laughing across tables, well, none of it was bad, yet somehow it felt like too much. By the time the last bell rang, your head felt crowded with thoughts that didn’t have anywhere to go. Instead of heading home, your feet brought you to the quieter side of the science building.

There was a staircase leading to the rooftop, though the door at the top was always locked. Students rarely bothered climbing it because there wasn’t really a reason to, but the landing just below the door had a tall window overlooking the soccer field. That small space was enough.

You sat on one of the steps and leaned your head back against the wall. Outside, the soccer team practiced loudly, their voices distant and carried by the wind. From here, it sounded far enough away not to feel overwhelming. For a while, you stayed there. Your fingers traced the seam of your sleeve as your breathing slowly evened out. It wasn’t happiness exactly, but it was quieter than the day had been.

Then the door at the bottom of the stairwell creaked open. Footsteps echoed upward. The sound bounced lightly off the walls. You lifted your head slightly, listening as the steps climbed closer. A moment later, someone appeared. Huh… Jungwon?

He stopped halfway up the stairs when he saw you sitting there. His hand rested on the railing, surprise seen across his face. For a second, neither of you spoke. “Oh,” he said quietly.

You sat up a little straighter.

“Oh.”

Then he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I didn’t know you came here,” he admitted.

You glanced around the stairwell briefly before answering. “I didn’t know you did either.”

He stayed standing on the step for another second. The hesitation was obvious enough that you noticed it. “You can sit here if you want,” you said, nodding slightly beside you. “I don’t mind.”

He seemed a little surprised by the offer, but he walked up the rest of the steps and sat down beside you. His backpack rested between his feet, and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. The quiet returned almost immediately. Through the window, the soccer team shouted to each other across the field. Their voices were heard through the glass. You glanced at him after a moment. “Bad day?” you asked softly.

His shoulders lifted slightly before dropping again.

“…Yeah.”

You nodded slowly.

“What happened?”

He stared at the step beneath his shoes before answering. “Nothing specific,” he said after a moment. “That’s the annoying part. It’s like… I keep doing all these things,” he continued. “Classes, practice, hanging out with people. I’m busy all the time, but sometimes, it feels like none of it actually means anything.”

You watched the sunlight shift across the floor.

“I get that,” you said softly.

He glanced at you, a little surprised.

“You do?”

You shrugged lightly.

“Sometimes the day ends, and I feel exhausted,” you said. “Though, when I think about it, I didn’t really do anything that mattered.”

He let out a small laugh. “Yeah. Exactly.” After a moment, he spoke again. “I didn’t even realize I was walking here,” he said quietly.

You tilted your head. “Here?”

He nodded slightly. “I needed somewhere quiet,” he said. “Guess I accidentally picked the same place as you.”

You looked around the stairwell, then back toward the window. “Well,” you said after a moment, “good accident.” He smiled faintly at that. He shifted slightly on the step, glancing out the window at the soccer field. “So you come here often when you need to think?” he asked.

You shrugged. “Not really. It’s only whenever the day feels too loud. This place is quiet, at least. It doesn’t ask anything from me.”

He nodded slowly, as if understanding more than the words said. “Yeah, I get that. Sometimes I wander without a reason, to not feel… stuck.”

You looked at him then, a little surprised. “You wander a lot?”

“Too much,” he admitted with a small smile. “I don’t always know why I end up where I do.”

You laughed softly, the sound light in the stairwell. “Sounds familiar,” you said. “I do the same thing. Only I don’t usually find people… here.”

He glanced at you. “Yeah… lucky me,” he muttered, almost to himself.

You rolled your eyes playfully, but you weren’t annoyed. “Lucky you? I’m the one who has to deal with your random company.”

He laughed. “Fair enough,” he said. “Although, I like it.”

You nodded. “Yeah, I like that too.”

A few moments of comfortable silence passed, neither of you needing to fill it. Then he glanced at you, slightly hesitant. “Do you ever feel like you’re just going through the motions?”

You sighed softly, looking down at your hands. “All the time. Sometimes I even feel invisible. It’s as if I’m here, but nothing I do matters. And then I come here, and it’s like someone might notice, just by being here.”

He studied your expression for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said quietly. “It’s exhausting, doing everything and still feeling like you’re nothing.”

You looked up at him then, caught off guard by the honesty. “Yeah… exactly,” you whispered. He shifted a little closer, not touching you, just sharing the space. “I don’t know why I told you all this,” he said. “But I’m glad I did.”

You smiled faintly. “Me too,” you said softly, feeling the heaviness in your chest lighten ever so slightly.

He leaned back slightly against the wall, running a hand through his hair. “Hey, I don’t usually do this,” he started, “but do you want to… exchange numbers? Maybe talk sometimes? Get to know each other a little?”

You were caught off guard. “Uh… talk sometimes?” you echoed.

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at his hands for a moment. “I don’t know… it’s weird to say, but… I feel like… maybe we’re supposed to… know each other better. You know? Since… well, we’ve already shared… that night.” You chewed the inside of your cheek. That night… You hadn’t expected it to matter this much, and yet… the thought made your chest tighten.

“Yeah…” you whispered finally, a small smile forming. “I… I’d like that.”

His face brightened. “Cool. I’ll send you a message later, then. Nothing big, only talking. No pressure.”

“Yeah,” you said softly. “No pressure.”

He glanced at you one last time before reaching for his phone. “I’m glad I found you here today,” he said.

You met his gaze and nodded. “Me too,” you said.

♥️

You got home and dropped your bag by the door. Changing into your soft, worn pajamas, you sank onto your bed and stared at your phone. The day had been tiring, but for some reason, it didn’t feel as heavy anymore. Your phone buzzed. His name flashed across the screen.

Jungwon: Hey! made it home okay?

you typed back

You: Yeah, you?

Jungwon: Same. Long day

You: Definitely. I want to crash now 🙃

Jungwon: Me too ✊

A moment passed. Then,

Jungwon: Random question

Jungwon: Do you wanna go to that store again? Ya know the one that’s open 24/7

You glanced down at your pajamas and laughed quietly.

You: I’m already in my weird PJs…

Jungwon: Same, but I don’t mind. You still wanna go?

You hesitated for a moment, then typed back.

You: Yeah… okay.

Jungwon: Cool

You slipped on your jacket and laced up your shoes, stepping outside for the first time since changing. The night air was cool, brushing against your face. You walked slowly, letting the breeze fill the quiet spaces in your chest. For some reason, the thought of Jungwon, the sudden invite, the randomness of it all, didn’t bother you at all.

Pushing open the door to the store, the sound of the refrigerators and the faint smell of fried snacks, and there he was. Your eyes landed on Jungwon immediately, jacket on over PJs, hair a little mussed, looking slightly out of place but calm. He glanced up, and his face brightened just a little. “Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey,” you replied, feeling your lips twitch into a small smile.

You both wandered the aisles, the faint pop music around you, picking up snacks almost absentmindedly, then paying for it. Chips, candy, maybe something sweet to wash down the small bottles of soda. Nothing extravagant. You carried your snacks toward the small empty table near the window. Jungwon followed, balancing his own choices in his hands. You both sat down, the table feeling oddly like a little island away from the rest of the world. For a moment, neither of you spoke. You opened your bag of chips and nudged them toward him. “Here, if you want,” you said casually.

He picked one up, smirked, and said, “Thanks. You didn’t have to.”

“You were the one who suggested coming,” you replied, crunching a chip and leaning back slightly in your chair.

He laughed quietly, a soft sound that made the space feel warmer. “Fair point.”

The two of you sat there for a few minutes, eating and letting the quiet settle comfortably around you. Outside, cars passed by, but here it was just you and Jungwon, and the simple feeling of being somewhere neither of you had to pretend. “You’re actually okay with being in PJs out here?” you asked, glancing at him.

“Yeah,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t mind. It feels easier this way.” You nodded, thinking how strange it was to feel this normal, this calm, sitting across from Jungwon, who was a stranger a few weeks ago. You slid the bag of chips toward the middle of the table and glanced at what he bought. “You really picked the sweetest snacks here,” you said, tapping the candy bar he placed down.

He looked down at it and shrugged. “Long day,” he said. “Sugar fixes most things.”

“You’re going to crash later,” you replied, pushing a bottle of water toward him. “At least drink this too.”

He chuckled softly but took the water anyway. “Okay, that’s actually good advice.” Jungwon continued, “So,” he said after a bite of his snack, “what do you usually do when your day gets too much?”

You thought for a second before answering. “I walk,” you said. “Not fast. It’s just until my head clears a bit.”

He nodded, probably storing the idea somewhere. “That’s actually better than what I do.”

“What do you do?”

“I just added more things to my schedule,” Jungwon admitted. “It’s like if I’m busy enough, I won’t think about it.”

You gave him a look across the table. “That sounds like the worst strategy ever.”

He laughed under his breath. “Yeah, I’m starting to realize that.”

“Maybe try doing less for one day,” you suggested. “You should actually start choosing what you want to do instead of everything at once.”

He tilted his head a little, considering it. “You make it sound simple.”

“It’s not, but you can try,” you said.

He rested his elbow on the table. “Alright,” Jungwon said. “Then what about you?”

“What about me?”

“If walking doesn’t work,” he said, “what’s the backup plan?”

You thought of his question for a while.

“I don’t know,” you admitted.

He nodded toward the snack in your hand. “Maybe start with eating properly instead of sitting on the ground at four in the morning.”

You laughed unexpectedly at that.

“Okay,” you said, pointing at him. “That’s fair.”

“See?” he said, leaning back slightly. “Advice goes both ways.”

The conversation drifted from there. Little things, small suggestions, random stories about school and people you both knew but never really noticed before. Neither of you was trying too hard to keep the conversation going. It just moved on its own. At one point, you reached for the chips again and realized Jungwon had quietly pushed them closer to your side of the table.

You both finished most of the snacks without realizing it. The wrappers sat loosely on the table, and the bottles were nearly empty. You gathered the empty wrappers into one pile and stood up. He followed your lead, tossing the trash into the bin near the counter. The cashier barely glanced up as the two of you stepped back outside. The air felt cooler than before. You zipped your jacket a little higher while Jungwon shoved his hands into his pockets. For a second, neither of you moved, then he nodded toward the sidewalk. “Walk?” he asked.

You shrugged lightly. “Sure.”

So you started walking. The streets were mostly empty at that hour, with only the occasional car passing, and the streetlights across the pavement were visible. Your footsteps matched without either of you trying. He kicked a small pebble along the sidewalk absentmindedly. “You know,” he said after a moment, “I don’t usually stay up this late walking around.”

You glanced at him. “Really? You seemed pretty experienced.”

He laughed. “That was a one-time thing.”

You nodded slowly, looking ahead again. A few steps later, Jungwon spoke again, a little more hesitant this time.

“Do you think we could do this again sometime?”

You looked at him, slightly confused. “Walk?”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Or the snack thing or just talking like this.” He gestured vaguely around the quiet street. “Not like a big plan or anything,” he added quickly. “Perhaps sometimes.”

You thought about it for a moment. It didn’t feel like a big decision.

“Yeah,” you said.

He glanced over at you, a small smile forming.

“Yeah?”

You nodded. “Yeah. Sometimes is fine.”

Jungwon looked forward again, the smile staying on his face as the two of you kept walking, your footsteps continuing down the road.

♥️

Days started slipping by faster than you expected. Not because life suddenly became busy or exciting, but because somewhere between classes, late-night walks, and conversations, time just moved differently.

You and Jungwon started meeting as if it had always been normal. Sometimes it was the same 24-hour store, sometimes it was walking down the street with drinks in your hands. The night was always calmer than the day, and both of you seemed to understand that without needing to explain it. Most of the time, you didn’t even talk about anything serious.

You’d complain about school, laugh about small things that happened during the day, or point out random stuff on the street. Sometimes he’d tell you about something stupid his friends did, and you’d shake your head while trying not to laugh too loud in the quiet neighborhood.

During school, you’d occasionally run into Jungwon, too. Passing by near the courtyard, sitting somewhere quiet during free time, or walking together for a bit before heading to your next class. It wasn’t planned most of the time, but it kept happening somehow. And after school, when both of you were free, the walking continued.

Side by side, sometimes talking, sometimes listening to the sound of your footsteps and the wind brushing past. The city at night felt slower, giving people space to breathe.

You noticed something after a while.

The heaviness you used to carry around every day didn’t disappear. Your thoughts still wandered the same way, the same questions about what you were doing and where you were going still showed up in quiet moments, but it didn’t sit on your chest the same way anymore. Somehow, sharing time with him made it feel lighter.

It’s not like Jungwon solved anything. Not like he fixed the things you struggled with. Though when the two of you walked together or sat somewhere with cheap snacks and quiet conversation, the weight didn’t feel like it belonged to you alone anymore.

It was late afternoon. You sat on the low concrete steps near the fence in the school courts. Students were scattered around the field, some finishing practice, others watching and talking. You rested your chin on your hand, eyes drifting toward the court where Jungwon was still playing.

He moved quickly across the floor, sneakers squeaking with every pivot. You didn’t really understand all the plays, but you could tell he was focused. Now and then, he’d glance toward the sidelines, as if he were checking if practice was almost over.

When the whistle finally blew, the players started gathering their things. Jungwon wiped his face with the edge of his shirt before spotting you sitting there. His expression changed immediately, from surprised to amused. “You’ve been here this whole time?” he asked as he walked over, grabbing his bag.

You shrugged lightly. “I had time.”

He slung the bag over his shoulder, still catching his breath. “You could’ve texted. I would’ve finished faster.”

“That would’ve been unfair to your team,” you replied.

He laughed under his breath at that, shaking his head a little. “You sound like my coach.”

You stood up from the steps and brushed your hands against your jacket. The sky had started turning that soft orange that meant evening wasn’t far away. “So,” he said, adjusting the strap of his bag. “Walking?”

You nodded like it was obvious. The two of you left the school grounds together, stepping onto the sidewalk while the noise from the courts faded behind you. The air outside felt cooler now, and the streets were starting to quiet down as people headed home. Jungwon walked beside you, swinging his bag slightly. “You really didn’t have to wait,” he said after a few minutes.

“I know,” you answered.

He glanced at you briefly, then looked forward again.

“Still did, though.”

You shrugged. “I was already there.”

He let out a small laugh. The two of you kept walking under the dimming sky, your pace naturally matching. The conversation drifted in and out, small things and random observations. Somehow, the walk home felt shorter than usual.

♥️

The room was quiet except for the sound of the clock somewhere in the house. You sat on the couch, knees pulled slightly toward you, staring out the window without really seeing anything. The sky outside had already darkened, the glass reflecting your own still figure at you. Your thoughts moved in slow circles.

Why am I this tired?

It’s not a tiredness that sleep could fix, or something that sat somewhere deeper, but it felt like even small things are heavier than they should. You tried to shake it off, pressing your fingers against your temple, but the feeling stayed. Your chest tightened a little. You wiped your face quickly when you realized tears had already slipped down. “Crying again, huh,” you muttered to yourself, letting out a small breath that sounded almost like a laugh.

Across the city, Jungwon sat on the edge of his bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His room was dim, the only light coming from the lamp near his desk. His basketball bag was still on the floor where he dropped it earlier. It had been one of those days.

Nothing had gone particularly wrong, but something still felt off. He kept thinking about everything he was doing, practice, school, friends, and how none of it seemed to answer the question he kept asking himself.

Who am I actually trying to be?

He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at his phone on the desk. For a moment, he hesitated, thumb hovering above the screen. Then he called you. Your phone buzzed beside you on the couch. You quickly wiped your face again before picking it up, taking a breath before answering. “Hello?” you said, trying to sound normal.

“Hey,” his voice came through the speaker. “What are you doing?”

You looked back at the dark window. “Nothing much. I’m sitting around.” There was a small pause on the line. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you replied quickly. “I’m fine.”

Another silence.

He exhaled quietly. “You’re crying.”

Your grip on the phone tightened a little. “I’m not-”

“You are,” he said gently. Not accusing, but only certain. For a moment, you didn’t say anything. Then he spoke again.

“I’m coming over.”

Your head snapped up slightly. “Wait, you don’t have to-”

“I’ll be there in a bit,” Jungwon said.

Before you could protest again, the line went quiet. You stared at your phone for a moment, and somewhere in the middle of the heaviness sitting in your chest, there was a small thought. He noticed.

You stayed by the window a little longer after the call ended, hugging your arms around yourself. Every thought in your head seemed louder than the last, echoing the same question over and over. Why am I so tired?

Minutes passed before a soft knock sounded from the door. You wiped your face quickly, though the tears kept slipping down anyway. When you opened it, Jungwon was already standing there, slightly out of breath, looking as if he had rushed the whole way. The moment he saw your face, your swollen eyes, your trembling lips, his expression fell. Before you could say anything, he pulled you into his arms.

His hug was tight, warm, and immediate. One hand pressed gently against the back of your head, shielding you from the world. For a moment, you just stood there in the doorway, frozen in his hold. “I’m so exhausted,” you whispered against his shoulder, your voice cracking. “I don’t even know why everything feels so heavy lately.” Your fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt as another sob slipped out. “No matter what I do, I still feel this tired.”

He didn’t interrupt you. Jungwon just held you a little closer, steady and firm, like he was making sure you wouldn’t drift anywhere. “You don’t have to explain everything right now,” he murmured. “Stay like this for a bit.”

You eventually ended up on the couch, though neither of you remembered exactly how. His arms were still wrapped around you, one around your shoulders while the other rested protectively over your hands. Your face was buried against his chest, your breathing uneven as the sobs kept slipping out. Time passed in a blur.

Maybe it was thirty minutes. Maybe even an hour. You honestly couldn’t tell. The only thing you were aware of was the steady rise and fall of his breathing and the gentle way his hand kept brushing over your hair, slow and patient. You cried the whole time, and he stayed there through all of it, never once pulling away, never once asking you to stop. And somehow, in the middle of all that warmth, the world didn’t feel quite as unbearable as it had a while ago.

You lifted your head from his chest, sniffing, eyes red and puffy. Your voice was small. “I’m scared,” you admitted. “Of… of feeling like this. Of everything being too much.” He moved slightly so he could look at you, his hand gently cupping your cheek. “Hey,” he murmured, “it’s okay. You’re not alone.”

You tried to steady yourself. “I… I don’t even know why it hits me like this sometimes. I get up, I do everything, I try… and yet… I still feel like I’m drowning.” He tightened his arms around you just a little more, holding you firmly but not forcefully. “I get it,” he said quietly. “I don’t have all the answers either, but I’m here. You don’t have to face it by yourself.”

You sniffled again. “It’s scary, you know? To feel like this and not have a way out.”

“I know, but sometimes you don’t need a way out. Sometimes you need someone to stay with you. That’s all I’m doing,” he said, voice steady and soft. You let out a shaky breath, resting your head back against his chest. You sniffled again, hesitating for a moment before the words escaped. “…Can you… stay tonight?” you whispered. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

He paused, then nodded without a word. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I’ll stay.” You let out a quiet breath, relief settling in your chest even as the tears still prickled your eyes. “Thank you,” you murmured, barely audible, curling a little closer against him.

He adjusted slightly, making sure you were comfortable on the couch, his arms still wrapped around you protectively. “No need to thank me,” he said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

For a long while, you lay there, the night settling around you. His presence stayed steady, an anchor against everything that had been too loud in your head. You didn’t say anything more, but you didn’t need to.

♥️

You stirred slowly, the first light of morning creeping through the curtains. Blinking a few times, you realized you were no longer on the couch. You were in your bed, and he was lying there next to you, still asleep. For a moment, you just watched him, careful not to move too much.

Thump… thump…

Your chest fluttered unexpectedly at the rhythm of your heartbeat, a strange new feeling prickling. Your face was still swollen from all the crying, and you traced a finger across your cheek, noticing the warmth of tears. Yet somehow… with him there, it didn’t feel heavy anymore. The exhaustion, the worry, the ache…it all felt softer. The sun peeked through the window, scattering pale gold across the room. You exhaled slowly, letting yourself sink back into the warmth. Everything felt like it might just be okay.

He stirred beside you, a low groan escaping him as he stretched lazily, still half in that sleepy haze. His eyes blinked open, meeting yours for the first time that morning, and his gaze somehow made the room feel warmer. “Morning,” he said, his voice low and rough from sleep.

“Morning,” you replied quietly, your fingers nervously twisting the edge of the blanket. Don’t make it weird… just breathe. He moved slightly closer, not crowding you, but enough to make his presence reassuring. “Sleep okay?” he asked gently, his tone careful, as if he could feel your still-fragile state.

You hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah… better than last night,” you admitted.

He nodded. “Good,” he said, brushing a loose strand of hair from your face. “That’s all that matters right now.”

You moved a little on the bed, trying not to wake him, then finally cleared your throat. “Uh… do you want breakfast?” you asked, your voice still soft from sleep. He stretched his arms above his head before sitting up slowly. “Breakfast?” he repeated, his voice that same low, heavy comfort you’d gotten used to. “Yeah… I could eat. You making something?”

You nodded. “I think I have some eggs and bread. Maybe we can keep it simple.” He smiled faintly, that lazy, half-awake smile that made your chest flutter. Why does that feel like that? “Simple’s fine,” he said. “After last night, I don’t think I can handle anything fancy.”

You laughed softly. “Okay… simple it is,” you said, swinging your legs over the side of the bed and standing. Your feet felt cold against the floor, and you shivered slightly as you padded toward the kitchen. He followed a moment later, still rubbing at his eyes, hair mussed from sleep. “So… you cook a lot?” he asked, leaning against the counter as you started cracking eggs into a pan.

“Not really,” you admitted, stirring gently. “Mostly when I have to, but I can manage a simple breakfast.” You glanced at him, noticing the way he watched. “What about you? Can you cook?”

He chuckled. “Depends. I can manage ramen or toast. That’s about it.”

You shook your head, smiling despite yourself. “Figures,” you said, sliding the pan onto the stove. “I’m going to have to teach you some things then.” He raised an eyebrow. “Are you volunteering, or…?”

“Of course I’m volunteering,” you said lightly, flipping an egg with a practiced hand. “Someone has to make sure you don’t starve.” He laughed softly, leaning closer to watch you work. “Okay… then I guess I’m in good hands.”

The two of you moved around the small kitchen. You caught yourself glancing at him more than once, noticing how his messy hair caught the sunlight, the way his shoulders relaxed when he leaned against the counter. By the time the eggs were ready, he had pulled a chair over to the small table, sitting down with a smile. “Thanks for this,” he said, almost under his breath.

You set the plates in front of him and took a seat across from him, both of you quiet for a moment. You picked up your fork, feeling that small flutter of comfort again. This morning wasn’t perfect; your face was still puffy from crying, the heavy thoughts from yesterday were still there, but with him here, with this simple breakfast and companionship, it felt easier to breathe. This is nice… don’t overthink it. “Yeah,” you said softly, almost to yourself. “this is nice.”

He looked up at you. “Yeah,” he agreed, smiling softly at you.

The rest of the day went by, almost lazily, with him still there. He wasn’t sure if he was overstaying his welcome. He knew he had somewhere to be, things to do, but every time he glanced at you, it seemed like you genuinely wanted him there.

You moved through your small routines, tidying up a little, putting on music softly, making tea, and he followed along, sometimes helping, sometimes watching. The two of you existing in the same space, talking in little bursts about random things: a show you liked, silly childhood stories. You laughed at a joke he made about his own clumsiness, and he laughed too. Small gestures like him handing you the remote, or you passing him a blanket, felt meaningful without needing explanation.

At one point, you both ended up sitting on the couch again, sharing a comic or a game on your phone. He looked at you then, and he felt at ease. He wasn’t pretending to be anything; he didn’t have to hide his own exhaustion or worries. This is… okay. “You know,” he said after a while, voice soft, “I’m glad I came.”

You glanced at him. “Yeah, me too.”

The afternoon faded into evening, and somehow, just by being there, laughing a little, sharing small stories, exchanging advice, the two of you bonded in ways neither of you had expected. Not everything was solved, and the struggles weren’t gone, but somehow…somehow…the world felt a little lighter when you were together. You hesitated for a moment, then softly said, “Hey…”

He looked up at you, eyes curious. “Yeah?”

You swallowed. “I’m really glad I met you.” Don’t mess this up.

His lips curved into a smile. “I’m glad I met you, too,” he said. Before you could think twice, you leaned in, and he wrapped his arms around you again. It was gentle. Your cheek pressed against his chest. You stayed like that for a long while, holding each other, letting the warmth of the hug speak everything words couldn’t.

♥️

He was watching you move around. Even now, after everything, after all the tears and long nights, Jungwon feels the pull in him that tightens when you’re out of reach. He doesn’t want to be away from you. Not just tonight, not just in this moment, but in general.

I don’t want to be away from her.

He thinks about the nights you’ve spent talking, the walks, the small silences that feel more alive than any conversation with anyone else. Every time you laugh, every time you sigh, every tiny habit of yours, it draws him closer. He realizes that he can’t imagine going through his days without the thought of you in them, without your presence softening the edges of his own struggles.

Why does it feel like this already matters so much?

Even when you’re just sitting there, staring out a window or lost in thought, he feels this strange warmth in his chest, where everything is slightly better simply because you exist in it. He catches himself hoping you’ll look at him, smile, or even just let him sit nearby. The idea of leaving, even for an hour, feels wrong, where he’d be abandoning something he can’t name yet.

If I leave, it feels like I lose something I can’t replace.

It scares him a little.

Because he knows he’s feeling something stronger than friendship, something that makes him stay a moment longer than, something that makes him want to protect you, support you, and be close to you no matter what. He doesn’t say it out loud yet, not even to himself, but every time you glance up and meet his eyes, that silent thought is there: I don’t want to be away from her.

I don’t want this to stop.

The realization settles over him, quiet but undeniable. He isn’t rushing. He isn’t forcing anything, but for the first time, he understands that some connections, like this one, like the one he has with you, are worth staying for, worth guarding, worth letting grow patiently.

Tonight, like every night that follows, he knows he won’t let distance come between you, not if he can help it.

One day, the two of you wandered along the school grounds, sneakers brushing against the concrete as the cool air brushed your cheeks. At one point, he offered his jacket when a breeze swept past, and you accepted without thinking, wrapping it around your shoulders.

Later, sitting on the small steps near the school garden, he nudged you slightly with his shoulder. “You’ve gotten better at smiling,” he said teasingly. “You’ve gotten better at noticing,” you shot back, and both of you laughed softly.

Days passed into weeks, and you noticed something subtle but undeniable. The exhaustion that used to weigh down every step didn’t hit as hard anymore. Waking up wasn’t just a repetitive cycle of “eat, sleep, go to school”. It was moments to actually live in, small choices that mattered, even if only to yourself. Walking to school with Jungwon by your side, chatting in between classes, laughing at small things, it all began to feel like a life you were shaping, not just repeating.

You could look at your day and think, Okay… I did something today. I mattered today. Even if it was as small as helping him with his jacket or sharing a snack, it wasn’t meaningless. Your routines were now intertwined with purpose, connection, and subtle joy.

then there was him. Being with you forced Jungwon to slow down, to reflect, and to really see himself. He realized that all the roles he had taken on. Sports, clubs, and expectations weren’t truly defining him. Watching you navigate your own struggles, seeing your resilience, your honesty, and your small triumphs, he began asking himself questions he had avoided for years: What can I actually do to overcome this? Who am I beyond this?

He learned that he could like things just for himself, that mistakes didn’t make him weak, and that vulnerability wasn’t a flaw. He noticed how his moods softened when he saw you, how your small habits and the way you carried yourself made him feel anchored. The moments, the laughter, the late-night talks, they weren’t just comforting but were mirrors, showing him parts of himself he hadn’t understood before.

She makes things feel clearer… even when nothing is solved.

Slowly, day by day, the confusion that had haunted him began to fade, replaced by clarity that wasn’t immediate but steady. The more he discovered himself, the more he realized he didn’t want to face life without you. You had become his safe place, not in the way he could comfort you, but in how being near you reminded him that he could face himself, too.

Meanwhile, your own struggles, though still present, felt lighter. They didn’t vanish, but now they were shared, understood, and manageable. The cycles of exhaustion and self-doubt that had once trapped you were now punctuated by laughter, walks, small gestures of care, and the knowledge that someone understood you without needing you to explain everything.

It wasn’t perfection. There were still nights when tears came unbidden, or mornings when your chest felt heavy again, but the difference was now there was someone beside you who wouldn’t leave. Seeing Jungwon grow, seeing him face his own questions and fears, you learned that struggles could be overcome, not vanished, but softened, when shared with the right person.

By the time the sun went low one evening, both of you knew, without saying it, that life didn’t have to be a cycle of exhaustion anymore. You were still figuring things out, still learning, still vulnerable, but now, you felt like you were moving forward, together.

♥️

You were sitting on the steps outside school with your friend, the late afternoon sun warming your face. She nudged you and smiled. “Hey, you seem happier these days. I’m glad.”

You looked down at your hands for a moment, a small smile tugging at your lips. “Yeah, I guess I am,” you said softly, almost shyly. “Thanks. It’s been better lately.”

Her eyes narrowed playfully, noticing something. “Is it him? The one I keep hearing about?” she teased, a knowing grin spreading across her face. You felt your cheeks heat up slightly, glancing away for a moment. “…Hm,” you murmured, voice quieter, almost shy. “Maybe… sort of.”

Your friend laughed softly. “Sort of?” she pressed. “Come on, spill. You’ve been acting differently. Smiling more, laughing easier. There’s definitely something there.”

You laughed softly, shrugging and trying to play it cool, but your heart was doing its little flutter. “Well… it’s… nice,” you admitted finally, voice low. “Being around him… it feels lighter. You know? Comfortable.” Your friend raised an eyebrow. “Huh. Sounds like someone’s found their safe place.”

You nodded. “Yeah… something like that.” Even saying it out loud made you feel warmer. You didn’t need to label it fully yet; knowing that he was there and that you could be yourself was enough for now.

He really does make things feel easier…

♥️

It was late when your phone buzzed beside you.

Jungwon: Are you awake?

You squinted at the screen, confused. It was 4 am again, the same strange hour when everything always seemed silent. You frowned slightly, remembering how you first met him at the store.

You: Yeah. Why?

The typing bubble appeared almost immediately.

Jungwon: Can we meet? The store.

You stared at the message for a moment. He usually texted casually, but this felt rushed.

You: Right now?

Jungwon: Yeah… if you don’t mind.

A few minutes later, you were pulling on your jacket and shoes, still wondering why he sounded so strange. The streets were quiet as you walked. When you pushed open the store door, the small bell chimed softly. He was already there. Jungwon stood near the instant noodles shelf, hands in his pockets, glancing around, probably waiting for a while. The memory of the first time you had talked, late at night, made the place feel strangely comforting. “You’re early,” you said as you walked up beside him.

He turned quickly, almost startled. “Oh- hey.”

You narrowed your eyes. “…Why do you look like that?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You seem as if you’re about to confess to a crime or something.”

He let out a short laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “You know what? just get the noodles.” You grabbed one cup while he grabbed another. When you both reached the counter, you instinctively pulled out your wallet. “I’ll pay,” he said quickly. You looked at him. “Since when?” He shrugged awkwardly. “Just let me.”

Outside, instead of sitting at the tables, he nodded toward the pavement. “Can we eat there?” he asked. You were surprised at him. “Oh?”

He nodded. You stared for a second before laughing under your breath. “You’re weird tonight.” He grinned sheepishly. “I know,” he said quietly.

Still, you both sat down on the pavement. The noodles steamed softly between your hands as you ate in silence for a moment, but Jungwon kept glancing at you. Once. Twice. Then again, each time you noticed, your stomach fluttered. You stopped mid-bite and looked at him. “…What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Jungwon.”

He sighed softly. For a second, he looked like he might change his mind. Then suddenly, he reached out and grabbed your hand. Before you could react, he placed your hand flat against his chest. Your eyes widened. “…What are you doing?”

You could feel it immediately.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

His heart was beating fast, ridiculously fast, and you realized how nervous he actually was. He looked away, embarrassed, his ears turning red. “That’s… because of you,” he muttered quietly. You slowly set your noodle cup down beside you. “…What?”

Jungwon exhaled slowly. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this without sounding stupid,” he admitted. “Although every time I see you, it just gets worse.” You were still staring at him, your hand still against his chest, heart beating unevenly. “I don’t want to be somewhere you’re not,” he said. “I realized that a while ago.” His fingers tightened slightly around yours. “It’s annoying because now, everything I want to do somehow includes you.”

Your chest felt warm, your mind racing to catch up.

“…Jungwon.”

He looked at you finally, nervous but honest.

“I’ve said this many times, but I’m really glad I met you,” he continued. “That night. The snack. The crying. All of it.” He let out a small, breathy laugh. “Now, I think I’d be pretty miserable if you disappeared.”

You stared at him for a moment, then laughed softly under your breath. “…You dragged me out at four in the morning just to say that?” He groaned, covering part of his face. “See? This is why I didn’t want to say it.”

You shook your head, smiling, then gently squeezed his hand. “I’ve also told you this many times, but I’ll say it again, I’m glad I met you, too,” you said. His eyes lifted again. “I didn’t expect you either,” you admitted. “Somehow, you became part of everything.” You paused slightly, then added softly, “I don’t think I’d like it if you weren’t around anymore.”

He stared at you for a second, stunned.

“…Really?”

You nodded once.

Then he laughed softly, almost in disbelief, running a hand through his hair.

“Can I kiss you?”

The question made your stomach flip. You looked at him, cheeks warm, then gave a small nod.

“…Yeah.”

He leaned forward slowly, still holding your hand, and kissed you gently. It was warm, a little nervous, a little unsure.

When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against yours, laughing quietly. “…I can’t believe I made you sit on the ground at four in the morning for that.” You smiled softly, letting your fingers squeeze his hand. “…I didn’t mind,” you whispered.

He gave a small, relieved smile, still keeping his forehead against yours. “…Good,” he said softly. “I don’t want to be anywhere else right now.”

You felt your chest flutter. The noodles forgotten beside you, it was only this.

The two of you, together.

♥️

He walked home slowly. For the first time in a long time, his mind wasn’t racing with confusion; it was calm, focused, in a way that felt right. He realized he knew himself better than before, not because everything was solved, but because he had someone who made him notice who he truly was.

I think I’m starting to understand myself because of her.

Thinking of you made him smile without even trying. The way you had squeezed his hand, the way you hadn’t pulled away when he rested your hand on his chest, it all replayed gently in his mind. It wasn’t about grand gestures or words; it was the moments, the subtle closeness, that told him exactly how he felt.

She makes everything feel quieter in a good way.

By the time he got home, he felt lighter, but not in a way that erased struggles. It was shared with someone who mattered. He realized he wanted to do more than be near you; he wanted to build little pieces of life together, small things that mattered to both of you.

The next days were full of ordinary yet meaningful moments, and he cherished them all. He could just be him, with you. You were the part of the world he wanted to understand, the person he wanted to learn from, and the one who made all the small, ordinary moments feel extraordinary.

Even when struggles came, they didn’t feel like he had to carry it all alone anymore. You were there, sometimes talking, sometimes sitting beside him, and he began to understand what it meant to share life. He could laugh at himself, plan little surprises, or walk beside you without thinking too hard, and that simplicity was everything.

♥️

You were sitting on the bleachers, backpack beside you, watching him practice. His movements were focused and precise, but every so often, he glanced toward you, where he wanted to make sure you were still there. He jogged over after finishing a round, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Hey,” he said, a little out of breath, but his eyes lit up when he saw you. “Did you just watch the whole thing?”

You shrugged, smiling softly. “I was bored, and I kind of like seeing you in action,” you admitted, leaning back on your hands. “It’s interesting.” He laughed, then sat beside you, brushing a few stray hairs from his forehead. “Interesting, hm? That’s one way to put it,” he teased lightly.

You laughed softly, looking at him, and before you realized, he leaned closer and pressed a quick, gentle kiss to your cheek. “Hey,” you whispered, startled.

“I said I’d show you,” he murmured, grin faint against your skin. “But also…” His tone softened, serious now. “…I just want you to know, you’re…the love of my life.”

You were completely taken aback, cheeks heating instantly. “Excuse me?!”

He shrugged a little, suddenly looking almost shy despite the boldness of what he had just said. “You heard me.” You stared at him, mouth slightly open, trying to process how casually he said it. “…Wait,” you murmured, laughing softly in disbelief. “So… what are we now?”

Jungwon looked at you for a moment before smiling. “We’re us…but yeah. You’re my girlfriend,” he said quietly. He glanced down at your hand resting beside you before slowly intertwining his fingers with yours. “I just know I want this,” he admitted. “You beside me. Walking home together. All of it.”

You looked at your intertwined hands, then back at him, cheeks still warm. “That sounded suspiciously sweet.”

He laughed softly, shoulders shaking slightly. “Don’t ruin the moment.”

You couldn’t help laughing too, leaning lightly against his shoulder. “So this is really happening then,” you murmured.

“Yeah,” he said, turning his head slightly toward yours. “It is.”

♥️

You slumped onto the couch, shoulders tight, books and papers scattered across the floor. Your fingers fidgeted with the edge of your sleeve, jaw clenched, and a soft sigh escaped before you could stop it. Jungwon was there before you even asked. He sat behind you, hands hovering over your shoulders, watching you. “You’ve been at this for hours,” he said softly. “You’re tense. Let me.”

At first, you hesitated, a little embarrassed, but when his hands finally pressed into your shoulders, the tension in your body seemed to melt just a fraction. His touch was firm but gentle, and you felt your racing thoughts start to quiet. “School’s been too much,” you murmured, leaning slightly back into him, your voice low.

“I know,” he said quietly, one hand massaging, the other resting lightly on your arm. “You don’t have to do all of it alone.”

You let your head fall back against the couch, the warmth of him pressing into your back grounding you. He moved slightly, pulling a blanket over both of you. “Better?” he asked softly, fingers still working into the knots in your muscles. You nodded, closing your eyes, letting a small, tired smile slip onto your face. “Yeah. This helps,” you whispered.

He didn’t answer with words. He kept going, letting the silence and the comfort speak for themselves.

“I like this,” you murmured.

“I do too,” he replied, lips brushing the top of your head. “We should do this more often.”

You laughed softly. “Yeah. I’d like that,” you said. For a long while, you two stayed like that. You could feel the stress of life slowly give way to a comfort, one that had taken months to grow but now felt unshakable. Jungwon tightened his hold slightly. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered.

You smiled, pressing your cheek lightly against his chest. “…Good,” you whispered back. “…because I don’t want you to.”

♥️

A year had passed…

though sometimes it didn’t feel that long. The staircase leading to the rooftop still looked the same. You and Jungwon sat shoulder to shoulder, sharing one earbud. A soft song played between you, the sound barely louder than the distant chatter of students somewhere below.

Your legs stretched down the step, your bag resting beside you. You glanced at him slightly. “Do you remember the first time we sat here?” you asked quietly. He nodded without hesitation. “Yeah.” That was all he said, but it was enough because you both remembered. The bad days. The nights that felt too heavy. The talks went longer than either of you had planned. “Feels like a lot happened since then.”

Jungwon looked at you for a moment before giving a small smile. “It did.” There was no need to explain further. The music continued playing softly in your shared earphones, and he leaned closer until your shoulders pressed together. His forehead gently touched yours, and instinctively, you leaned in too.

Then suddenly-

The school bell rang loudly.

You pulled back slightly, startled, before laughing under your breath. “Oops.” You stood up, brushing your skirt lightly. “Got class soon.”

Jungwon sighed, tilting his head back against the wall. “Unbelievable timing.”

You picked up your bag and turned to go down the stairs, but before you could take another step, his hand caught yours. You looked back just as he gently pulled you toward him, turning you around. And before you could say anything-

He kissed you.

It wasn’t rushed, but warm and certain.

When he pulled away, he squeezed your hand once. “Alright,” he said casually, grabbing his own bag. “Go. Don’t be late.” You laughed softly, cheeks warm.

“Bye. I love you,” you said.

“I love you too. See you later,” he replied.

And as you walked down the staircase toward your class, you realized something quietly. A year ago, everything had felt heavy, a cycle you couldn’t escape. Now, somehow, life didn’t feel like that anymore. This time, when the bell rang-

Still, his eyes were beautiful. Your hope flickered like a small stubborn flame in your chest that you wanted to guard against the blizzard. The marriage was simple. You showed up to the courthouse in a knee-length white dress, constantly adjusting at the pearls around your neck anxiously while he signed the papers. Once he was done, he’d simply slid it over to you, evidently avoiding your eyes. 

“Are you sure?” you’d asked meekly, as if speaking any louder than a whisper would shatter your heart. You weren’t sure if you were asking him or yourself. Not that it mattered, much.

He spared you a soft smile. Pity, maybe, with how his eyes remained empty, but you took it anyway. 

A starved man does not beg for more. The flame remained.

The only reason he married you was because MC had gotten married to another childhood friend of theirs. When he mentioned it, you thought nothing of it at first. But when the only photo he’d put up throughout your entire house was one of him and her as children, while your awkwardly situated courthouse picture sat beside it, you knew. He didn’t stop to stare at your photo, ever. Not any of the photos. Only hers.

The final blow to the puny flame remaining in your heart was when you’d finally initiated physical contact. To perform the marital duty, he’d hovered above you in just his pants while you stared up at him in your thin pajamas that did little to hide what was beneath it. There was no setting the mood. The air was cold, the room dull because only your half had any semblance of effort that had gone into decorating it. When he kissed you, it felt more like his lips were simply touching yours gently. Almost tapping it. 

It felt like nothing.

This was not romantic at all.

“Are you okay? Is this okay?” he asked, pulling back with a furrow in his brows—probably because you were lying lifelessly while holding your breath. You wondered how he could ask something so softly when his eyes remained so muted. Maybe not softly. Maybe just quiet.

“It’s okay.” You wanted to curl up and go to sleep, but he was the only semblance of warmth in the freezing room.

But when his hand slid up your shirt, resting atop of your stomach, you stopped breathing again. He stopped as well. Your gazes met silently, and for a moment, the world seemed to stop. A dull, slow stop. And then suddenly, he was off you, clambering to pull his shirt back on as you sat up in confusion, eyes wide.

“I can’t,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”

The flame went out.

Were you really so distasteful? So disgusting that he didn’t want to lay his hands on his own wife? Or was it that you were just too different from her? Should you be offended? Are you even offended? Relieved? Hurt? 

Does it even matter?

Once you were sure he’s gone, you cried yourself to sleep.

The next few years are a blur that you wish had somehow gone even faster. The days are a bore. He’s away for weeks—maybe even months—at a time. In those periods of time, the house feels like a maze not meant for only one person. At the same time, maybe it’s better he’s away.

Caleb Xia is not a mean person. On paper, he’s a decent husband. He cleans, cooks, and never complains if you ask him to do something. He smiles, nods, and goes on his way. Yet, it feels more like a vaguely close roommate than a husband. The two of you eat in silence, watch TV in silence, and even go to bed in different rooms. You suppose you can’t complain—it’s not like you put in much effort to get to know him well anyway.

The only thing he does that even comes close to romance is bringing you flowers. You’d told him once that you wished the house had space for a garden to plant them, and he’d brought you a bouquet later that week. Since then, he brings them every few weeks routinely. They appear in the vase beside the couch as if they’ve just magically appeared. 

They’re pretty, you think.

Resentment builds, slowly but surely, probably on both ends as in most marriages. This kind of life is killing you inside. This lonely, aimless life in a house that makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world, in a bed that feels too large. 

“I want to work,” you say one day, picking at your food blankly. “I have an interview tomorrow, so I won’t be here for most of the day from now on if I get it.”

A fork clatters from across the table. “What? Why?”

You don’t necessarily have to work given Caleb’s plentiful paycheck, but you want to anyway because you can’t stand being in that gigantic house all by yourself. But of course, how could you tell this to the man in front of you? The man you don’t even know the favorite color of?

“It’s a regular office job.”

“I didn’t ask what it was,” he blurts, eyes narrowing in concern. “I’m asking why? Do I not give you enough money? You know you have access to everything on the card, right?”

You shrug. “It’s not about the money…I just think I need something to do throughout the day.”

“What about picking up another hobby?”

“I’ve exhausted most of them.”

“Then traveling?”

“By myself?” you frown. “It’s not like you’re ever here.”

You’re not sure why the words slip through your teeth, but they do, and the disdain is apparent. He seems surprised at first, blinking, before his shoulder slump again and the corners of his lips twitch downward. For some reason, it makes you feel—good? Alive, more so. So you keep talking. “You’re always working. You even missed my friend’s wedding after I told her we’d be there.”

He shoots back immediately, brows tight. “That was a special case—it was an emergency.”

“That’s fine,” you chew slowly on your food. “But I don’t want to wait around all day for you to get back.”

“You shouldn’t work if you don’t have to. I make more than enough.”

“Again, not the point.”

His lips tighten, pursing. “What will your family think if they hear that I’m making you work after I told them that I’d take care of you?”

You snort. “Is this what you call ‘taking care of’?”

Immediately, you can tell that you’ve struck a nerve. And for some reason, it feels good again. Like you’re alive, again. Maybe you just like pissing him off. His expression shifts momentarily to something you can’t recognize before it settles disapprovingly and silence befalls the both of you. You like when he doesn’t have that stupid smile he always has. The fake, lifeless smile he’d given you when you first met. You’d rather he just be upset, just like this. He looks like he wants to say something, but then shuts his mouth, swallowing the lump in his throat. 

His phone rings, slicing the tension in the air like a knife. Caleb glances at the caller ID for a split second before he’s already on his feet, pacing to the sink to put his plates away in a hurry. “I’m sorry, I need to take this. Let me know how the interview goes..”

You stare at your plate, listening to his feet pad around in a hurry. “Is it MC?”

He whips his head around. “What?”

You stand from your seat to dump your food into the sink, ignoring the slight clench in your chest. He’s always been this way. Jumping at any opportunity to be useful to her, while he leaves everyone else in the dust. “Nevermind. Go.”

Once you hear the front door shut, you slump into the couch face first, hoping it swallows you whole before he comes back. This has to be some sort of humiliation ritual. Perhaps you committed a grave sin in your past life, because you’re not sure what you could’ve possibly done to warrant such a feeling. The sunset seeps through the window planes and hits half of your face, bathing you in a warmth that had been missing from the rest of the house. The heat makes you sleepy, and you soon find your eyelids drooping shut, gazing lazily at a photo of the two of you on the coffee table. You don’t remember when it was taken, but in it, you genuinely look like you’re almost enjoying yourself. You can’t tell with him, though. You can never really tell.

“Stupid Xia,” you mutter as you fall deep into slumber.

When you awake again, the sun has fully set. There’s a blanket draped over you and when you blink away the blots in your vision, you’re met face to face with a fresh vase of flowers on the coffee table. They smell nice.

Damn it. 

Sometimes, you wish he was just an asshole.

You learn about him through the photo albums he has stashed away in the attic. It’s not like you were looking for them. You’d only been cleaning when they managed to topple right into your hands, and since he always says whatever’s his is yours, you figure you might as well satisfy your curiosity. There’s less than you expected, unfortunately. Most photos are taken by him, but there’s a few in between where he’s the subject. Him at his birthday party, his graduation ceremony, him packing for college, and the day he left for the DAA. 

It’s odd. You forget he was a normal teenager at one point, and not a high ranking colonel.

The pictures are through his eyes. Before you can stop, you find yourself becoming engrossed in lacing the photos together into some semblance of a story in your head. You see his childhood home and the model planes he enjoys building. His outings with MC and his grandmother. His last minute halloween costumes. Him and his friends carrying out a prank on someone. His studies. His likes. His dislikes. 

Caleb Xia is a charming person. If you hadn’t met the way you did, you think you might’ve liked him a little more.

When you ask him a question regarding one of the photos at dinner, he nearly chokes on his food. You quirk a brow in response. “Was I not supposed to see them?”

“No, it’s fine if you look…” he mumbles, taking a sip of water to gather himself. You squint—are his ears pink? You didn’t know he was capable of doing something kinda adorable. “It’s just a little embarrassing.”

“Like the picture of your airplane swim trunks from when you were a kid–”

He coughs again, and you snicker.

You think he’s tolerable—just a bit.

Weeks pass. Life gets a little easier with your job and more to do—it might even be a bit fun. With your new friends at your workplace and a new sense of accomplishment, the less you stress about your loveless marriage and the more you appreciate what you have. Your interactions with Caleb become less forced. Not because you’ve somehow managed to miraculously understand how his brain functions, but because you put less weight on what you say. It’s hard to see someone as intimidating when you’ve seen a photo of them in a stupid halloween costume. He seems to notice the change too. 

[Caleb Xia]: I got us fried chicken for dinner. Don’t be too late so it doesn’t get cold :)

Your mouth waters. It’s nice, almost. Emphasis on the almost.

Outside, the evening chill hits your cheeks, sharp enough to wake you up and wrap your jacket tighter around yourself. The street is busy but not crowded, as the sun has just set. A couple laughs too loudly across the road. Somewhere, a bus exhales.

You start down your usual route.

At first, it’s nothing. Just footsteps. Not out of place. People exist. People walk. People go home.

But something’s off. Your gut insists on it, and it’s hard to ignore.

You slow slightly, just enough to be subtle. The footsteps slow too.

Your fingers tighten around your bag.

Coincidence, surely.

You don’t turn around, yet. Turning means you have to see something and acknowledge that it’s real. Instead, you adjust your pace again. Faster this time.

The footsteps quicken, dropping your heart to your stomach. 

Your eyes dart around you anxiously. It’s dark. Streetlamps are guiding your path home, and though the neighborhood is nice, it’s empty. Well, except for you and the footsteps that seemingly sound like they’re getting ever so closer every few seconds. You throat feels dry. 

Phone. You need to tell someone. Even if you’re wrong—even if it’s just a hunch.

[You]: Still there?

[Caleb Xia]: Yea. why?

[You]: I think there’s someone following me

Your message sends, and for a moment air doesn’t enter your lungs.

The typing bubble appears. Disappears. Appears again.

[Caleb Xia]: I’m coming.

You don’t know how he’s going to find you, but you don’t bother questioning it at the moment. You swallow, and your throat is dry enough that it hurts. The streetlamps cast long shadows across the pavement, and it’s hard to discern whether something is just a shadow or something else in the dark.

You don’t turn around.

Your legs carry you as fast as you can go without breaking into a sprint, and your grip tightens around your phone until your fingers ache. Hurry, you think. Hurry up, Caleb.

A car passes.

He’s closer now, whoever it is.

Your breath catches. Your shoulders tense, every instinct screaming at you to run, but your legs feel like they’ve forgotten how.

Suddenly, a car turns the corner too fast, tires kissing the curb before readjusting and you nearly jump out of your own skin. The tint on the car makes it too difficult to see inside, not that you’d be able to see much regardless due to the dark. It slows to a stop as it sees you, and you think if this isn’t who you’re expecting, it might actually be the end for you. 

The passenger door swings open.

“Get in.”

Relief floods your body when you hear his voice and you stumble to clamber in.

Relief?

This is Caleb Xia you’re talking about. Now that you think about it, you’re unsure why he was the first you contacted instead of the police. Your fingers had tapped on his profile faster than you could think. Was it just because he was at the top of your contacts? Was it because he was near? It must be, right? It had been instinctual. Your body had reacted—and it had somehow worked out. 

Regardless, you can’t possibly deny how relieved you feel right now.

You wonder if this is how MC always feels. It must be nice to know that someone so reliable is always at her beck and call, right? To come running at just a few words—maybe she wouldn’t have had to walk home in the first place. Maybe he would’ve driven her. You feel sick. This isn’t what you should be thinking about right now. Right now, you need to report it to the police and take a much needed nap. 

A part of you is envious of her.

“You should’ve called me earlier.”

The chicken doesn’t look as appetizing anymore even despite it sitting before you in all its crispy fried glory. The growling in your stomach from earlier is replaced by a slight pain, and it’s difficult to tell if you’ve only lost your appetite or if it’s a different kind of anxiousness. He watches you from across the table with a perplexed frown while you pick at the chicken aimlessly, nodding blankly.

“I’ll report it first thing in the morning,” Caleb sighs. “I should pick you up from work from now own. Or I’ll call you a taxi if I can’t.”

You nod again.

“Are you okay?”

Ah, he’s asking that again. You hate when he does.

You tilt your head. “I’m just sort of in shock, I think.”

“I know, but you should eat at least a bit. Here.” He holds a piece of chicken on a fork to your face and you scrunch your nose. He smirks. “Here comes the airplane?”

“I might vomit all over you.” A half lie.

He replies instantly. “Then I’ll clean it. Eat.”

For a reason that you just attribute to exhaustion, you don’t bother arguing. Instead, you pop it into your mouth, cheeks dusting pink at the intimacy of the act. He hums in approval and you try your best not to choke. Why was he feeding you—a grown woman? And why were you letting him? 

How bizarre. This whole day is bizarre.

At least you’re home—thanks to him.

“Thank you,” you mumble softly. “For getting there so fast.”

He looks almost offended, shaking his head. “Don’t thank me, it was a given. I’m just happy you thought to call me. I was worried you wouldn’t.”

Why did you call him? Well, you suppose he is your husband at the end of the day. One who has eyes for another, but your husband nonetheless. “Why wouldn’t I?”

He stops for a moment, as if in thought, and then smiles sheepishly. Not the annoying fake smile he puts on for show, but one that’s riddled with guilt. Shame. You want to know why. “Just assumed you wouldn’t.”

Strangely, the words make your chest tight.

Your eyes meet his usual striking violets, shoulders slumping as you look away once the eye contact feels too intense. “I’m glad I did.”

You barely catch the tips of his ears turning pink.

Caleb keeps his word for the months following the event. You never have reason to pass by that street again on foot, and although you continue to insist it’s not necessary, having him as your private driver of sorts does feel kind of nice. You think eventually, you’ve come to call him more than a stranger. He’s easier to talk to. Funnier than you thought, actually, when he’s not being annoying to tease you.

You’d never tell him that though, of course.

You blink warily, rubbing at your eyes with the back of your hand when a ray of sunlight escapes through the shades of your bedroom and hit your face. However, it’s not what awakes you. Rather, it’s the insistent buzzing of your phone on your bedside table, which you barely manage to snatch without falling off the edge of the bed. 

[Caleb (husband)]: morning sleepinghead, you awake?

[Caleb (husband)]: Come eat breakfast :> made apple juice too

[Caleb (husband)]: I better hear you shuffling around in your room in the next few minutes or i’ll have to come drag you out.. :)

Caleb Xia, you find, nags a lot.

“Sleep well?” he chuckles when you finally emerge, still half-awake despite being fully dressed. You scratch the back of your neck, yawning as you perch yourself on one of the chairs at the counter where he’s standing with an apron tied neatly behind him. If you were just a tad bit more awake, you’d have a field day making a snide comment about it.

“Mm.”

He laughs again, gently. Did he always sound so soft?

“You can always quit your job, y’know,” he shrugs, placing a plate of breakfast foods in front of you. It smells immaculate, as usual. “Offer’s always on the table.”

You shove a forkful of eggs into your mouth, squinting at him. “Why do you wanth me shoo be unemployed sho bad? My parentsh don’t care.”

“It’s not about your family…It just doesn’t seem necessary.”

“I like working. Just not waking up so early.”

“I only want you to avoid overextending yourself if you don’t have to,” he pops a tomato into his own mouth. “I make enough for you to get whatever you want, don’t I?”

“But I want my own money, too.”

“My money is your money. This is the least I can do.”

“Careful,” you snort. “You sound dangerously close to being romantic.”

He tilts his head. “Why wouldn’t I be romantic? I’m your husband.”

This time, you really choke on your food, coughing as he quickly hands you the apple juice. He’s been doing that lately—dropping lines like that out of nowhere, like they’re nothing. Somehow always when you’re least prepared for it, and always with a lopsided grin that tells you he’s either completely oblivious or knows exactly what he’s doing.

You’re willing to bet on the latter.

Caleb Xia, as you figure out in the time you spend with him in his car on the way to work, has terrible taste in films.

“That movie is awful. There’s no way that’s your favorite.”

He gasps dramatically and you don’t bother suppressing the urge to roll your eyes. “Hey, don’t judge before you try it.”

“I’d like it if I never had to try it, actually.”

The smile adorning your lips falls in an instant the car slows to a stop. You find yourself growing disappointed when you arrive at your workplace, because it means you’ll have to leave him. You want to scold yourself for thinking such preposterous thoughts. What are you? A teenager who’s hanging out with a boy for the first time?

You’re married, for god’s sake.

Then again, so what if his company isn’t so bad? What if you think he’s a bit more to you than tolerable? Isn’t that allowed? He’s your husband, after all. If it doesn’t feel so bad, maybe you could let yourself reprise and enjoy it while it lasts.

“Ah, right, I should tell you—I’ll be leaving this weekend for work.”

Ah, nevermind. Reality has a way of slapping you across the face when you least expect it.

“How long?”

“A few weeks at best,” he pauses, voice quieter. “Months, if I’m unlucky.”

You really despise the subtle aching in your chest.

You hate how easily it slips in. How, for a second, it makes the flame that’s gone out years ago flicker, as if these moments could mean more than they do. They don’t. You know they don’t. They aren’t yours to keep. None of it is.

The warmth, the ease, the way he looks at you like this—like you’re something he actually cares about—it’s all fake. Stolen. You’re just standing in the space where someone else is supposed to be.

You press your lips together, forcing the feeling down before it can spread any further. Get a grip.

His palm pats the top of your head, making your cheeks heat against your will. With a grin, he nods. But it’s stiff. The slight crinkle between his brows. Upset. Upset? “I’ll see you tonight.”

It’s like he knows what you’re thinking before you know yourself.

“Who said I want to?”

“You wound me.”

As soon as you enter the building, you feel your phone buzz in your pocket.

[Caleb (husband)]: I know you’re at work, but…

[Caleb (husband)]: Movie night tn ?? i can make us popcorn :D

[Caleb (husband)]: And yes we’re watching my fav so you can stop calling it bad :>

[Caleb (husband)]: Last hurrah before i leave

This is dangerous, you think. Really, really dangerous. 

You seriously hope you don’t fall for him, if it isn’t too late already.

A few hours later, the living room is dimly lit with soft lights, the low hum of something playing in the background as Caleb sets everything up. The bowl of popcorn ends up a little too full, a few pieces spilling onto the counter as he carries it over, muttering something under his breath as he munches on the ones that are about to spill over. You sink into the couch, watching him move around the room—adjusting the volume and flipping through options he’s already decided on. 

It’s strange, how easy it feels. How normal.

You don’t realize you’re staring until he glances over.

So you look away quickly, fixing your gaze on the screen. But a few seconds pass, and you can feel his attention still lingering.

You pretend not to notice.

What are you doing? What are either of you doing?

You don’t say anything, swallowing the question down into the pit in your stomach.

The movie stars a side character with a passionate devotion to his family, who reminds you of Caleb. Oddly enough, the resemblance is almost uncanny. You kind of want to root for him but also want him to lose terribly. You huff quietly. “He’s so intense.”

Caleb glances over, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “What? You wouldn’t want someone like that?”

You tilt your head, pretending to think. “I mean… he’s a bit much.”

A pause.

“…but it comes from a good place. I like him.”

He stills.

You pick at a piece of popcorn, rolling it between your fingers. “He reminds me of you a little.”

“Yeah?”

You shrug, still not quite looking at him. “Yeah.” A small breath escapes you before you can stop it. “MC is really lucky to have you.”

He goes quiet. When you glance over, he’s already looking at you.

“…Lucky,” he repeats, almost to himself.

You hesitate, then ruin it by saying more. "I mean, you're always there for her, you know? If she calls, you come running. Everyone wants someone like that."

It was supposed to come off lightheartedly, but it only digs the hole deeper.

Something in his expression shifts. His smile fades, his face losing its usual ease as it drops to something you’ve never seen on him before. It contorts in phases. Surprise, and then confusion, and finally into one you prefer the least.

Panic. Something is wrong.

You wish you’d just shut up. The long pause makes you wish you were just a fly on the wall right now.

“Is this why?” he blinks, and his eyes glisten with something you haven’t seen from him. Void of the usual emptiness but replaced with something fuller. Heavier. “Is this why you hate me so much? Because of MC?”

Huh?

“Fuck,” one hand pulls at the roots of his hair, his top teeth sinking into his bottom lip as he attempts to hide his face from you. “I’m a moron. I should’ve known.”

What? Despite your hands growing clammy, you feel cold. Like the blood is draining from your face.

“You must hate me so much.”

When did you ever hate him? You’ve loathed him, certainly, when he’d disappear for weeks on end leaving you all alone in this cold, lifeless house. You’ve wanted to punch your balled up fists into his chest, knowing that it wouldn’t phase him in the slightest simply to alleviate some of your own anger. You’ve wanted to run away a multitude of times. But hate? Have you ever hated Caleb? Can you hate Caleb?

“Caleb.”

“This is my fault. I should’ve been more aware. It’s so obvious now, I feel like an idiot.”

“Caleb.”

“I thought you just hated me because this isn’t a marriage you wanted,” his voice cracks, and he’s burying his face into his palms. “I thought staying away from you was what you wanted. Shit, I’m so stupid.”

“Caleb,” you say, more firmly this time, and he finally looks at you. There’s a watery film over his usually lifeless eyes, glistening against the light of the TV screen, and it makes the pit in your stomach grow deeper. You don’t like seeing him like this. You thought you would, but you don’t.

His voice is a mere whisper now. He looks like he wants to vomit out a million words at once, but there’s three specific ones that linger on his tongue. Is this what they call a woman's intuition? You’re not sure how, but in the moment, it feels like you’re in his head. For the first time in the 4 years you’ve been wed to Caleb Xia, you feel like you can understand him. 

A victory that doesn’t feel like one at all.

“Listen to me,” he grabs your hands in his, holding them in front of his chest. “I don’t love her—not as a woman. I haven’t in a long time. She and Zayne are like my family, and I’d be a terrible person not to be happy for them. I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear to you. I’m so sorry.”

Your heart doesn’t seem to be beating anymore.

The air is too thick. Like liquid entering your lungs.

Caleb opens his mouth and then shuts it again, his words stuck in the back of his throat. You’re not sure if you want to hear what he wants to say. The words hold too much value, too many years of hurt, and you don’t know how you’ll react. You don’t want to acknowledge any of this as real, because if it is, what was all of this for? What were the years you spent holed up in your room meant to achieve? Were you just being a fool? And in that case, would you even want to know?

No. You don’t.

So instead, you kiss him.

A wordless, messy kiss. Though he’s taken aback at first, he’s quick to slot his mouth against yours eagerly, hands flying to your waist to pull you closer as if a man starved. It’s desperate. Different from the kiss you shared with him at the courthouse, or for transactional purposes. His mouth feels hot against yours, and when his tongue swipes against your lip, you let him in. 

You climb onto his lap, straddling him as he presses you flush against him. The movie is long forgotten. His hair weeds through the crevices between your fingers and he deepens the kiss as if he’s trying to physically become one with you. His heart hammers against your own like a timer, warning you of what this could mean, but you don’t care.

“Put your arms around my neck,” he mumbles against you, and then you’re suddenly being lifted up to your room with his hands supporting your thighs around his waist. But even those few seconds aren’t worth staying apart for, because he’s kissing your neck, mouthing at spots that have you pursing your lips to avoid making any embarrassing sounds. He lets you down gently onto the middle of your bed and follows suit, pushing you onto your back.

You’re here again.

He’s looming over you, face flushed in a deep red this time. He’ll ask if you’re okay. If this is okay. And then he’ll take off his shirt and his hand will slide up yours. It’ll be better this time, because it’s not out of some twisted sense of duty. Desire pulses at your core, but you can’t help but shake off this curdling feeling in your chest, as if you want to hurl. You wait for what you expect, eyes never leaving his.

Instead, he breathes sharply. “I love you.”

The world stops. 

“You don’t have to say anything back that I don’t deserve. I just want you to know,” he whispers.

Can anyone love someone like you—much less, your husband? You start breathing again because you have to, staring up at him as if he’s gone insane. In fact, you think you’ve gone insane. Kissing him, lying beneath him, enjoying his presence, looking forward to his breakfasts, letting him drop you off at work, feeling disappointed that he’s leaving—you’ve most definitely died and come back as another person, because this is not you.

This is Caleb Xia. He is an unloving person. He cannot love. But what happens if he does? With tears stinging at his eyes, watching you with a mix of pure adoration and sorrow, he’s telling you he loves you. Love is a strong word, isn’t it? But he means it. He loves you. Caleb loves you. You want to call him a liar, but he’s not.

You want to cry into his chest and run away at the same time.

The flame flickers, and you panic. Not because you despise him, or because his confession is one you don’t want to accept, but because this flame is not one you welcome with open arms anymore. It’s too easy to hurt. Too easy to shrink, yet somehow impossible to destroy.

“I can’t,” you croak. “Not right now.”

Even Caleb can’t mask the hurt that deepens his frown, as if you’ve torn his heart straight from his chest. For a man with so much power, he’s never looked more powerless than he does now.

It feels too vulnerable. Open. As if you’re naked and he’s fully clothed, when it’s infact the exact opposite. You don’t want to open up to him again. You don’t want him to snuff out that small flame you have that never seems to go out no matter how much you douse it in water. Or maybe you do?

He forces a crooked smile, strained against his very will and nods before leaving the room. As the door slips shut, he doesn’t turn to look at you. “Sleep tight.”

You don’t get much sleep that night at all.

Morning comes anyway.

And then another.

And another.

His absence returns, but this time because you’re the one avoiding him. You leave earlier than usual, linger longer at work, find excuses in the smallest things—emails, errands, anything that keeps you just a little out of sync with him. When you do cross paths, it’s brief. Polite. A short good morning or a quick goodnight. It’s easier that way.

You tell yourself this is what you wanted—to put distance back where it belongs. Whatever that night was, whatever flame flickered between you, it will fade. It must fade.

He isn’t yours. Even if he says he is, there’s too much pain--too many years of resentment built up that you don’t know what to do with.

You catch yourself thinking about it at mundane times—standing in line, walking home, staring at your coworkers chatting amongst themselves. The apartment feels different already, like it’s preparing to be emptier. As cold as it was a few months ago, when he was still Caleb Xia, and not just Caleb.

You take the time away from him to reset. To think, but not too much. You find yourself flipping through his photo albums again, smiling when you flip to a particularly embarrassing one. You hear him shuffling outside your room, probably packing for his business trip. You’re aware of what he risks everytime he disappears for weeks at a time—not only his life, but the lives of his men—and you don’t know how he bears to leave home everytime he does. 

But he always comes back. He has to. 

You suppose it’s for the best for now. And when he returns, things will return to normal. The house won’t be as awkward as it is. The two of you will slip into your usual routine of a loveless marriage, and you’ll find other avenues in life to derive joy from. So will he.

The front door shuts faster than you anticipated. 

He’s gone.

This is fine.

This is what you wanted.

The house is empty again. You pace to the living room, and surprisingly, a fresh bouquet of flowers is propped inside their usual vase. You lift the vase into your hands, letting the scent of the flowers waft into your nose. They smell good. New. Sort of like the detergent he uses when doing the laundry.

You set the vase back down, nails pressing faint crescents into your skin.

His face when you last saw him keeps flickering in your mind. So much hurt. Raw with fear.

“I love you.”

You want to tell him he doesn’t. You want to remind yourself that this is your husband. Your heartless, cunning husband who kills people for a living—who doesn’t care about anyone but his family. 

But you’re his family, aren’t you?

You can still smell his cologne in the air.

You must’ve missed it from the glint of the sunlight in the glass coffee table—there’s a small shimmer of something sitting beside the vase. With a quirked brow, you pick it up. He usually never leaves trash lying around.

You nearly drop it.

His wedding band.

Your breath stutters, sharp and uneven, like your lungs have forgotten how to work. Your heart pounds as you realize that you're shaking, eyes wide as saucers as you stare at the object in your hands.

No.

He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t just leave it.

The ring sits in your palm like a brick that weighs your entire body down. This isn’t something you can pretend will reset when he comes back.

This means no more quiet dinners. No more stupid arguments over movies he insists are good. No more messages waiting for you when you’re at work. No more him, standing at the counter every morning with a pan in his hand. No more him.

And worst of all, no more chance to fix it. To tell him your side of the story.

Your body moves before your mind catches up.

You wrench the front door open, not bothering to lock it behind you as your feet hit the pavement with just your socks. The air burns your throat as you run, lungs screaming, heart still pounding like it’s trying to break through your ribcage.

He can’t leave.

The stinging beneath your feet go unregistered as you clutch the ring so tightly that it feels like it might dig into your flesh. 

Just forward, you hiss to yourself. Faster. You turn corner after corner, your body begging you to stop overexerting yourself, but you can’t bother to care. You don’t even register where you’re going, but you need to go somewhere. It feels like ages and seconds at the same time, as you beg nobody in particular for one more chance.

A chance for what, you're not sure.

Reconciliation? Love? Understanding?

Is any of that possible? And if not, why are you running like your very life depends on it?

The ring digs further into your skin, and you realize it doesn't matter as long as you find who it belongs to. Him. Caleb. The reason and bane of your existence, and apparently what has you running across the entire town in hopes of bringing him back.

Finally, you slam into something solid.

The impact knocks the breath out of you, your grip loosening as the ring nearly slips from your fingers. A hand catches your arms before you can stumble back too far, steadying you with a familiar scent that somehow lets you breathe again.

“Hey—watch it—oh.”

You freeze in place, breath hitching as you look up. Standing right in front of you, he appears slightly disheveled, one hand still gripping your arm while the other awkwardly balances a paper bag of groceries. Caleb blinks, his eyes immediately scanning over your frame before landing on your feet. “Why are you here? Are you okay? And where are your shoes, it’s dangerou—”

“Don’t go, Caleb,” you sniffle, tears already stinging at your eyes as your body finally has a chance to rest, though it doesn’t feel much better. “Please don’t go.”

He stares at you as if you've grown a third eye, nearly dropping his bag of groceries at your pleas. Even the tips of his ears turn red, flustered. "What are you--"

“Why did you leave the ring? Did you lie?” About loving me?

His expression falls, attention honing in on the ring gripped in your fist. Something seems to click in his head, and immediately, he shakes his head. “No, of course not, I was going to leave a note. I just went out to get groceries before I left—”

“So you were going to leave the ring?”

“Well, yes, but can we–”

“Do you not like me anymore?” you blurt, finger bunching at the fabric of his sleeve. “Is it because I ignored you for a week?”

He almost looks offended. “Of course I still like you.”

“Then why?”

His voice softens, as if speaking too loud will scare you away. Hesitantly, he sheepishly releases your arms. Instead, he slowly takes your hand in his, lips pursing as he sighs. His palm feels rough with calluses from the work he does, but light as feathers against your skin. His touch is gentle, as if you’re the most precious thing in the world. “I figured there was no reason for me to tie you to me anymore. I won’t force you to be with someone you can’t even stand to be around. Someone you hate. It’d be selfish.”

Your words tumble out before you can process them. “I don’t hate you.”

Finally, with your hand in his, the world feels okay again. This feeling tells you you’re screwed, but you don’t care.

“I’ve been mad at you, and I don’t know what to do with your feelings because they make no sense, but I don’t hate you,” you mutter. “You’re just too confusing.”

“...Confusing?”

“I just—I don’t know what to do, Caleb,” you wipe vigorously at your eyes with your free hand, head falling to avoid looking him at him. “I don’t know what to think about you. How to feel about you.”

His eyes ease, and you feel him squeeze your fingers. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No.”

“Do you love me?”

“I don’t know.”

Caleb has always been better at reading you than yourself. A flash of hurt ripples across his face, but his eyes maintain its soft glimmer—because he knows. Even if you say you don’t know, he knows. He also knows that you’re afraid of those words, and he doesn’t blame you for it.

So instead, he asks something else. “What am I to you?”

You want to call him a million things. The man who left you by yourself, the man who refused to touch you for so many years, the man who’d chosen to sleep in the guest bedroom just to avoid taking up space in yours. He’s felt awful, inconsiderate, and cold. But he’s also the man who’s gotten you flowers, the man who’d break four speeding laws to make you feel safe, the man who makes sure you’re never hungry, the man who folds your laundry neatly and organizes it color-coded in your closet. The man who you wish you could slap across the face and hold close to you at the same time. The man who’s made you feel alone yet so cared for all at once.

You like him, you think. In some strange way that’s never been covered in the romantic films you used to clutch onto like a life line, you like him. The ‘L’ word teeters on the tip of your tongue like a marble rolling around to decide what these emotions settling in your heart really are, but it doesn’t really matter. All you know is that you need him. You want him. You want him to hold your face and kiss you tenderly, like he did that night. You want him to do it again and again until you can’t breathe, and all you can feel is him. You want to eat dinner with him every night and wake up in the morning to his stupid apron. You want to go grocery shopping with him. You want to fall asleep watching a movie in his arms.

“What am I to you?”

Tears fall down your cheeks in fat globs and you try your hardest not to let your voice crack. “My husband.”

His eyes widen for a moment, and then his lips split into a wide grin that resembles the lovesick expression of a teenage boy who’s holding hands for the first time. Caleb drops his grocery bag to his feet and reaches either hands to the sides of your face, cradling you gingerly as he guides you closer. Before you’re even registering it, he brushes a strand of hair out of your forehead and presses a soft but firm kiss to your temple, where you can feel him smile against your skin.

“Who am I to say no my wife?”

Your marriage is a messy, complicated jumble of emotions. The confusion. The fear. The warmth. It’s not perfect. It never will be. And despite it all, you don’t want it any other way, because Caleb Xia is a loving person.

Everyone knew Jungwon as the cheerful one. The boyfriend who laughed too loudly at his own jokes, stole bites from your plate, and draped himself over your shoulders whenever he wanted attention.  Most people assumed he was the younger, clingier one in the relationship. They were only half right. The moment the apartment door clicked shut behind you, something shifted.

Jungwon leaned against the door, watching you with an expression that made your heart skip. Jungwon's cheerful laughter from dinner had barely faded from the air when his hand curled around your wrist. It’s not rough, but deliberate. His palm was warm as he tugged you toward the bedroom, his eyes losing that boyish glimmer, replaced by something darker and hungrier. 

“Strip.” 

He didn’t yell at you, but the tone he set for his voice was enough to make you obey him instantly.  Your fingers fumbled with the hem of your shirt, pulling it over your head, discarding it. Your bra followed, then your shorts, your panties. Each piece falling to the floor while he watched, unmoving, arms crossed, his jaw tight. When you stood fully naked before him, you felt his gaze drag over you like a physical touch, lingering on your breasts, the curve of your waist, the dampness already gathering between your thighs.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t nod. He simply tilted his head and said, “Now undress me. Use your mouth.”

Your heart hammered. You stepped forward on shaking legs, sinking to your knees in front of him. Your hands reached for his belt, but he caught your wrist.

“I said mouth. No hands. Open my jeans with your teeth.”

You hesitated, and his grip tightened.

“Did I stutter?”

“No, sir.”

You leaned in, your lips brushing against the rough fabric of his jeans. Your teeth found the belt buckle, fumbling, tugging, your tongue working to loosen the leather. It took several tries, your cheeks flushing with heat and submission. He didn’t help. He just watched, breathing slow and deliberate, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

Finally, the belt gave. You pulled it free with your teeth and let it fall to the floor with a clatter. Then you worked on the button. Your tongue pressing against the metal, your teeth pinching it open. The zipper was next, and you gripped the tab between your teeth, dragging it down slowly. Inch by inch. The sound was obscene in the quiet room.

When his jeans hung open, you looked up at him, waiting.

“Good girl,” he murmured, and the praise sent a pulse of heat through you. “Now pull them down.”

You ducked your head, biting onto the waistband of his jeans and boxers together, tugging downward. The fabric dragged across his thighs, his cock springing free. Already hard, and the tip glistening with precum. You worked the jeans down to his ankles, and then he stepped out of them, kicking them aside.

He stood over you, naked, towering, his erection jutting toward your face. His hand found your hair, gripping the roots, tilting your head back. 

“Kiss me. From my lips down.”

You rose on your knees, your lips meeting his in a rough, demanding kiss. He bit your lower lip, hard enough to sting, then pulled back. 

“Keep going.”

Your mouth trailed down his chin, his jaw, his throat. You kissed the hollow of his collarbone, the hard plane of his chest, your tongue tracing the ridges of his abdomen. He was taut, every muscle defined, and you felt him twitch beneath your lips as you traveled lower. His breathing grew heavier, his hand tightening in your hair. When you reached his navel, you paused, looking up at him through your lashes. His eyes were half lidded, dark with hunger.

“Don’t stop,” he ordered.

You lowered your mouth further, your lips brushing the coarse hair below his navel. Then your tongue flicked out, tracing the base of his cock. He inhaled sharply. You ran your tongue along the length, from root to tip, slow and deliberate, savoring the salt and heat.

He grips his cock and smacks your lips a few times.

“Open,” he commanded.

You parted your lips, and he guided himself inside, not gently. He pushed deep, hitting the back of your throat, and you gagged. But, he didn't pull out. He held you there, your nose pressed against his pelvis, his cock filling your throat.

“Breathe through your nose,” he said, voice strained. “Take it all.”

Tears welled in your eyes, but you obeyed. Your throat relaxed, the muscles spasming around him. He groaned, low and guttural, and began to move, thrusting into your mouth, fucking your throat with a rhythm that was harsh and unforgiving.

“Look at me,” he growled.

Your eyes, wet and desperate, met his. The sight of you on your knees, mouth stuffed with his cock, tears streaming down your cheeks, made his hips snap harder. He was fully in control, using your mouth as he pleased, and you let him. Spit dripping down your chin, your nose running, every instinct screaming to pull away, but your submission held you still.

He pulled out abruptly, leaving you gasping, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his tip. He grabbed your jaw, squeezing.

“You’re so fucking good,” he said, his thumb dragging across your wet lips. 

He put his back on the bed, completely sprawled. His gaze followed you. The moment you sit still in your position, his patience is running low. He clicked his tongue, clearly annoyed. 

"Go on." He laces his hands behind his head, settling deeper into the pillows. The pose should look casual, but there's nothing relaxed about the way his eyes pin you in place. "Ride me. But no hands, no grinding. Just that pretty little pussy sliding up and down my abs until you come."

You swallow hard, heat flooding your cheeks. "Jungwon—" 

His eyebrows furrowed, not happy with your answer. 

“What did you call me?” 

The correction stung from the weight of his authority pressing down on you. You dropped your gaze, your voice smaller when you spoke. 

“I-i’m sorry Sir,” 

He didn't acknowledge the apology with words. He merely waited, his eyes boring into you, his hands still laced behind his head, muscles coiled and ready beneath that deceptively relaxed pose. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, until you realized he was waiting for action, not more words.

You moved, climbing onto the bed. You positioned yourself over his torso, your knees bracketing his hips. His abdomen was a landscape of hard ridges defined, warm, intimidating. The thought of sliding your bare, slick flesh across that surface without using your hands or grinding made your thighs tremble. You hovered, hesitant.

"Lower," he said, voice flat. "I want to feel you."

You began, lifting your hips until only your clit grazed his skin, then sinking back down.   You straddled him, thighs trembling as you hovered over his hard, sculpted midsection. His hands found your hips, guiding you down until your slick heat pressed against the ridges of his abdominal muscles. The contact sent a jolt through your core. 

"Hands behind your back," he ordered. "No touching me."

You obeyed, clasping your wrists together at the small of your back. The position arched your chest forward, pushed your hips out, and left you completely exposed and unbalanced. He watched, his jaw tight, a predatory stillness in his gaze.

"Now move. Up and down. Slow. I want to see every inch of that cunt slide over me."

You rolled your hips, grinding against his stomach, and the friction was maddening. His skin was warm, slightly damp, and the shift of muscles beneath you made your breath catch. Your hands braced on his chest, nails digging into his shoulders as you move slowly, undulating, and desperate. 

The sight of your glistening arousal coating his stomach made his cock twitch against his thigh. He didn't touch himself. He didn't need to. His pleasure came from watching you work for his approval.

"Faster."

Your pace increased, your breath coming in sharp bursts. Your thighs burned, your wrists ached, but you didn't stop. The sensation built low in your belly, a slow, desperate coil. Your juices smeared across his abs, leaving a wet, glistening trail.

"That's it," he murmured, his voice dipping lower. "Look at you. Making a mess of me. You love this, don't you?"

"Yes, Sir," you gasped.

"Say it. Say what you're doing."

"I'm—I'm riding your abs, Sir—using your body to make myself come—"

"Good girl." His hands remained behind his head, but his hips shifted slightly, flexing the muscles beneath you, creating more friction. The way your clit shifted around his muscle, it sent the sensation all over your body. It was too much, your clit is swollen and begging for a break. 

"Please," you whimper. "Won, please, I'm so close—"

Jungwon smack your ass. The slap was echoing in your shared bedroom. The pain stings, it feels hot, and it left his handprint on your behind. He hissed. 

“Call me properly,” 

Tears welled in your eyes, “I-i’m sorry sir,”  

"You're not allowed to come yet." His hand shoots out, fingers wrapping around your waist, stopping your movement. You whine, the sound pathetic and desperate. "I didn't say you couldn’t." 

His grip on your waist tightened like iron, halting every desperate roll of your hips. The denial hit harder than the slap, leaving you trembling on the edge with no release in sight.  His palm smoothed over the heated print on your ass, fingers pressing just enough to remind you who controlled every sensation.

"Look at you," he continued, tone sharp with command. "Whimpering, dripping, begging with that pretty cunt. But you know the rules. Say it."

You swallowed, voice shaking. "I-I only come when you allow it, Sir."

A satisfied hum vibrated from his chest. He shifted his hold, one hand sliding up to fist in your hair, pulling your head back just enough to arch your spine deeper. The new angle forced him even further inside, the pressure building again despite his order.

"Good. Now stay still and take it. I'm going to fuck you exactly how I want, and you're going to hold that orgasm until I tell you otherwise."

You obeyed, hips rocking harder, your clit dragging against the hard planes of his abdomen. The sensation built, a coil tightening low in your belly, and you gasped, moaning his name. His grip on your hips tightened, guiding your movements, pushing you harder.  Your movements grew sloppy, desperate. The orgasm was building, cresting, but you needed permission.

"Please, Sir—can I—"

"Come," he commanded.

The release crashed through you, your body convulsing, your inner walls clenching around nothing as your climax spilled onto his stomach, hot, wet, shameless. Your hips kept moving through the aftershocks, grinding despite his earlier rule, but he didn't correct you. He simply watched, his eyes dark with satisfaction, as you painted his abs with your pleasure.

When you finally stilled, trembling, breathless, he reached down and dragged a finger through the mess on his belly. He brought it to your lips.

"Clean it up."

You parted your mouth, tasting yourself on his skin as you sucked his finger clean. He withdrew, then grabbed your chin, pulling you down until your face hovered inches from his.

Jungwon chuckled, low and dark. "Good. Now on your hands and knees."

He was already moving, flipping you over with practiced ease. Your palms pressed into the sheets as he settled behind you, one hand gripping your hip, the other wrapping in your hair in a firm, possessive pull that tilted your head back.

"You're so beautiful when you obey." His voice was gravel, rough with restraint. "I'm going to fuck you now. You're going to take it. And you're going to cry for me."

The head of his cock pressed against your slick entrance, and he pushed inside without warning. He thrust his cock in a single, deep thrust that made you gasp, your back arching. He was thick, stretching you, filling you completely, and he didn't give you a moment to adjust. He started moving, hard and fast, each stroke driving the air from your lungs.

His hand tightened in your hair, yanking your head back, and you whimpered. 

"Please—"

"Please what?" He leaned over you, teeth grazing your shoulder before sinking in a sharp bite that made you cry out. His mouth latched onto the curve of your neck, sucking hard, marking you. You felt the sting bloom into a deep, possessive heat.

He pulled back, licking the bruise, then bit again, lower, on your shoulder blade. Another hickey. Another claim. His hips never slowed, driving into you relentlessly, and tears pricked at your eyes from the overwhelming intensity of being so completely owned.

"Look at you," he murmured against your skin, voice thick with satisfaction. "Crying on my cock.”

The pressure built again, deeper this time, coiling in your belly. Your legs trembled, your knuckles white against the sheets.

"I'm close," you sobbed.

"Not yet." He pulled out abruptly, leaving you empty and aching, and before you could protest, he hauled you up. Your back hit his chest, his arm locked around your waist, and he positioned you standing, legs spread, bent slightly forward.

He drove into you, the new angle hitting spots that made your vision white. His hand found your throat as a reminder of control. His other hand pressed against your lower belly, and you could feel the outline of him through your skin, stretching you from the inside.

"Feel that? I'm everywhere inside you."

You can't hold yourself up anymore, you sag against him, letting him take your full weight, and he uses it, drives into you harder with every thrust. 

"Look at you." His voice is low, almost tender, but the words are razors wrapped in silk. "Can't even stand. Such a mess for me. I love it. I love how pathetic you get when I fuck you."

You want to answer, but your voice is gone. All you can do is take it, let him use your body the way he wants, feel the pleasure building again despite how raw you already are. Your legs shook, knees buckling, but he held you up, fucking you with brutal, relentless precision. Each thrust pushed him deeper, and your moans turned to broken cries. 

"Come for me," he commanded.  

Your body obeyed before your mind could catch up. The orgasm ripped through you, violent and consuming, and you felt yourself gush a hot, wet release that splattered down your thighs and dripped to the floor. Your legs gave out, but he caught you, lowering you gently to the bed.

But he didn't stop. He kept thrusting, shallow now, each movement pushing against your oversensitive core, making you whimper. His hand pressed harder on your bulging belly, stretched by his size and the mess you'd made.

"Look," he whispered, guiding your trembling hand to the swell. "That's all me. You're so full."

You cried freely now, a stream of tears and pleas and his name falling from your lips. He chuckled, a low, satisfied sound, as he finally stilled, buried deep inside you. He shoved deep one last time, groaning, and you felt him pulse inside you, hot and thick. He stayed there, buried, breathing hard, his forehead pressed against your spine.

When he finally pulled out, he watched his cum spill from you, pooling on the sheets. He gathered it on his fingers and pushed it back inside, pressing gently. Then he gathered you into his arms, pulling you against his chest, his breath warm against your hair.

"That's my good girl," he murmured, softer now, the edge fading. "You did so well."

You curled into him, spent and trembling, knowing that tomorrow he'd be all smiles and sunshine, and no one would know the power he held over you behind closed doors.

When he finally gathered you into his arms, the room felt impossibly quiet compared to everything that had happened before. The sharp edge that had been present in his voice was gone now. Jungwon pulled the blankets over both of you before settling back against the headboard, carefully guiding you against his chest. For several moments, neither of you spoke. The only sounds were your uneven breathing and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath your ear. His fingers slowly combed through your hair.

Jungwon shifted slightly, pulling you closer.

"You okay?"

The question was quiet. You nodded against his chest.

"Words."

You sighed.

"Yes."

His hand squeezed your shoulder.

"Good."

Another kiss found your forehead.  Jungwon only tightened his arms around you. And as you listened to his breathing gradually slow, it became impossible to reconcile this version of him with the confident, commanding person only hours earlier.

Jake spent a solid fifteen minutes staring at the vending machine. A deep sigh escaped him as he leaned his forehead against the glass. His reflection stared back, looking significantly less charming than usual. Tragic. 

First day as an attending anesthesiologist, he already got yelled at in front of an entire operating room. 

Jake still couldn’t fully process it. 

Not during med school. Not during residency. Not even by Professor Kwon, who once made a grown orthopedic resident cry over improper intubation positioning. 

But you? 

You had looked up from an actively bleeding patient with the coldest expression he had ever seen and said—

“Dr. Sim, are you planning to keep up, or should I ask for someone faster?” 

The room had gone silent. Even the cardiac monitor suddenly sounded awkward. Jake winced at the memory and rubbed a hand down his face. 

Okay. 

In his defense, trauma surgery was insane. Things moved at approximately the speed of light in your operating room. Instruments flew into your waiting hand before people even registered that you asked for them. Residents looked second away from cardiac arrest. Nurses communicated through eye contact alone. 

And you? 

You were terrifying. 

Not loud, not emotional, just brutally efficient. Which somehow made it worse. 

Jake grabbed an  Americano from the vending machine and muttered under his breath. 

“One rough induction and suddenly my career flashed before my eyes,” 

“You were slow.” 

He nearly fumbled the drink. Turning around, he found you standing there in navy scrubs, arms crossed loosely over your chest. 

No warning. No footsteps. Psychotic behavior, honestly. 

“You always stand there like a disappointed ghost?”

“You always complain this much?”

“Only after public humiliation.”

You grabbed your drink from the vending machine. “Then get used to it.”

Jake stared at you in disbelief as you started walking away.

“Wow,” he called after you. “That was kinda mean.”

Jake watched you walk down the hallway without looking back once.

Sure, you were dragging your steps like each one weighed at least fifty pounds after a brutal shift, but somehow you still moved through the hospital corridor with the intensity of someone seconds away from giving a TED Talk titled Why Med School Was The Worst Decision Of My Life.

Jake took a sip of his coffee.

“…I kinda respect her, actually.”

“Don’t let her hear that.”

"Jesus!"

Jake's heart almost evaporates. A nurse stood beside him now, casually punching numbers into the vending machine. Slowly, and trying to make things more embarrassing, he calmed himself down.

“Why?” he asked.

“Compliments make her violent.”

He let out a quiet laugh. “That explains a lot.”

“You’re new, huh?”

“That obvious?”

The nurse grabbed her drink with a hum. “You’re still smiling after getting yelled at.”

Ouch.

Jake leaned back against the vending machine. “Does she hate everyone equally, or should I feel honored?”

“Oh, Dr. Y/N definitely hates incompetence more.”

“…That somehow feels personal.”

“You’ll survive,” the nurse said. “Probably.”

Probably?

Before Jake could question that deeply concerning choice of words, his pager suddenly buzzed against his waist.

OR TWO — TRAUMA ACTIVATION. 

“Well,” he muttered, pushing himself off the vending machine, “time to go disappoint a woman again.” 

“Good luck,” the nurse called out, already laughing.

He took one last sip of his americano before tossing the empty can neatly into the trash bin.

Missed.

Jake stared at the can lying sadly on the floor.

“…That feels symbolic somehow.”

Then, with what remained of his dignity, he picked it up and headed toward OR Two. Straight into the beginning of his problems.

.

.

.

.

Six months later, Jake learned three important things. 

First, trauma surgeons operated entirely on caffeine, spite, and unresolved psychological issues. Second, the emergency department smelled permanently like stress and antiseptic. And third, you still hated him. Maybe hate was a strong word. Strongly disliked him? Yeah, probably that. 

“Dr. Sim.”

Jake didn’t even look up from the patient chart anymore. “That tone usually means I’m about to get criticized.”

“Because you’re leaning on the sterile table.”

He immediately stepped away. “See, this is why morale in this hospital is terrible.”

“Morale is not my department.”

“Neither is emotional damage, yet somehow you excel at both.”

Around the operating room, two residents immediately looked down to hide their laughter.

Six months ago, they would’ve been terrified to witness conversations like this. Now the trauma team had simply accepted that Dr. Y/N and Dr. Sim existed in their own strange ecosystem. Jake adjusted his gloves before glancing sideways at you. Same cold expression. Same sharp eyes. Same terrifyingly competent hands are currently preparing for surgery.

Still terrifying. Still brutally honest. Still the prettiest person he’d ever seen in an operating room.

Which honestly felt medically unprofessional at this point.

“You’re staring again,” you said flatly.

Jake blinked once. “See, now you’re just making things awkward.”

“Focus on the patient.”

“I am.”

Your eyes narrowed slightly. Jake grinned behind his mask. Ah. There it was. Progress. Six months ago, you would’ve ignored him completely. Now you looked mildly homicidal instead. 

Relationship development.

.

.

.

.

A year later, Jake still couldn’t decide whether meeting you had improved his life or permanently damaged it.

Probably both.

You were still terrifying. The difference was that he had unfortunately started finding it attractive. Deeply attractive. Catastrophically attractive, even.

Somewhere between his third overnight trauma call and the time you silently handed him half your sandwich during a fourteen-hour shift, Jake realized he was in serious trouble. Not crush trouble. Real trouble.

The kind where he automatically searched for you first every time he walked into the trauma department. The kind where hearing your voice over the intercom somehow made his shifts less unbearable. The kind where your approval started mattering more than it should.

Which was ridiculous, considering you still criticized him like it was a professional obligation. 

“BP’s dropping.”

“I know.”

“Well, that response feels unnecessarily hostile.”

You didn’t even look up from the patient. “Clamp.”

The scrub nurse immediately placed the instrument into your hand.

“Pressure’s at eighty over fifty,” Jake continued, eyes moving across the monitor. “She’s bleeding faster than you’re closing.”

“That sounds judgmental coming from someone sitting down.”

Jake gasped softly behind his mask. “See? This is why people fear trauma surgeons.”

“People fear incompetence.”

“And yet you continue allowing residents into your OR.”

One of the residents nearly choked. You held your hand out wordlessly.

“Suction.”

Jake watched you work for a second.

Fast hands. Steady movements. Zero hesitation. Honestly, it was getting hard to focus professionally when you looked like that during surgery.

“Dr. Sim.”

He blinked. “Hm?”

“Focus.”

Jake stared. “You sensed me being distracted?”

“Your monitor alarm has been going off for seven seconds.”

“…Right.”

He silenced it quickly while muttering under his breath, “This is psychological warfare.”

“Heart rate stabilizing,” he said a moment later. “You’ve got a better window now.”

“How much time?”

Jake glanced at the monitor again. “If you want the patient alive? Ten minutes.”

“I only need seven.”

“That confidence is either very attractive or deeply concerning.”

Silence. Then the scrub nurse quietly turned away to hide her laughter. Your eyes narrowed above your mask.

“Are you always this annoying?”

“Only in rooms where I feel emotionally safe.”

“Then feel unsafe.”

Jake grinned immediately.

Ah. There it was. His favorite thing in the world: the tiny look of irritation you got whenever he made you this close to losing composure.

.

.

.

.

Three years later, Jake could read your moods purely based on how aggressively you tied your surgical gown.

Today?

Dangerous.

Not angry enough to kill someone, but definitely irritated enough to emotionally damage a resident.

“Why is everyone breathing so loudly today?”

Ah.

Definitely dangerous.

Around the operating room, three residents immediately lowered their heads like civilians avoiding eye contact with a predator. Jake, meanwhile, didn’t even look up from the anesthesia monitor anymore.

“Good morning to you, too, sunshine.”

“I’ve been awake for twenty-two hours.”

“And yet somehow your personality still finds ways to worsen.”

“Scalpel.”

The instrument landed perfectly into your waiting hand before the scrub nurse could react. Your eyes flicked toward Jake briefly. Not surprised. Just accustomed. Three years working together had turned your operating rhythm into something almost automatic.

Jake adjusted medications before you asked. You anticipated his timing without looking. The entire trauma surgeries passed with conversations made up of half-sentences because neither of you needed explanations anymore. Honestly, it was a little insane.

“BP stable,” Jake said.

“Mm.”

“Heart rate’s improving.”

“Good.”

“You know,” he continued casually, “most surgeons say thank you.”

“Most anesthesiologists don’t complain during active hemorrhages.”

Ouch.

The surgery continued smoothly after that.

Three years working together had turned both of you into something almost terrifyingly synchronized. You moved. Jake adjusted. He spoke. You already anticipated the problem before he finished the sentence.

Somewhere along the way, working together stopped feeling difficult and started feeling natural. Which was honestly dangerous for Jake emotionally. 

Nearly an hour later, you finally stepped away from the operating table with a tired exhale.

“Closing complete.”

Jake glanced at the monitor one last time before nodding. “Vitals stable.”

“Good.”

The residents visibly relaxed like prisoners being granted freedom.

You peeled off your gloves with the same exhausted irritation you carried through most shifts nowadays. Twenty-two hours awake. Midnight surgery. Terrifying attitude is somehow still fully operational. Jake watched you walk toward the scrub room sink before following behind casually.

“So,” he started, washing his hands beside you, “coffee?”

“No.”

Immediate.

Jake sighed. “You reject me concerning efficiency.”

“Practice.”

“Cruel.”

“Accurate.”

Water ran quietly between both of you for a moment. Your shoulders looked tense. Heavy. The kind of exhaustion that sleep alone probably couldn’t fix. Jake leaned slightly against the sink.

“Okay,” he tried again, “then lunch tomorrow.”

“No.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“No.”

“Breakfast?”

“I’d rather intubate myself.”

Jake stared at you in disbelief. “See, comments like that are exactly why HR avoids our department.”

Finally, finally, the corner of your mouth twitched upward slightly. Barely there. Tiny.

But Jake noticed immediately anyway. And there it was. The reason he kept trying. Because every once in a while, after long shifts and impossible surgeries, you let tiny cracks show through the armor. Never for long. Never intentionally. But enough. Just enough to completely ruin him. You grabbed a towel, drying your hands before speaking flatly again.

“Go home, Dr. Sim.”

Jake smiled lazily. “Worried about me?”

“I’m worried your face will still be here when my next shift starts.”

“That’s the meanest possible version of concern.”

You turned to leave the scrub room. Then paused briefly near the doorway.

“…There’s coffee in the residents’ lounge.”

Jake blinked once.

“Wait.”

You kept walking.

“Was that an invitation?”

Silence.

Jake grinned slowly to himself before following you anyway.

.

.

.

.

Jake realized he was in love with you at 3:17 in the morning.

Which was deeply unfair, honestly.

Not because the timing was inconvenient— although falling in love during a trauma activation probably counted as psychological damage— but because the realization happened over something incredibly stupid.

You were eating crackers.

That was it.

Just you sitting on the counter in the residents’ lounge after eighteen straight hours awake, still wearing navy scrubs while quietly eating stale crackers like they personally offended you. Jake stood frozen near the coffee machine.

Yet somehow, while watching you silently eat crackers at an ungodly hour in a fluorescent hospital lounge, that was the only thought Jake had left. 

Oh, this was bad.

Because suddenly every annoying thing about you became weirdly endearing. The permanent frown. The exhaustion in your eyes. The way you looked homicidal before caffeine. Even your silence felt familiar now instead of intimidating.

You noticed him staring almost immediately. Of course you did. You looked unimpressed already. Comforting, somehow. Jake grabbed two coffees automatically before setting one beside you. You glanced at the cup.

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“You also haven’t gone home in twenty hours. I’m taking creative liberties.”

You stared at the coffee for a few quiet seconds before taking it anyway. No, thank you, just acceptance. Jake smiled before he could stop himself. And there it was again. That horrible feeling in his chest. Warm. Heavy. Stupidly soft.

God.

He was genuinely done for.

You frowned slightly at him over the coffee cup.

“…Why are you smiling like that?”

Jake leaned against the counter beside you.

“Nothing.”

Suspicious silence.

“You’re being weird again.”

He laughed quietly. Again. Like this was normal now. And maybe that was the exact moment Jake realized the problem wasn’t that you were difficult to love. It was that loving you had become the easiest thing he’d done in years.

.

.

.

.

“Fine,” you said flatly. “Lunch.”

Jake blinked. For the first time since you’d known him, he looked genuinely caught off guard. Then his entire face changed. Not smug satisfaction. Not teasing triumph. He looked happy. 

Ridiculously, openly happy. 

“Seriously?” he asked. 

You immediately regretted everything. “Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not making it weird, you just said yes.”

“To lunch.”

“With me.”

“To food.”

He laughed under his breath, then straightened so quickly it was almost embarrassing. “Right. Yes. Of course. Food.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Why do you look like you won something?” 

“Because I did.”

“You did not.”

“I absolutely did.”

That exact moment had permanently altered his brain chemistry. 

But Jake couldn’t help it. Because for everyone else, lunch was just lunch.

For you?

Saying yes to anything personal felt nearly impossible. Which meant Jake remembered every tiny detail of that day with horrifying clarity. The way you sighed before agreeing. The way you rolled your eyes when he smiled too much. The fact that you stayed even after finishing your food.

Tiny things. Meaningless things. Things Jake treasured anyway, like a complete idiot.

“Dr. Sim.”

He looked up instantly. And there you were at the end of the hallway, already dressed in scrubs for the next surgery. Same exhausted expression.

Same terrifying aura.

The same woman is currently ruining his emotional stability.

“Are you coming to OR Three,” you asked flatly, “or are you planning to stand there looking emotionally compromised all afternoon?”

Jake blinked once.

“See, comments like that are exactly why I’m obsessed with you.”

“That sounds like a personal problem.”

“It is.”

You stared at him for a long second before turning around toward the operating rooms again.

“Five minutes.”

Jake immediately pushed himself off the counter to follow after you.

Of course he did.

The hallway lights reflected against the polished floors as both of you walked side by side in familiar silence. 

“Why are you smiling again?”

Jake looked over innocently. “You notice me a lot.”

“You’re visibly weird.”

“That’s hurtful.”

God. Even your insults sounded fond lately. Or maybe Jake was just deeply delusional at this point. Honestly hard to tell anymore.

“You know,” he said casually as both of you stopped outside the OR doors, “we should do lunch again sometime.”

“No.”

Immediate. Jake sighed dramatically toward the ceiling.

“And yet you already said yes once.”

“Temporary lapse in judgment.”

“One of the best days of my life, actually.”

Your hand paused briefly against the OR door handle. Tiny. Almost invisible. But Jake noticed anyway. He always noticed. You glanced sideways at him with narrowed eyes.

Silence.

“Dr. Sim.”

“Yeah?”

“Go monitor your patient.”

Ah.

Deflection again. Interesting.

.

.

.

.

The problem with Jake openly liking you was that nobody in the hospital found it surprising anymore.  

Not the nurses. Not the residents. Not even the janitors at this point. After three years, Dr. Sim orbiting around Dr. Y/N had simply become part of the hospital ecosystem. Jake brought you coffee. You rejected him. Jake flirted during surgeries. You threatened violence.

Nature healed. 

“You know that our hospital scrubs look good on you, right?”

“Move.”

Jake sighed, stepping aside so you could reach the patient's chart behind him.

“See, this is what I mean. You never take me seriously.”

“Because you say things like that while blocking the hallway.”

“That’s not related.”

“It’s extremely related.”

You flipped through the chart with your usual flat expression while Jake leaned beside you like a man with absolutely no survival instincts.

“I’m serious, by the way.”

“Mm.”

“That response feels disrespectful.”

“That’s because I don’t respect this conversation.”

Brutal.

Jake watched you scribble notes onto the chart, completely unaffected. Which honestly felt offensive at this point. Most people got nervous when they confessed to. You looked mildly inconvenienced.

“Three years,” Jake continued. “Three years of emotional dedication.”

“Three years of workplace harassment.”

“Wow.”

“You asked.”

Fair enough.

A resident passing by suddenly changed direction immediately after spotting both of you together.

Coward.

Jake narrowed his eyes at your profile. “Do you genuinely not believe me?”

“No.”

Immediate.

“That’s crazy, actually.”

“You flirt with everyone.”

Ouch.

Jake straightened slightly.

“Not like this.”

Finally, your pen paused. Just briefly. Tiny enough that nobody else would notice. But Jake noticed everything about you. Your eyes lifted toward him slowly.

“Dr. Sim.”

“Yeah?”

“You tell nurses they look pretty at least twice a day.”

“That’s basic workplace morale.”

“You winked at a pharmaceutical representative yesterday.”

“In my defense, she gave us free pens.”

Your expression flattened further somehow.

“Exactly my point.”

Jake stared at you for a second before laughing quietly under his breath.

God.

This was the issue. You genuinely thought this was just how he was. That he was naturally charming, affectionate, and absolutely naturally unserious.

You finally closed the chart and handed it to him. Your fingers brushed his glove briefly. Accidental. Meaningless. Yet Jake still felt like an idiot.

“Trauma consult in ten,” you said.

Then, just before walking away—

“…And stop flirting in hallways. You’re disturbing the residents.”

Jake blinked. Slowly, a grin spread across his face. 

Not stop flirting. 

Just—not in hallways. Oh. Interesting.

.

.

.

.

The next morning, you looked terrible.

Not visually terrible. Objectively, annoyingly, you still looked good. But Jake had worked with you for three years. He knew your normal expressions, your normal silences, your normal levels of hostility.

Today? Something was off. You were quieter. Not calmer. Just exhausted in a way that sat too heavily on your shoulders.

You adjusted your gloves with visible irritation before looking over the trauma scans clipped beside the monitor.

“Patient’s unstable. We don’t have time.”

Jake kept watching you carefully.

Pale.

“Dr. Y/N.”

“What.”

“You have a fever.”

“You diagnosed that from across the room?”

“I diagnosed it from your personality, somehow getting worse.”

No response. Which, honestly, worried him more. Usually, you’d insult him by now.

“Pressure dropping,” Jake said sharply.

“I know.”

“You’re too slow.”

“I said I know!”

Your voice cracked harshly through the operating room. Everyone froze instantly. Not because you yelled. You yelled all the time. But because your hands trembled afterward. Barely noticeable. Barely there.

Jake’s stomach dropped immediately.

“Dr. Y/N.”

“Focus on your side.”

“Dr. Sim,” you said flatly, though your voice sounded weaker now, “either help me keep this patient alive or stop staring at me.” 

Jake looked at the monitor again before adjusting the medications quickly.

“BP stabilizing.”

“Good.”

Your shoulders lowered slightly in relief.

The surgery ended nearly four hours later.

Successful. Technically. But the entire day had gone horribly for you. Two emergency traumas back-to-back. One difficult family consult. Three residents are asking questions at the exact wrong time. No proper meal since yesterday afternoon.

And now this surgery.

By the time you stepped out of the operating room, your face looked noticeably pale beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. Jake noticed immediately. Of course he did.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

Automatic. Flat. You didn’t even look at him while stripping off your gloves. The second the operation ended, you scrubbed out quickly and walked straight out of the hallway without your usual post-op lecture to the residents. Jake frowned immediately. That wasn’t normal. The residents looked confused, too. You never skipped the chart review. Never disappeared first.

Jake watched you push through the heavy emergency stairwell door before it shut behind you. For a moment, he stayed where he was. Then, without really thinking about it, he followed quietly down the hallway.

The stairwell door didn’t close completely. Just enough of a gap remained for him to see through the narrow opening.

And there you were.

Sitting halfway down the stairs with your elbows resting against your knees, eyes closed briefly as your head leaned against the wall. Still wearing your scrubs. Still carrying exhaustion in every inch of your posture. Silent.

Jake froze near the doorway. Something unpleasant tightened in his chest immediately.

Because he’d spent three years watching you survive impossible shifts without slowing down once. Three years watching you carry entire trauma rooms on your shoulders like it was normal. Yet right now, sitting alone in a quiet emergency stairwell, you looked tired in a way he’d never seen before.

Not the kind fixed by sleep. The deeper kind of doctors ignored themselves constantly.

Jake’s hand rested lightly against the stairwell door. He could go inside. You’d probably insult him for following you. Tell him to leave. Tell him you were fine.

But for once, he didn’t think you wanted someone talking to you. You just wanted silence. So Jake stayed where he was. Quiet. Hidden behind the door like an idiot. Watching long enough to make sure your breathing evened out slightly. Watching until some of the tension slowly left your shoulders.

The exhausted one sitting alone on emergency stairs because the hospital never stopped needing pieces of you. Jake lowered his eyes briefly before exhaling quietly to himself.

Hopeless. Completely hopeless.

Then, careful not to make noise, he stepped away from the stairwell door and walked back toward the hallway—leaving you your five minutes alone.

.

.

.

.

The emergency department immediately dissolved into organized chaos the second the paramedics pushed the gurney through the trauma bay doors.

“Male, thirty-eight,” one of the paramedics reported quickly. “Blunt abdominal trauma, hypotensive en route, possible internal bleeding—”

You were already moving before they finished speaking.

“Prep OR Two,” you ordered sharply. “Get blood ready. FAST ultrasound now.”

Jake watched you take over the room instantly. Like always. Fast hands. Fast decisions. No hesitation. The exhaustion from earlier disappeared beneath pure instinct the second a patient’s life landed in your hands.

That was the terrifying thing about you.

No matter how exhausted you were, trauma mode always came first. The patient groaned sharply as nurses transferred him onto the trauma bed. Disoriented. Agitated. In pain.

“Sir, stay still,” you said firmly while checking the abdominal tenderness.

“Don’t touch me,” he snapped immediately, trying to shove your hand away.

Jake frowned slightly from beside the monitors. Pain response. Confusion. Not unusual. But the patient kept going.

“Where’s the real doctor?” he barked harshly.

Silence flickered briefly across the trauma bay. One of the residents visibly stiffened. You didn’t react. Didn’t even blink. Just continued checking his injuries calmly.

“I am the trauma surgeon,” you replied evenly.

The patient laughed bitterly through clenched teeth. “Yeah? Then why do you look about sixteen?”

Bad move.

Jake saw several nurses immediately avoid eye contact. Because everyone in the trauma department knew one thing very clearly: You hated incompetent men. But you hated disrespectful ones even more.

Still, your expression never changed.

“You have internal bleeding,” you said flatly. “You can either cooperate with treatment or continue arguing while your blood pressure drops.”

“Unbelievable,” the patient snapped loudly. “You people always act like you’re smarter than everyone else.”

Jake’s jaw tightened slightly.

Because normally? Normally, you’d shut this down immediately with one terrifying sentence and move on. But today you just looked tired. Not offended. Not angry. Just tired.

“OR is ready,” a nurse interrupted carefully.

You nodded once. “Move him.”

.

.

.

.

The silence between you stretched quietly beneath the fluorescent lights.

Cold water still ran over your hands. The steady sound echoed softly through the scrub room while the rest of the hospital continued moving somewhere beyond the walls—pages overhead, hurried footsteps, distant monitor alarms.

Jake stayed near the doorway. Not leaving. Not speaking. Just there.

You finally shut the water off with a tired exhale before reaching for a paper towel. “You’re hovering.”

Jake leaned lightly against the doorframe. “You look like you’re about to commit aggravated assault on the next resident that breathes wrong.”

“That’s not unusual.”

“…Fair.”

The corner of your mouth almost twitched upward. Almost. Jake noticed immediately anyway. Three years later, and he still reacted to every microscopic change in your expression like a man discovering religion. You tossed the paper towel into the trash before finally looking at him properly for the first time since surgery.

“What?”

Jake shrugged slightly. “Nothing.”

“You’re staring again.”

“You got yelled at by an idiot patient and still saved his life thirty minutes later. I think I’m allowed to stare a little.”

Your expression flattened automatically at that. Deflection. Distance. Armor back up.

“It’s part of the job.”

“I know.”

“And I’m fine.”

Jake looked at you quietly for a second too long. Because that word again.

Fine.

Your favorite lie.

The thing was—you probably believed it too. You’d spent so many years surviving impossible shifts and impossible expectations that exhaustion became normal. Hurt became background noise. You kept functioning, so technically nothing was wrong.

Jake hated that.

Not because he thought you were fragile.

God, no.

You were probably the strongest person he’d ever met. But strong people still deserved someone noticing when things got heavy.

“You know,” he said softly, “being good at handling something doesn’t automatically mean it doesn’t suck.”

For the first time that night, you looked caught off guard.

Tiny reaction. Brief. But real. Your eyes lowered for a second before you shook your head lightly, almost annoyed at yourself for reacting at all.

“Since when did anesthesiologists become therapists?”

Jake grinned faintly. “Since trauma surgeons became emotionally constipated.”

“Watch your tone.”

“There she is.”

That finally earned him a quiet scoff from you. Small. Tired. But genuine. And somehow that felt like victory.

It wasn’t the first time a patient had looked at you and questioned your abilities. Wasn’t the first time someone assumed you were too young, too cold, too arrogant to be good at your job. And it definitely wasn’t the first time a man raised his voice at you because you refused to soften your tone for his comfort. None of it was new. You learned years ago that being a trauma surgeon meant growing thick skin fast, so you did. You became sharper. Colder. Harder to offend. Most days, it worked. Today just wasn’t most days.

The trauma patient was eventually stabilized after agreeing to surgery at the last possible second. The operation itself went smoothly—efficient, controlled, another life saved. Everyone in the OR moved on quickly afterward. Residents talked about the procedure, nurses cleaned up, and another trauma page already echoed somewhere down the hallway. The hospital kept moving. It always did. You stripped off your gloves quietly before stepping out of the operating room without saying much to anyone.

Jake noticed immediately. Of course he did. He watched you stop near the scrub room sink, hands braced lightly against the counter while cold water ran over your fingers. Just breathing. Just existing for one second without somebody needing something from you. Jake stood near the doorway quietly, not interrupting this time. No flirting. No teasing. Because he knew. Not exactly what it felt like, but enough. Enough to understand that being hurt by something didn’t mean you were weak for it. You could hear the same insult a hundred times and still feel it on the hundred-and-first. Especially on days when you were already running on nothing.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke. Then quietly, without looking at him, you muttered, “…He’s alive.” 

Like that was the only part that mattered. Jake’s chest tightened painfully. 

Because even after getting screamed at, doubted, and disrespected, your first concern was still whether the patient survived. Not your pride. Not your feelings. The patient. And standing there beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, exhausted down to the bone yet still worrying about somebody who had insulted you to your face, Jake felt himself fall in love with you all over again.

A few weeks after that night, the hospital didn’t get any quieter.

It never did.

But something between you and Jake had shifted in a way neither of you said out loud. He still trailed after you through corridors, still made unnecessary comments during surgeries, still acted like your personal irritation in human form. And you still told him to move, still rolled your eyes, still treated him like he was one bad joke away from getting kicked out of your OR.

But it wasn’t just that anymore. It had started to feel consistent. Familiar in a way that didn’t belong to colleagues.

That night, another trauma page came in just after midnight. Jake was already in OR Two when you arrived, tying your gown with sharp, efficient movements that didn’t quite hide how exhausted you were.

“Male, forty-two, MVC,” Jake said as you stepped in. “BP unstable en route but responding to fluids.”

“Start transfusion protocol,” you replied immediately.

No hesitation. No wasted movement. Just instinct and control.

The patient came in fast. Too fast. The room snapped into controlled chaos the moment the gurney crossed the threshold.

And Jake noticed it again. You were tired. Not obvious to anyone else—but obvious to him. A fraction slower between movements. A tighter set to your jaw. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t show up in posture, only in timing.

“Dr. Y/N,” Jake said quietly while adjusting anesthesia, “you slept at all this week?”

“I sleep.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is the only one you’re getting.”

He sighed under his breath, but didn’t push further. He’d learned that pushing didn’t help with you. Not like that. The surgery progressed. Bleeding controlled. Vitals stabilizing. Everything is technically going right.

Until a resident hesitated at a critical step. A second too long. You didn’t raise your voice. You didn’t need to.

“Step aside,” you said flatly.

The resident froze.

“I said step aside!”

They moved immediately. The room went tense for half a second before stabilizing again. Jake watched it happen, not with judgment—but recognition. Because he knew that silence. That tone. It wasn’t anger for the sake of control. It was exhaustion protecting something fragile underneath it: the patient not dying on your table.

The surgery finished cleanly after that.

“Vitals stable,” Jake said.

“Close,” you replied.

And just like that, it was over.

You moved to the sink afterward, stripping off gloves with slightly slower hands than usual. The kind of tired that had started to settle into your bones lately instead of passing with the shift.

Jake stayed with you this time. Not behind. Not beside like a passing colleague. Just there. Close enough that it was intentional. The water ran quietly between you for a moment before he spoke.

“You’re not fine.”

Your hands paused under the stream.

Not startled. Just… aware. He didn’t continue immediately. Didn’t push. His voice stayed steady, lower than usual.

“I’m not saying that as your anesthesiologist,” he added. “I’m saying it as someone who actually cares about you.”

Silence. That landed differently. You slowly turned off the water and reached for a paper towel.

“…That’s not your job,” you said flatly.

Jake gave a quiet, humorless exhale. “Yeah. I know.”

You finally looked at him then. Properly. Tired eyes. Controlled expression. Walls still up, but thinner than they used to be.

He didn’t look away. Because he meant it. Not as a colleague. Not as a coworker orbiting your OR schedule. As someone who had spent too many nights noticing when you stopped being okay before you ever admitted it.

“I don’t care about this job boundary thing,” Jake said more softly.

That made your expression tighten slightly. Not anger. Something more complicated.

“…You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why?”

He just stayed there beside you in the harsh fluorescent light, like leaving you alone wasn’t something he was willing to do anymore.

“You should stop,” you said.

“Stop what?”

“This.”

A beat.

You gestured vaguely between the two of you, like it explained everything and nothing at once. Jake’s expression tightened slightly, but he didn’t back off.

“No,” he said simply.

That one word landed harder than expected. Because Jake didn’t usually refuse you like that. Not seriously. Not like he had decided something.

You narrowed your eyes. “You don’t get to decide that.”

“I am deciding it,” he corrected, voice calm but firm. “Because you’re not actually asking me to stop. You’re telling me to leave you alone so you don’t have to deal with it.”

Your jaw tightened.

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” he said quietly. “And I get it.”

That stopped you for a second. Not because you agreed. Because he wasn’t arguing your competence. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t pushing your patience just to get a reaction.

He was just seeing it. Like he had been paying attention longer than you realized.

Jake stepped slightly closer—not invading, not cornering, just closing the distance enough that you couldn’t ignore him without effort.

“I’ve watched you for three years,” he said. “Not just in the OR. Everywhere.”

Your eyes flicked to his face briefly, guarded. He continued anyway.

“You don’t slow down. Not when you’re exhausted. Not when people are disrespectful. Not when you’re clearly running on nothing.”

A pause.

“And I used to think that was just who you are.”

His voice softened slightly, but didn’t lose its edge.

“But it’s not strength when it’s constant depletion.”

The word hit differently. You hated that it did. Your fingers tightened around the edge of the sink.

“I’m fine,” you repeated automatically.

Jake shook his head once.

“No,” he said again, quieter this time. “You’re functional. There’s a difference.”

Silence stretched. The hum of the hospital overhead felt louder now. You looked away first, which annoyed you more than anything else.

“…You’re overstepping,” you muttered.

“Yeah,” Jake admitted immediately.

That made you look back at him. He didn’t apologize. Just nodded slightly as he accepted it.

“I am,” he said. “But I’d rather be annoying than watch you keep pretending you don’t need anything from anyone.”

Your throat tightened slightly—something you refused to name. Jake exhaled slowly, then added, softer but steadier:

“And I’m not doing this because you’re my colleague anymore.”

That part landed differently. He held your gaze. No grin. No flirting. No easy exit. Just honesty, stripped down.

“I care about you,” he said. “More than I should for someone I work with.”

A pause. Then, more firmly.

“And I’m not going to pretend I don’t anymore.”

The space between you felt too quiet after that. Not empty. Just full in a way neither of you had labeled yet.

.

.

.

.

You didn’t hate people.

Jake had stopped believing that version of you a long time ago. What you hated was the aftermath—the chaos left behind when someone else made a mistake, and you were the one expected to turn it into something survivable again. The delay. The preventable damage. The clean-up that always landed in your hands. Inconvenience disguised as responsibility. That was what irritated you, not humanity itself.

Because if it had truly been hatred, you wouldn’t pause the way you did when a patient’s voice cracked in fear. You wouldn’t adjust your tone when someone was too scared to understand instructions. You wouldn’t stay late when there was nothing in it for you except making sure things didn’t fall apart after you left. Jake had seen it too many times now for it to be an accident.

You had always told yourself engagement with people was complicated—that it meant getting pulled into problems you never agreed to take on, responsibilities that didn’t belong to you, emotions that would slow you down. So you built distance. Sharpness. Efficiency. Cold professionalism that made everything easier to manage and harder to reach. A system that worked, most of the time.

But life didn’t let you stay detached. Not here. Not in trauma. Because here you were anyway—standing in the middle of chaos, cleaning up what other people broke, making impossible decisions in seconds while others hesitated. Everything you said you didn’t want, you were already doing. Jake watched you for a moment longer and thought, quietly, that maybe it was never about hating people at all. Maybe it was just that you cared too much and never permitted yourself to call it that.

So when others called you cold, Jake no longer agreed. Because to him, you weren’t the coldest person in the hospital. You were the one who cared the most. Just in a way that didn’t ask for credit, didn’t ask to be seen, and definitely didn’t ask to be understood. And somehow, that made you the warmest person he had ever known. 

.

.

.

.

The trauma page came in just after midnight.

MVC. High speed. Multiple casualties.

By the time you reached the ER, the chaos was already organized into sharp, practiced motion. Gurneys rolling in, voices overlapping, monitors beeping in a frantic rhythm.

“Male, early thirties,” one paramedic reported quickly. “Severe chest trauma, hypotensive, possible internal bleeding. Passenger vehicle. Wife is also incoming—pregnant, third trimester, conscious.”

That made your steps pause for half a second. Then you kept moving.

“Bring him to OR One. Prep blood now,” you ordered immediately. “Call OB for standby.”

The husband was already fading when they transferred him. Too much damage. Too fast. Internal bleeding, you couldn’t fully stop, even as you worked. Jake was there, but he didn’t speak much, just watched the numbers, adjusted what he needed to adjust, stayed exactly where he was needed.

And you?

You didn’t hesitate.

Didn’t break rhythm. Didn’t allow anything to slow your hands. But even before the final moment, you knew. That quiet, awful certainty that sometimes came in trauma. When effort stopped being about saving and started being about not losing control of the room.

“BP dropping,” Jake said softly.

“I know,” you replied.

You pushed harder anyway. Longer than most would have. Longer than was reasonable. Long enough that everyone in the OR understood what was happening without saying it.

Finally—

silence.

Not the peaceful kind.

The final kind.

Jake’s hand slowed on the monitor. No dramatic announcement. No unnecessary words. Just a small pause before he looked at you.

“…Time of death,” he said quietly.

You didn’t respond immediately.

For a second, your hands stayed where they were, still in position, still doing the job your body refused to stop doing. Then slowly, you stepped back.

“Stop,” you said flatly to the team. “Call it.”

Your voice didn’t shake. Not outwardly. The room moved again after that—procedures, documentation, cleanup—but everything felt muted now because the patient wasn’t just a case. Not this one.

When the OR finally cleared, you stood at the sink longer than usual. Washing your hands even after they were already clean. Jake didn’t say anything. Just stayed nearby.

And then the wife was brought in.

She was still in pain. Still in shock. Heavy pregnant, barely able to sit up properly, one hand gripping her abdomen while the other reached for the space beside her.

“Where is he?” she asked immediately.

No one answered right away. Not the nurses. Not the resident. Not Jake. Your name was the only one that mattered now. So you stepped forward. The hallway suddenly felt too small.

“I’m your trauma surgeon,” you said calmly.

Her eyes locked onto yours instantly.

“Where is my husband?” she asked again, sharper now, fear breaking through.

A pause. One that stretched too long. Jake watched your posture carefully. Saw it before you even spoke. That moment where you were still composed—but only just.

“He didn’t survive the surgery,” you said.

Simple. Direct. No decoration. The words hit her like an impact.

“No,” she whispered immediately, shaking her head. “No, that’s not—he was fine. He was talking to me. He said he was going to see the baby—”

Her voice broke. And you stood there, still. Holding it together in the only way you knew how. stillness, control, distance. But then she started crying properly. Not quietly. Not politely. The kind of grief that filled the space.

“He promised,” she said, voice cracking. “He promised he would be there. We waited so long—this baby—he—he can’t just—”

Her hand tightened over her stomach like she was trying to hold everything together physically. And something in you shifted. Not visibly. But deeply. Because it wasn’t just grief. It was love. It was a future that had already existed in her head, being taken away mid-sentence.

Jake saw it immediately. The way your expression didn’t change, but your silence did. He stepped slightly closer, not to intervene, but to stand near you. A quiet presence. Because he knew you. And he knew what moments like this did.

The wife reached forward suddenly, grabbing your sleeve with shaking hands.

“Please,” she cried. “Please, you have to do something. You’re the doctor. You’re supposed to fix it. You can’t just—he can’t be gone—he can’t—”

Your breath stopped for a fraction of a second. Just one. Barely noticeable. But Jake saw it. And so did you. Your hand lifted slightly, then paused mid-air, unsure whether to hold her wrist or let her hold on. For the first time all night, your voice didn’t come immediately.

And when it did, it was quieter. Not clinical. Not sharp. Just human.

“…I’m sorry,” you said.

The wife broke completely then.

And you stood there while she cried into the reality you had just given her, your composure holding like something inside you had taken a hit it couldn’t cleanly repair.

Jake stayed beside you. Not touching. Not speaking. Just there. Because for once, there was nothing to fix.

The hospital kept moving as if nothing had happened. Paperwork was completed, the OR was reset, and another trauma page already echoed somewhere down the hall. But you didn’t go back. You didn’t speak. You just walked until you reached the emergency stairwell, the one place in the hospital where the noise couldn’t follow you. The door shut behind you with a soft click, and suddenly everything went quiet.

You sat down slowly on the steps, as your body had finally decided it couldn’t stay upright anymore. At first, there was only silence. Then your breath broke. Small, uneven, almost imperceptible. You pressed a hand over your mouth like you could contain it, like control was still something you could choose. But it wasn’t. The grief came anyway, quiet and heavy, slipping through every restraint you’d built over years of training and survival. Tears fell without sound as you stared at the floor, unable to look away from the memory of a wife holding onto hope that had just been taken from her.

The stairwell door opened softly behind you, but you didn’t turn immediately. Jake didn’t speak when he stepped in. He didn’t rush toward you or try to fix anything. He just closed the door carefully and sat one step above you, close enough that the space didn’t feel empty, far enough that you didn’t feel cornered. For once, there were no jokes, no teasing, no words at all—just him staying there with you in the quiet, so you didn’t have to break alone.

“Hey.”

Your shoulders tensed slightly, but you didn’t look up.

Jake shifted down one step, slower this time, closer without invading. “You don’t have to stop,” he said gently. “I’m not going anywhere.”

That did something worse than comfort, it loosened the last bit of control you were still holding onto. Your breath hitched again, shorter this time, and you turned your face away instinctively as you could still hide it. But Jake had already seen enough. He lowered himself fully in front of you now, careful, steady, not rushing. “Look at me,” he said softly.

You didn’t at first. So he waited. No impatience. No teasing. No pushing. Just him, there. Eventually, your eyes flickered toward him, tired, wet, unguarded in a way you never allowed anyone to see. Jake’s expression softened immediately.

“There you are,” he murmured.

That was it. Something in you broke properly then. Jake didn’t hesitate. He reached forward and pulled you into him. Arms around you, firm and steady, like he was catching something he refused to let fall further. One hand came up to the back of your head, holding you gently against him. The other stayed at your upper back, grounding you with quiet pressure.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, close enough that you could feel his voice more than hear it. “It’s okay. You don’t have to hold it right now.”

Your hands froze for a second in the air, uncertain, before finally gripping his scrubs like you needed something real to anchor yourself to. Enough that you knew you weren’t alone in it.

“I’ve got you,” he said quietly. “Just breathe.”

And for the first time since the hospital had swallowed the night whole, you let yourself fall apart without standing back up immediately afterward.

.

.

.

.

A few months after the stairwell incident, things between you and Jake felt strangely normal again. At least on the surface.

You were back in the OR. Back to correcting residents before they make mistakes. Back to moving through trauma consults like exhaustion had never touched you at all. And Jake? Jake was back to orbiting around you like usual. Except now there was something quieter underneath it.

Something harder to joke away.

It happened late at night after a long surgery. The residents had already left, the nurses were finishing cleanup, and the hospital had finally slowed into that eerie post-midnight stillness.

You stood at the scrub sink washing your hands while Jake leaned against the counter nearby. For once, neither of you spoke immediately. Then Jake sighed softly.

“You know,” he said, “I don’t think you understand how I see you.”

You glanced at him briefly. “Unfortunately, I hear enough from you already.”

Usually, that would’ve made him laugh harder. This time, he only smiled faintly.

“I’m serious.”

That made you pause slightly. Not because he’d never said things like this before—he had, constantly. But lately, he sounded different when he did. Less playful. More certain.

You shut off the water slowly. “Jake.”

“No, listen to me for a second.”

His voice stayed calm. Steady. Not forcing, but not backing away either.

“You think I like you because I enjoy bothering you.” A small exhale left him. “And yeah, okay, I do enjoy that a little.”

“A lot.”

“A lot,” he corrected easily. “But that’s not why.”

Silence settled briefly between you. Jake straightened slightly, eyes fixed on you now with an honesty that immediately made you uncomfortable. Not because it was unpleasant. Because it was real.

“I like the way you care about people even when you pretend you don’t,” he said quietly. “I like that you keep showing up for everyone, no matter how exhausted you are. I like that you’re honest even when it makes people dislike you.” His mouth softened slightly. “I like that you’re strong without making it everyone else’s problem.”

Your chest tightened faintly. You hated conversations like this. Not because they were insincere. Because you never knew what to do with sincerity once someone handed it to you directly.

Jake continued before you could interrupt.

“And I know you think I flirt with everyone.” He smiled a little, tired this time. “But what I feel for you stopped being casual a long time ago.”

The room suddenly felt too quiet. You crossed your arms instinctively. Defensive.

“That sounds like a bad idea.”

Jake’s expression barely changed. “Because you don’t feel the same?”

Your jaw tightened immediately.

“That’s not what I said.”

Something flickered across his face, then small, hopeful enough to annoy you. You looked away first.

“I don’t…” You exhaled slowly. “I don’t think about relationships.”

“That’s a lie.”

You frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You think about everything.” Jake’s voice softened slightly. “You just avoid things that feel complicated.”

You hated how accurate that sounded. He stepped closer, careful, measured.

“And I know this is complicated,” he admitted. “We work together. We spend almost every day together. If things go wrong, it could affect everything.”

“Exactly.”

“But I still want you anyway.”

Your throat tightened slightly at the directness of it. Jake looked at you for a long moment before speaking again, quieter this time.

“I’m not asking you to decide anything right now,” he said. “I just need you to understand that I mean it.”

A pause.

“That this isn’t a joke to me anymore.”

The honesty in his voice made something shift uncomfortably in your chest. Because the problem wasn’t that you thought Jake was lying. The problem was that you were starting to believe him.

The problem wasn’t Jake.

That was what made this difficult. If he had been careless, immature, or insincere, you could’ve dismissed this easily. You could’ve rolled your eyes, told him to stop being dramatic, and continued your life the same way as before. But Jake meant it. You knew he did now.

And somehow, that made everything worse.

The hospital had taught you how to manage almost everything—pressure, exhaustion, grief, and responsibility. You knew how to function in chaos. You knew how to make impossible decisions without freezing.

This felt uncertain in a way trauma never did.

Because surgeries had protocols. Complications had procedures. Even death had steps you could follow after it happened. Relationships didn’t. Especially not with someone who worked beside you every day.

You sat alone in the attending lounge long after your shift ended, staring blankly at the untouched coffee in your hands. Jake’s words kept replaying, whether you wanted them to or not.

I still want you anyway.

Your jaw tightened faintly. You hated complicated things. And relationships felt like the most complicated thing possible. Not because you thought love was impossible. You saw it all the time. Families crying in waiting rooms, spouses refusing to leave hospital bedsides, people holding onto each other through impossible situations.

You knew it existed. You just never imagined it fitting into your life. Your life was sharp corners and unpredictable hours. Trauma calls at three in the morning. Twenty-hour shifts. Emotional exhaustion, you barely knew how to process yourself.

Jake already knew this life, too. Which meant if things went wrong, there would be no clean escape from it. You would still see each other in the OR. Still work trauma cases together. Still stand across operating tables pretending nothing happened while everyone around you noticed the tension anyway. The idea alone sounded exhausting.

You exhaled quietly and leaned your head back against the chair. The worst part was that you still didn’t know what you felt. Not fully.

Jake mattered to you. That much was obvious now in ways you couldn’t comfortably deny anymore. His presence had become something familiar. Important. He irritated you constantly, yet somehow made the hospital feel less unbearable at the same time.

But caring about someone and wanting a relationship weren’t automatically the same thing.

Were they?

You genuinely didn’t know. And that uncertainty unsettled you more than anything else. Because for the first time in years, this wasn’t a situation you could solve by being competent enough.

.

.

.

.

Jake, unfortunately, did not know how to quit.

After that conversation, any normal person probably would’ve backed off a little. Given you space. Allowed you time to process your feelings without constantly hovering around your existence like an emotionally persistent golden retriever in surgical scrubs.

Jake did none of those things.

“You know I’d marry you tomorrow if you asked, right?”

You didn’t even look up from the patient file. “I’d rather induce my own coma.”

“That’s not a no.”

“That is absolutely a no.”

Yet somehow, he never made it feel like pressure.

Jake didn’t confess because he expected something from you immediately. He confessed because he wanted you to know the feeling still existed. Constant. Unchanged. Certain.

And every time you dismissed him, he just smiled like someone who already understood your language better than you realized.

“Morning,” he greeted one day, falling into step beside you while you speed-walked toward trauma rounds. “You ignored three of my messages.”

“They weren’t messages. You sent me photos of hospital cats.”

“They reminded me of you.”

You stopped walking immediately. “Explain that statement carefully.”

“Mean eyes. Doesn’t trust people. Hisses when approached.”

“You’re brave today.”

“Love makes people fearless.”

“You need a psychological evaluation.”

Jake grinned like that was a compliment. That was the issue with him. Every rejection somehow fueled him, rather than discouraging him.

A week later, he cornered you at the vending machine at two in the morning while you aggressively tried to choose caffeine.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if we dated, I’d let you steal my fries.”

You stared at him flatly. “I can already do that.”

“Yeah, but romantically.”

“That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Not true. Remember when I said epidurals were easy?”

Your expression darkened immediately. “I almost reported you to HR for that.”

“Yet here we are. Stronger than ever.”

You genuinely couldn’t tell if Jake was flirting or simply surviving on a level of confidence normal people didn’t possess. The worst part? He somehow adapted to your personality instead of fighting it. When you ignored him, he kept talking anyway. When you insulted him, he looked entertained instead of offended. And when you got exhausted enough to stop responding entirely, he just walked beside you quietly until you recovered enough to threaten him again.

It was deeply inconvenient.

One afternoon after a brutal trauma surgery, you dropped heavily into a chair in the staff lounge while reviewing scans. Jake appeared two minutes later like a curse.

“You look terrible,” he said sympathetically, handing you coffee.

You accepted it automatically before narrowing your eyes. “Why are you here?”

“I sensed emotional distress.”

He sat across from you casually, watching while you drank the coffee in exhausted silence.

“You know I’m still trying to date you, right?”

You closed your eyes briefly.

“Jake.”

“I’m just making sure we maintain clear communication.”

“You confessed to me yesterday.”

“And today.”

“You’re proving my point.”

“That I’m consistent?”

“That you’re insane.”

Jake leaned back in his chair, completely unbothered.

“Okay, but statistically speaking, eventually you’re gonna accidentally fall in love with me.”

You looked at him over the coffee cup.

“…That’s not how statistics work.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Then I’ll simply have to increase exposure.”

You stared at him for a long moment before muttering, “I actually understand why residents avoid you now.”

Jake looked delighted.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke. Then Jake shoved his hands into his pockets and tilted his head slightly.

“So?” he asked lightly. “Any progress on accidentally falling in love with me?”

You stared at him. Jake stared back hopefully. And despite everything, the exhaustion, the complicated feelings, the fact that relationships still sounded terrifying and inconvenient and deeply impractical, you felt your mouth twitch slightly.

Small. Real. Jake immediately pointed at you. 

“That’s improvement.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

“Too late. I’m celebrating internally.”

You shook your head under your breath.

Still no answer. Still uncertain. Still not ready to call whatever this was by its real name. But this time, when Jake called after you—

“See you tomorrow, Dr. Y/N. I’ll continue loving you then too.”

You didn’t tell him to stop..

Jake watched you disappear down the hallway until the automatic doors closed behind you with a soft hiss. Around him, the hospital kept moving the same way it always did—pages overhead, hurried footsteps, another resident sprinting toward a consult somewhere down the corridor. Nothing had changed. And yet somehow, everything had. Because for the first time since falling in love with you, Jake realized he no longer needed an immediate answer just to keep going. 

And honestly?

For now, that was enough. 

The party is Mina’s idea. It always is. You’ve stopped pretending otherwise — stopped doing the thing where you spend twenty minutes debating whether you’re really feeling it before Mina gives you the look and you both know you’re going regardless.

It’s a Friday in late September, the air outside finally tipping from warm to something with a bite in it, and you’ve been in your dorm room since two in the afternoon staring at the same paragraph of Middlemarch without absorbing a single word.

“You need to get out of this room,” Mina says from your bed, where she’s been watching you not read for the past hour. She’s already dressed — black top, dark jeans, the gold hoops she only wears when she’s decided the night is going to be worth the effort. She decided before she came over. The last hour has been a courtesy. “You’ve been staring at that book like it cheated on you.”

The word lands between you, briefly. Mina’s face doesn’t change “George Eliot is a menace,” you say.

“You love George Eliot.”

“I love George Eliot when I’m not trying to produce fifteen hundred words on her narrative voice by Monday morning.” You close the book. It’s not like you’re reading it anyway.

The thing about Delta Kappa parties is that they are, by any objective measure, too much. Too loud, too hot, the bass sitting somewhere in your sternum, red cups and bodies everywhere you look. Mina thrives. You tolerate it with the specific resignation of someone who knows they’re going to have a good time despite themselves and finds this faintly irritating.

You’re on your second drink when you see Sunghoon. He’s across the room near the kitchen doorway, mid-conversation with someone you don’t recognise, laughing at something. Head tipped back the way he always did — that particular way, unhurried and a little private, like whatever amused him was his alone. You used to love that about him. You watch it for maybe three seconds before you look away, which feels like a victory of some kind.

Four months. Four months since you’d found out, since you’d sat on your dorm room floor and read a conversation thread you were never supposed to see, since everything you thought you’d built with him had turned out to be built on something rotten underneath.

Two years of your life. Your first real relationship. You’d thought it would last.

You look away. You drain the rest of your cup.

“He’s here,” Mina says, appearing at your elbow with the precision of someone who has been watching.

“I know.”

“Do you want to leave?”

“No.” You mean it. “I’m not leaving a party because of Sunghoon Park.”

She studies you for a moment with that particular look — the one that measures the difference between actually fine and performing fine with uncomfortable accuracy. Whatever she finds seems to satisfy her, because she clinks her cup against yours and says, “Then let’s get another drink.”

You’re at the makeshift bar — someone’s kitchen counter pressed into service — when you become aware of someone standing beside you. Not waiting for the bottle. Something else. A specific quality of attention that you register before you’ve consciously clocked it. You look up. Jake Sim looks back.

You know who he is the way you know most things about the people who exist in Caldwell’s uppermost stratum — passively, through cultural osmosis, without ever having chosen to learn. Captain of the Wolves. Dean’s son. The name that comes up in a specific tone of voice, like a warning dressed as gossip.

Up close he is, unfortunately, exactly as good-looking as that reputation implies. Tall, built through the shoulders and chest in the way that years of hockey builds — not showy, just solid, like his body was designed to take up space and does so without apology. Dark eyes. A jaw that should probably be illegal. A mouth curved at the corner like he’s already three steps ahead of the conversation and finds this mildly entertaining.

“You’re doing maths,” he says.

You blink. “What?”

“Your face.” He nods at you, vaguely. “Very intense for someone just standing at a bar.”

“I’m making a drink.”

“You’ve been staring at that vodka for forty-five seconds.”

“I didn’t realise I was being timed.”

“You weren’t.” He reaches past you for the bottle — close enough that you catch something clean and faintly expensive — pours his own cup, sets it back.

“I’m Jake.”

“I know who you are.” Something moves through his expression. Amusement, maybe, or the specific satisfaction of a fact confirmed.

“Most people do,” he says, and there’s no arrogance in it, just a statement of observable reality, which is somehow worse. “And you’re—”

“Also a person,” you say.

That gets a real smile. Brief, but actual. “Fair enough.”

You should find Mina. You’re aware of this the way you’re aware of the coursework due Monday and the fact that it’s past midnight — true, noted, irrelevant. Instead you stay where you are and let the conversation go where it goes, and it goes somewhere you didn’t expect.

He’s good at this. That’s the thing you clock first and keep clocking — the way he makes conversation feel like it has momentum, like you’re building toward something together, the timing of his humour landing slightly off-beat in a way that catches you. He asks questions and actually listens to the answers. You know it’s a formula. You know it has worked on an uncountable number of girls at an uncountable number of parties exactly like this one, and knowing that should make you immune to it, and it doesn’t.

Mina finds you at some point, clocks the situation in under a second, raises her eyebrows precisely two millimetres — a full paragraph in two millimetres — and disappears back into the crowd.

At some point his hand finds the small of your back. Light. Questioning. You don’t move away from it. At some point, close enough that you feel the words more than hear them, he says: “We could get out of here.”

You think about Middlemarch, which you’re not going to read tonight regardless. You think about the two years you spent being someone’s person and the four months since that have felt like learning to walk in a body that’s been subtly rearranged. You think about Sunghoon somewhere in this house with his head tipped back, laughing.

“Okay,” you say.

His room is in the east block upperclassmen housing — a single, because of course, because Jake Sim has probably never had to negotiate space with anyone in his life. It’s tidier than you’d have guessed. You file this away without meaning to, the way you’re still filing things even now, even when you’ve told yourself you’re not doing that anymore.

He closes the door and you’re already turning toward him and then his mouth is on yours and it’s nothing like how he acted downstairs — no charm, no ease, just heat and intent, his hands gripping your face and kissing you like he’s already decided exactly how this goes.

You grab his shirt and walk him backwards and he turns you instead, smooth and immediate, your back hitting the wall beside the door hard enough to knock the breath out of you and you don’t care, you’re already pulling at his shirt and he’s already got your top halfway up your body.

He strips it off you and his mouth drops straight to your throat, open and hot, and then your bra is unclasped and gone before you’ve fully registered his hands at the back of it.

Then his mouth is on your tits and he makes a sound low in his chest like the sight of them was specifically designed to ruin him. His hands cup them, squeezing, thumbs dragging slow over your nipples and watching your face while he does it. You feel your cheeks go hot because his expression is entirely too focused, too attentive, like he’s cataloguing your reactions and filing it away for later use.

He bends his head and takes one nipple into his mouth, tongue working in slow wet circles. Your head drops back against the wall on a moan you didn’t mean to let out that loud.

“Yeah,” he says against your skin, rough and pleased, “get loud,” and bites down lightly you gasp and your nails find his shoulders through his shirt.

He marks you up like he has all the time in the world — mouth dragging from your tits to your throat to your collarbone and back again, teeth and tongue, leaving his work on your skin with a thoroughness that should feel like too much and instead just makes you want more.

His hips grind into yours against the wall, the hard line of his cock pressed against your core through clothing, slow and deliberate, the friction makes you roll up into it and he does it again to which you make a sound that’s honestly embarrassing.

“Bed,” you manage, and he pulls back just enough to look at you — mouth-bitten, dark-eyed, satisfied with himself in a way you don’t have the capacity to be annoyed about right now — and walks you to it.

You land on the mattress and he’s over you immediately, his mouth back on your tits before you’ve stopped bouncing on the mattress, you’re pulling at his shirt until he lets you get it off him and then his jeans are gone and yours are gone and he’s settled between your thighs in just his boxers and the weight of him is — a lot, in the best way, solid and warm and pressing you into the mattress, his hips grind down slow as his cock drags against your pussy through the thin fabric of your panties, you grab his shoulders to hold onto something.

He does it again. Slower.

His mouth is still at your nipple, tongue working it stiff while his hips keep that maddening rhythm, grinding into you with enough friction to make your thighs clench around him but not enough to give you anything real, you can hear how wet you are, can feel it and judging by the way his jaw tightens he can too.

“Jake,” you say, and it comes out more desperate than you intend.

“I know,” he says, like that’s an answer, and then he’s moving down your body.

He hooks your underwear off, throws it somewhere and finally puts his mouth on your pussy. Your back comes off the mattress.

He licks into your folds slowly, taking his time, his tongue dragging from your entrance up to your clit in one long stroke and then doing it again, his hands are spread flat on your inner thighs holding you open and still and there is nothing to do but take it.

He’s good — infuriatingly good — like he’s genuinely interested in making you cum, like this is something he wants to do rather than something he’s doing to get to the next thing. You’ve got one fist in the sheets and one pressed to your own mouth to which he pulls your hand away from your face without looking up. “Don’t,” he says against your cunt, and goes back to work.

His tongue finds your clit and stays there, tight focused circles, two fingers then press at your entrance and push in slow, curling immediately, finding the spot that makes your hips jolt and working it with patience that feels almost cruel.

The sounds coming out of you are loud and continuous and undignified and he hums against you like he approves, the vibration travelling straight up your spine, and you can feel yourself getting close embarrassingly fast, your walls clenching tight around his fingers, your whole body chasing it.

“Don’t stop,” you manage, “don’t — please —“ and he doesn’t, his tongue relentless on your clit and his fingers curling deep, and you cum on his mouth with your thighs shaking, his name coming out broken and too loud for the room.

He works you through every second of it, tongue gentling, fingers slowing until you’re twitching and oversensitive and pulling at his hair to get him off you, he comes back up your body looking composed in a way that feels like a personal attack. There’s something dark and satisfied in his expression as he looks down at you and kisses you before you can say anything, slow, and you taste yourself on his tongue.

His cock is hard against your hip, straining against his boxers, you reach between you and wrap your hand around him and feel him shudder. He’s thick and heavy in your palm, already slick at the tip and when you stroke him his composure cracks — hips pushing into your grip, jaw tightening and a low rough sound forming against your mouth.

You work him slow and watch his face and feel something warm and powerful settle in your chest. “Condom,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says and reaches for the nightstand.

He pushes in slow and you feel every single inch. The stretch of him opening you up, thick and relentless, your walls giving way around his cock, you dig your nails into his back and breathe through it until he’s fully seated. You’re so full it sits somewhere between pleasure and pain and then he rolls his hips and it tips firmly into the first one.

He starts slow — deep, grinding strokes, his cock dragging against every nerve of you, the weight of his hips pinning yours into the mattress and his mouth finds your tits again immediately, like he can’t help it, tongue working your nipple while his hips keep their deep rhythm and you stop being capable of thoughts that go anywhere.

“You’re so fucking tight,” he says against your breast, low and rough, and bites down on the swell of it and soothes it with his tongue and does it again somewhere else.

“Jake—”

“I know,” he says, his thumb finds your clit. The added pressure makes you gasp and your hips jolt up to meet his and he makes a sound that isn’t quite a groan and picks up the pace.

The slow grind gives way to something sharper. His hips snap against yours and the headboard knocks the wall and the wet sounds of it fill the room. You have completely stopped caring about anything except the way his cock fills you on every stroke, deep and thick, the drag of him pulling back and driving in again setting off a chain reaction of sensation that climbs fast.

He shifts your leg up higher over his hip and the angle changes, deeper, and the sound you make at that is genuinely obscene. “Yeah?” he says, doing it again, deliberate. “There?”

“Yes,” you manage, “there, don’t stop, please—”

“Dirty when you want something,” he says, low and pleased, and fucks you harder.

His thumb circles your clit without stopping, his cock drives into your cunt again and again and his mouth marks your throat. The build crests too fast to catch — you cum for the second time harder, walls clenching rhythmically around him, his name coming out wrecked and he follows you over with his hips buried deep and his face pressed to your throat, low broken sounds against your skin as he cums.

The room goes quiet. You stare at the ceiling. Your body has been taken apart and put back together slightly differently and everything feels warm and loose and heavy.

That, you think distantly, was either the best or worst decision you’ve made in months.

Possibly both.

Jake disposes of the condom, comes back, drops onto the bed beside you. The quiet settles. It’s almost comfortable — the dark, the warmth, both of you just breathing. And then…

“You can go whenever,” he says. Flat. Casual. Already looking at the ceiling like you’re no longer the most interesting thing in the room. Like you’ve been downgraded, in the last thirty seconds, from a person to an inconvenience that’s resolved itself.

You blink. You can go whenever. Not you don’t have to rush, not do you want some water, not even basic human decency. Just — you can go. Door’s there. Thanks for coming.

Something cold moves cleanly through the warmth in your chest and extinguishes it. You sit up. “Right,” you say. Your voice comes out level. You’re proud of that.

He says nothing. He is staring at the ceiling with his arms folded behind his head like a man with absolutely no awareness that he’s just been profoundly rude, or perhaps perfect awareness and total indifference, which is worse.

You find your clothes in the dark with quiet methodical efficiency — jeans, top, shoes, bra shoved into your bag because life is short. You do not look at him while you dress and he does not look at you. At the door you pause, and you genuinely don’t know why, some reflex kicking in from a life spent being polite to people who haven’t earned it.

“Bye, then,” you say.

“Mm,” says Jake Sim, at the ceiling not even at you. You want to scoff in his stupidly hot face.

You close the door behind you.

The walk back across campus takes twelve minutes and you spend all twelve of them with the cold night air doing its best against the heat in your face. Not embarrassment — or not only that. Something sharper. The specific anger of someone who knew exactly what they were walking into and walked into it anyway and is now annoyed at themselves for being annoyed.

I knew, you think, with each step. I knew what he was. Everyone knows what he is. I just—

You’d let the hour at the bar do its work. You’d let the conversation and the hand at the small of your back and the dark eyes and the unfair jaw do their work, and you’d told yourself it was fine because you were going in clear-eyed, and the sex had been — god, the sex had been amazing — but then he’d opened his mouth and reminded you exactly who he was and now here you are, at one forty in the morning, crossing the quad with your bra in your bag.

You text Mina. still up?

The reply is immediate. obviously. how was it?

You stare at your phone for a moment. come to mine, you type back.

Mina is sitting up in your bed when you get back, laptop open, a bowl of cereal balanced on her knee that she definitely made while waiting. She takes one look at your face as you come through the door and sets it on the nightstand. “Tell me.”

You drop your bag, toe off your shoes, and sit on the end of the bed. You press your fingers to your eyes for a moment. “The sex,” you say carefully, “was genuinely incredible. Like — top three of my life, Mina. Easily. Potentially top two.”

“Okay—”

“And then, the moment it was over, he looked at the ceiling and told me I could go whenever.” You drop your hands. “In the tone of someone dismissing a tradesman. Like I’d come to fix his boiler.”

Mina’s expression moves through several stages. “He did not.”

“He absolutely did.”

“What did you say?”

“I said bye then and closed the door.”

“Bye then?”

“I panicked and defaulted to manners.” You flop backwards onto the duvet. “I knew. That’s the thing. I knew exactly what he was before I ever spoke to him and I did it anyway because—” You gesture at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Because I’m tired of being careful. Because Sunghoon was across the room being beautiful and I wanted to feel something that wasn’t about him.”

Mina is quiet for a moment. Then: “Was it, at least something that wasn’t about Sunghoon.”

You consider this with the ceiling. “Yes,” you admit. “Annoyingly, yes. Right up until he opened his mouth.”

“He really is the worst,” Mina says, with the conviction of someone delivering a verdict.

“He really, genuinely is.” You stare upward. “He’s got such a good cock though, Mina. Like. I’m annoyed about it. I’m actively annoyed.”

Mina puts her face in her hands. You watch her shoulders shake. “It’s not funny,” you tell her, and then you’re laughing too, and the tight mean thing in your chest loosens by a fraction, and outside the window Caldwell goes on being loud and indifferent and fully lit up, and you are fine.

You’re fine. You’re completely fine.

The week after the party you are, by any reasonable measure, completely fine.

You turn in the Middlemarch essay on Monday morning — fifteen hundred words on narrative voice, mostly written Sunday afternoon in a single focused stretch that you attribute to having gotten something out of your system.

You go to your Tuesday seminar and your Wednesday lecture and you have coffee with Mina on Thursday at the place near the English building where they do the good almond croissants, and you do not think about Jake Sim.

Or you think about him the normal amount. The amount that is appropriate for a person you slept with once at a party and will probably never speak to again, which is to say occasionally and without weight, the way you might think about a film you watched on a plane — enjoyable in the moment, not something you’d seek out again, largely irrelevant to your actual life.

This is what you tell yourself. Mina does not challenge it, which means she’s either convinced or she’s decided to let you have it, and knowing Mina it’s the second one.

Sunghoon texts you on Wednesday. Just — hey, saw you at Delta Kappa Friday. you looked good. You stare at it for a long time. You don’t reply.

You see Jake on Monday. You’re crossing the main quad, coffee in hand, bag over one shoulder, running approximately four minutes late for your seminar, and he’s coming the other direction with Jay Park and someone you don’t recognise, all three of them in Wolves gear, clearly post-practice.

He’s laughing at something Jay said, head tilted back, and he looks — easy, and loose, and completely unbothered by anything in the known universe, which you knew, which is exactly what you expected, and yet something about seeing it in person at ten forty-three on a Monday morning makes your jaw tighten anyway.

He doesn’t see you. Or he does and gives no indication of it, which amounts to the same thing. You look straight ahead and keep walking and do not think about it for the rest of the morning.

You think about it a little bit in the afternoon. By evening you’ve filed it away under irrelevant and moved on, which is the correct and mature response and you’re proud of yourself.

The sickness starts on Wednesday morning. You wake up with your stomach doing something wrong — not dramatic, not the sharp unmistakable rebellion of food poisoning, just a low persistent nausea that sits behind your sternum like it’s made itself at home. You lie still for a moment, waiting for it to pass.

It doesn’t.

You get up, make it to the bathroom, sit on the edge of the tub for ten minutes breathing carefully, and then it eases enough that you can brush your teeth and get dressed and tell yourself you’re fine.

You’re not fine by Thursday morning.

The nausea is worse — still not acute, still this low insidious wrongness, but it’s there when you wake up and it doesn’t fully lift, and your coffee tastes like something burnt and metallic and you push it away after two sips which Mina clocks immediately from across the table at the place near the English building.

“You’re not drinking your coffee.”

“I’m not feeling it today.”

Mina looks at the cup. Looks at you. “You have never in three years of knowing you not felt like coffee.”

“There’s a first time for everything.” She watches you for a moment with that look. You look back at your laptop and don’t say anything else.

By Saturday you feel actively, genuinely terrible.

Not sick-sick — no fever, no aches, nothing you can point to as a specific illness — just this relentless creeping nausea that is worst in the morning and fades by afternoon and makes the idea of eating before eleven o’clock an abstract and unpleasant concept.

You cancel your Saturday morning coffee with Mina, which you have never done, and she’s at your door by noon with a container of crackers and a forensic expression. “Talk,” she says.

“I think I’m coming down with something.”

“What kind of something.”

“I don’t know, Mina, a virus. A bug. Something that’s going around.”

She sits down on your bed and opens the crackers and holds them out to you and you take one because the sight of them is, somehow, the most appealing thing you’ve encountered all week. You eat it slowly. Your stomach does not immediately rebel. You take another one. “How long?” Mina asks.

“Since Wednesday morning.”

“And it’s worst in the morning.”

“Yes.”

“And you can’t drink coffee.”

“It tastes wrong.” Mina is quiet for a moment. You eat another cracker and look at the wall. “I’m sure it’s just a bug,” you say.

“Yeah,” Mina says, in a tone that means something else entirely. “Probably.”

The conspiracy theories start that evening, though. It’s the two of you on your bed with Mina’s laptop open and a bag of pretzels between you, and it begins reasonably enough — you googling nausea worse in morning possible causes and working through the list with the detached efficiency of someone who is definitely not spiralling. Stress. Acid reflux. Inner ear issues. Viral gastroenteritis. Dietary changes.

“Have you eaten anything different lately?” Mina asks.

“No.”

“Stressed about something?”

“When am I not stressed about something.”

“Fair.” She scrolls. “It says here inner ear problems can cause—”

“I don’t have inner ear problems, Mina.”

Mina scrolls further. You eat a pretzel and watch her face and wait for it. You know it’s coming. You’ve known since Saturday morning, if you’re being honest, since she’d sat on your bed with that specific expression and said probably in that specific tone, and you’ve been not-thinking about it with considerable effort for the past several hours.

“Okay,” Mina says, carefully, still looking at the screen. “What if.”

“No.”

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

“You don’t have to.” You pull the laptop toward you and close the tab. “It’s been less than two weeks. It’s too early for that. It’s a bug.”

“You used a condom?”

“Obviously.”

“They’re not a hundred percent.”

“It’s a bug,” you say. “It’s a completely normal bug that normal people get and it has nothing to do with — it’s a bug.”

Mina looks at you with the expression of someone who has several more things to say and has made a strategic decision to not say them yet. “Okay,” she says. “Bug.”

By Sunday you can’t keep breakfast down. You sit on your bathroom floor at eight in the morning with your back against the tub and your forehead against your knees and you think about the party, and Jake’s room, and the nightstand, and the condom, and you think no very firmly and repeatedly and it doesn’t help at all.

You text Mina. can you come over

She’s there in seven minutes. She doesn’t say anything when you open the door, just looks at your face, and you nod back at her.

The Caldwell campus drugstore is a five minute walk from your building and has, blessedly, a single-occupancy bathroom at the back that Mina sweet-talks the Saturday cashier into letting you use on the grounds that you’re not feeling well, which is at least entirely true. It’s a very small bathroom.

The two of you fill it completely — you on the closed toilet lid, Mina with her back against the sink, the test sitting on the edge of it between you with three minutes on Mina’s phone timer counting down. Nobody says anything.

The tile is white. There’s a motivational poster on the back of the door — you’ve got this! in yellow letters — that you stare at with a feeling you can’t fully name.

Two minutes.

“It’s probably negative,” you say.

“Probably,” Mina says.

“The condom—”

“Yeah.” “And it’s been less than two weeks. Like. The timing—”

“The timing is actually about right,” Mina says, gently, “for symptoms to—”

“Stop,” you say.

One minute.

You watch the timer. The timer watches back. Your hands are completely still in your lap which surprises you — you’d have expected them to shake, but instead you feel very calm in the specific way that you get sometimes when something is about to happen and your body has decided that panic is a resource to be conserved.

The timer goes off.

Neither of you moves for a second. Then Mina picks up the test and looks at it. Her face does something — a flicker, fast and controlled, there and gone — and she hands it to you without speaking.

Two lines.

You look at it for a long time.

“Okay,” you say, finally.

“Yeah,” Mina says.

The motivational poster on the wall says you’ve got this! in yellow letters and you stare at it and think about Jake Sim telling the ceiling you can go whenever and feel something move through you that is too big and too complicated to have a name yet.

“Okay,” you say again. Like if you keep saying it, it’ll start meaning something useful.

—

You don’t go to him straight away. That feels important somehow — that you don’t just spiral out of that drugstore bathroom and make a beeline for the Hargrove Center in a panic, that you go back to your dorm first and sit with it for a while like a person with some degree of self-possession.

You and Mina order food you mostly don’t eat and sit on your bed with the test face-down on the nightstand like if you can’t see it it’s less real, and you talk around it for a while before you talk about it directly, which is its own kind of processing.

“You don’t have to decide anything today,” Mina says.

“I know.”

“You don’t have to tell him today either.”

“I know.” You pull your sleeves over your hands. “But I feel like — I don’t know. He should know. Like in or not he’s — it’s his. He should know.”

Mina is quiet for a moment. “Okay,” she says. “But eat something first.”

You eat half a portion of noodles. It’s the most you’ve managed in days and your stomach accepts it cautiously, like it’s making no promises. Then you change your top, put your shoes on, and look at Mina.

“Don’t come with me,” you say.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were absolutely going to.”

She opens her mouth. Closes it. “Text me the second you’re out.”

The Hargrove Center is a twenty minute walk across campus and you use all twenty minutes to rehearse what you’re going to say, which turns out to be a complete waste of time because the moment you push through the side door and the cold air of the rink hits you — that particular sharp smell of ice and equipment — your prepared sentences evaporate entirely.

Practice is just wrapping up. You can see them from the entrance, the Wolves coming off the ice in clusters, helmets off, sticks in hand. Jay Park says something that makes Riki Nishimura laugh. Jungwon Yang is already halfway to the boards.

And Jake is — there, centre ice, still, talking to one of the assistant coaches with his helmet under his arm and his hair pushed back from his face, and even from here he looks like someone who has never had an uncontrollable variable in his life.

You wait.

You’re good at waiting. You’ve spent the last two weeks being good at things you didn’t choose to be good at.

He sees you when he comes off the ice — clocks you in the way that people clock something unexpected in a familiar space, a brief recalibration. Something moves across his face, too fast to read. Then it’s gone and he’s walking toward you with the easy unhurried stride of someone who has decided to be unbothered and you stand your ground and wait for him to reach you.

“Hey,” he says. Like you’re an acquaintance. Like he’s mildly surprised to see you and finds it mildly unremarkable.

“I need to talk to you,” you say. Something shifts.

The easy expression doesn’t disappear exactly but it adjusts, becomes more guarded. He glances around — Jay is watching from the boards with open curiosity, Riki less subtly — and then jerks his head toward the corridor off the main rink.

You follow him into it. It’s quieter here, the noise of the rink muffled, the overhead lights slightly too bright. He turns and faces you with his arms crossed and his weight back, and waits. You had sentences. You had very good sentences, all the way across campus.

“I’m pregnant,” you say.

The corridor goes very quiet. Jake looks at you. His expression does several things in quick succession that he doesn’t quite manage to keep off his face — shock, and something that might be fear, and then a shuttering, a closing, something careful dropping down over all of it.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay,” you repeat.

“That’s — okay. How far—”

“I just found out today. So.” You fold your arms across your chest. “Not far.”

He nods slowly. His jaw is working. He looks at the floor for a moment and then back at you and the careful expression is fully in place now, composed and unreadable, and you don’t know whether to be relieved or furious about it.

“Are you sure it’s mine,” he says.

The corridor goes even quieter somehow.

You look at him. “What did you just say.”

“I’m just—” He shifts his weight. “We don’t know each other. I don’t know who else you’ve been—”

“Are you calling me a slut.” It comes out flat. Not a question.

“I’m not calling you anything, I’m just saying I don’t know—”

“You’re the only person I’ve slept with in four months.” Your voice is very level. “I was in a relationship. It ended. I haven’t — there’s been no one else. There’s only been you.” You look at him. “And I can’t believe I’m standing here explaining that to you.”

“I’m not trying to—”

“You literally just implied I could have slept with someone else.” The level voice is beginning to fray at the edges. “You literally said that. To my face.”

“Look, I just—”

You slap him.

You don’t plan it. Your hand moves before the decision has fully formed, the sharp crack of it landing across his cheek, and then there’s a ringing silence and your palm is stinging and Jake’s head has turned with the force of it and he’s looking at you now with an expression you haven’t seen on him before. Not angry. Something more complicated than angry.

“Don’t ever,” you say, quietly, “imply something like that to me again.”

He says nothing. His hand has come up to his cheek, not pressing, just — there. His jaw is tight.

“I thought you should know,” you say. “That’s all. I thought you deserved to know because it’s yours and you deserved to know. I haven’t decided anything yet and I’m not asking you for anything.” You pull your bag higher on your shoulder. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he says. Low. You walk back out into the cold. You text Mina out and she sends back seventeen question marks which is fair.

You tell her you’ll explain when you get back and spend the walk home feeling the particular hollow exhaustion of someone who has done the thing they needed to do and now has no idea what comes next.

You’re back in your building, one flight up, when you hear him behind you. “Hey—”

You turn. Jake is in the stairwell, still in his practice gear, slightly out of breath like he walked fast to get here, and you have absolutely no idea how he found out which dorm you’re in and you’re going to have questions about that later.

“How did you—“

“Jay knew,” he says, which explains nothing and everything.

He comes up the last few steps and stops on your landing and runs a hand through his hair and looks like someone who has been having a very difficult internal conversation at speed. “Can I—”

“No,” you say.

“Two minutes.” You look at him. He looks back. The mark from your hand has faded from his cheek but his expression is still doing that thing — complicated, unreadable, something working behind it.

“Two minutes,” you say, and unlock your door. Your room is small and suddenly smaller with him in it. He stands just inside the door like he’s not sure he’s allowed further in, which is the most uncertain you’ve seen him, and you sit on the end of your bed and look at him and wait.

He reaches into his jacket. He puts a stack of bills on your desk. You look at the money. You look at him. “Jake.”

“It’s enough to cover — whatever you decide.” He’s not quite meeting your eyes. “I’m not — look. I don’t want a kid. I’m not in a place for that. We don’t know each other. But I’m not going to just—” He stops. Starts again. “Take it. Whatever you need it for.”

You stare at the money for a long moment. “Are you going to want to be involved,” you ask. “If I decide to keep it.”

Something crosses his face. “I don’t — I haven’t—” He exhales. “I don’t know.”

“Okay,” you say. “That’s honest at least.”

“Are you going to keep it,” he asks. Quietly. Like he’s not sure he has the right to ask.

You look at the money on your desk. You look at him — standing in your doorway in his practice gear, jaw tight, trying very hard to look like someone who has this handled and not quite managing it — and you think that this is the first time he’s looked like a person to you. Not the reputation, not the corridor composure, not the ceiling of his bedroom. Just a person who is as blindsided as you are and coping with it badly.

“I don’t know yet,” you say. “I’ll let you know when I do.”

He nods. He looks at you for a moment longer than necessary. Then he picks up the money from your desk and puts it on your nightstand instead, like the desk was somehow wrong, like the four feet of distance makes a difference, and you don’t say anything about it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, at the door. “For what I said. At the rink.”

You look at him. “Which part.”

“All of it.”

He closes the door behind him and you sit on your bed in the quiet of your room for a long time, the money on your nightstand and the weight of everything pressing down, and then you pick up your phone and call your sister.

She picks up on the third ring. “Hey, you.” Hannah’s voice is warm and slightly distracted in the way it always is — you can hear one of the kids in the background, the particular high-pitched negotiation of a five year old who wants something and has decided now is the time. “Give me two seconds.”

Then, away from the phone: “Lily, baby, I said after dinner. After. Yes. Because I said so, that’s why.” A door closing.

Then: “Okay. Hi. Sorry. What’s up?”

You open your mouth. You’ve been sitting on your bed for forty minutes since Jake left, the money on your nightstand and your phone in your hand, and you’ve composed this conversation approximately thirty times in your head and all thirty versions started more coherently than what actually comes out, which is: “I did something kind of stupid.”

“How stupid.”

“Significantly.”

A beat. Hannah has always been good at letting silence do its work, at not rushing in to fill it with the wrong thing. It’s one of the things you’ve always loved about her. “Okay,” she says. “Tell me.”

So you tell her. All of it — the party and Jake and the test and the corridor and the slap and him in your room with the money — and Hannah listens through all of it without interrupting, which is its own kind of gift, and when you’re done there’s a moment of quiet that feels like her sorting through it.

“Okay,” she says again. “First question. Are you physically okay?”

“Yes.”

“Second question. Do you have someone with you?”

“Mina’s coming over in an hour.”

“Good.” You can hear her moving around, the soft sounds of her kitchen. “Third question, and I want you to actually think about it before you answer — not what you think you should say, not what’s practical, not what he wants or what anyone else wants. Just you.”

She pauses. “Do you want to keep it?”

You look at the money on your nightstand.

You think about the question the way she asked it — stripped of everything else, just you, just the truth of it underneath all the noise.

The thing is, you already know. You’ve known since the bathroom floor this morning, since you sat with your back against the tub and your forehead on your knees. It’s why the knowing has been so terrifying — not because you’re uncertain but because you’re not, and being not uncertain makes it real in a way that uncertainty would have postponed.

“Yeah,” you say. Quietly. “I do. I just — I don’t want it to be his. I don’t want to be tied to someone who—” You stop. “I don’t want the situation. I just want—”

“The baby,” Hannah says. “Yeah.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Those are two separate things,” she says. “The situation and the baby. They feel like the same thing right now but they’re not.”

You hear her sit down somewhere. “Marcus and I — when I had Lily, things with us were not good. You remember. We were not in a good place. And I thought about it the same way — I want her, I just don’t want this. And it was hard. It was genuinely really hard. But she’s five now and she’s the most annoying, amazing person I’ve ever met and I can’t — I can’t imagine.”

You press the back of your hand to your mouth.

“I’m not telling you what to do,” Hannah says quickly. “I promise I’m not. Whatever you decide I’m with you. I just — you asked.”

“I know,” you manage. “I know you’re not.”

“Is he terrible?” she asks. “This Jake person.”

You think about the corridor. The money. I’m sorry. For what I said. All of it. “I don’t know yet,” you say. “He’s — I don’t know what he is.”

“Okay.” Hannah’s voice is careful and warm. “You don’t have to know yet. You don’t have to know anything yet except what you want. Everything else gets figured out.”

You sit with that for a moment. “I’m keeping it,” you say. Out loud, to another person, for the first time. It lands differently than it did in your head — more solid, more real, like something that has been decided rather than something being considered.

“Okay,” Hannah says, and she says it the way Mina says it — not okay as in fine but okay as in I’ve got you. “Then we figure out the rest.”

You tell Mina when she comes over and she holds your hand and doesn’t say anything for a long moment and then says “okay, what do we need to do” in the tone of someone rolling up their sleeves, which is exactly right, which is why she’s your person.

You tell Jake two days later.

You find him after morning practice on a Wednesday, same side entrance to the Hargrove Center, and this time he sees you coming and something in his posture adjusts — not quite bracing, just becoming more careful, more deliberate, the way he gets when he’s paying attention. “Hey,” he says.

“I’m keeping it,” you say.

He goes very still. You watch him process it — the stillness and then the almost imperceptible movement of his jaw, the way his eyes go somewhere internal for a second before coming back to you. He looks like someone doing rapid and complicated mathematics. “Okay,” he says finally.

“You don’t have to be involved. I meant that when I said it. I’m not — I’m not asking you for anything except to know. You deserved to know and now you know and whatever you decide to do with that is up to you.”

“I said I’d provide,” he says. “I meant that.”

“Money isn’t the same as involved.”

“I know.” He shifts his weight. His hands are in his pockets and he’s looking at you with that careful expression, the one you can’t fully read. “I don’t — I’m not going to be the guy who just throws money at it and disappears. That’s not—” He stops. “I don’t know what I am yet. But I’m not that.”

You look at him for a long moment. There is, underneath the practice gear and the careful composure and the history of the last two weeks, something that might be decency in there. It’s buried. It’s inconsistent. You’ve seen it appear and disappear enough times already to know better than to trust it yet. But it’s there. “Okay,” you say. “Then figure out what you are and let me know.”

You turn to go. “Can I—” He stops. You look back. “Can I have your number,” he says. “Properly. So we can — so it’s easier to—”

“To what.”

He looks, briefly, like someone who hasn’t thought this far ahead. “Talk,” he says. “If we need to.”

You look at him for a moment. Then you take out your phone and hold it out. He puts his number in and hands it back and you save it under Jake Sim (do not text unless necessary) which you do not show him. “I’ll be in touch,” you say.

Jake doesn’t mean to tell his friend— or he does, but not like this, not in the locker room with his gear half off and Riki eating a protein bar on the bench across from him and Jay taping his wrist in the corner and Jungwon doing something on his phone. It comes out the way things come out when you’ve been holding them too long and the effort of holding them finally exceeds the effort of saying them.

“I got someone pregnant,” he says.

The locker room goes quiet. Riki stops chewing. Jay puts down the tape. Jungwon looks up from his phone. “I’m sorry,” Jay says, with the careful enunciation of someone who wants to make sure they’ve heard correctly. “You what?”

“You heard me.”

“I heard you, I just want to make sure I—” Jay sets down the tape fully and turns to face him. “Who.”

“Girl from Delta Kappa. Three weeks ago.” Another silence. Jay is looking at him with an expression that Jake doesn’t particularly enjoy — something between concern and the specific look of someone doing the maths on how this could have happened and arriving at several uncomfortable conclusions about Jake’s general life choices.

“Are you—” Jungwon starts.

“I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I was going to ask.”

“Then what.”

Jungwon looks at him steadily. “Is she okay.”

Jake opens his mouth. Closes it. Thinks about you in the corridor at the rink and your voice going flat and your hand cracking across his face, and then you in your dorm room — calm and certain and telling him you weren’t asking him for anything, which was somehow the part that landed hardest. “I think so,” he says. “She’s — yeah.”

“Do you like her?” Riki asks, with the bluntness of someone who has not yet learned that some questions require more runway.

“I don’t know her,” Jake says.

“That’s not what I asked.” Jay shoots Riki a look. Riki shrugs and takes another bite of his protein bar.

“What are you going to do?” Jay asks, turning back to Jake.

Jake leans his elbows on his knees and looks at the floor. The locker room smells like it always does — ice and rubber and effort — and it’s familiar in a way that is almost destabilising right now, how normal everything around him is when nothing feels particularly normal. “I don’t know yet,” he says. “Be there, I think. As much as she’ll let me.”

“As much as she’ll let you,” Jay repeats. Something in his tone.

“She’s not — she’s not soft.” Jake looks up. “She’s not going to make it easy.”

“Should she?”

Jake looks at him. Jay looks back, steady and unhurried. “No,” Jake says, after a moment. “Probably not.”

Jay nods once. Picks the tape back up. “Then figure it out,” he says, like it’s simple, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Jake sits with that in the familiar smell of the locker room and thinks that he probably needs to.

—

The truce, when it forms, is not announced. It happens gradually over the following week — a text from him checking if you need anything, which you respond to with I’m fine thanks and nothing else. A text from you three days later telling him your first appointment is booked for the following week, which he responds to with do you want me there and you respond with not yet and he responds with okay and that’s it, that’s the whole exchange, and somehow it’s the most civil conversation you’ve had.

He doesn’t push. You note this without letting it mean too much. You’re not friends. You’re not anything with a name. You’re two people who made a mistake that turned into something neither of you planned for, and you’re figuring out how to exist in the same orbit without either of you combusting, and most days it feels manageable and some days it feels impossible and on the days it feels impossible you call Hannah, who answers on the third ring and lets the silence do its work.

It’s something, you think. It’s not much but it’s something. For now, that has to be enough.

The thing about Caldwell though, is that it’s a big campus until it isn’t.

Thirty thousand students, four faculties, two libraries, a quad the size of a small park — and yet somehow the people you most want to avoid have an unerring instinct for occupying the same coffee shop, the same corridor, the same stretch of pavement at the same time.

You’ve been navigating this for four months with Sunghoon and you’ve gotten good at it. You know his schedule well enough to avoid it without meaning to, the way you learn the shape of someone after two years and can’t quite unlearn it.

Which is why it catches you off guard when he’s just — there. The library café, a Tuesday afternoon, three weeks after the test. You’re at a corner table with your laptop and a cup of tea you’ve been nursing for an hour because coffee is still wrong and probably will be for the foreseeable future, and you’re halfway through a close reading of Middlemarch chapter forty-two when someone pulls out the chair across from you and sits down and you look up and it’s Sunghoon.

He looks, as he always looks, like something assembled with unreasonable care. Dark hair, clean jawline, the particular quality of stillness he has that used to make you feel calm and now just makes you feel tired.

“Hey,” he says.

You look at him. Then at the chair he’s sitting in. Then back at him. “I didn’t say you could sit.”

“I know.” He doesn’t move. “I just wanted to talk.”

“Sunghoon.”

“Five minutes.”

You close your laptop. Not because you’re agreeing, but because whatever he’s about to say you want to be looking at him when he says it. “Five minutes,” you say. “And then you’re going to go away.”

Something moves through his expression — not quite hurt, but adjacent. He folds his hands on the table. He has nice hands. You spent two years noticing his hands. “I saw you at Delta Kappa,” he says.

“I know. You texted me.”

“You didn’t reply.” He looks at you steadily. “You were talking to Jake Sim.”

There it is.

You keep your face very neutral. “I was at a party. I talked to a lot of people.”

“Jake Sim isn’t a lot of people.” Something in his voice shifts — not quite possessive, not quite jealous, threading that needle with the precision of someone who knows he doesn’t have the right to either and is trying to disguise it as concern. “He’s not a good person to get involved with.”

“Thank you for that,” you say. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” You look at him. “Sunghoon. You don’t get to come sit at my table and tell me who I should and shouldn’t talk to. You gave that up.”

His jaw tightens. “I know I did.”

“Then why are you here?”

He’s quiet for a moment. Outside the café windows the quad is grey and overcast, students moving across it with their heads down against the wind, and Sunghoon is looking at you with an expression you know — you’ve catalogued it, the way you’ve catalogued everything about him, two years of accumulated knowledge you can’t seem to put down. It’s the expression he gets when he wants to say something and is choosing his words with care.

“I miss you,” he says.

You look at him for a long time. The honest answer is that you miss him too — or you miss the version of things you thought you had, which isn’t exactly the same as missing him but lives close enough to it that the distinction is hard to maintain on a grey Tuesday afternoon with him sitting across from you looking like that.

You miss having a person. You miss the shape of your life before it got complicated in every possible direction.

But you also know what he did.

You know it with the specific clarity of something you’ve gone over enough times that it’s stopped being sharp and started being just — true. A fact about him. A fact about what he chose. “I know,” you say. Carefully. “But that’s not my problem to fix.”

He nods. Slow. Like he expected it and it still costs him something. He stands up, pushes the chair back in, and then pauses with his hands on the back of it. “Are you okay?” he asks. “Actually? You look—” He stops.

“I look what.”

“Tired,” he says. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine,” you say.

He looks at you for a moment longer. Then he goes, and you open your laptop, and you stare at Middlemarch chapter forty-two for a while without reading any of it.

You don’t tell Jake about Sunghoon.

There’s no reason to.

You and Jake are not — whatever you are, it doesn’t include telling each other things. It includes occasional texts, one appointment you went to alone where a doctor confirmed what you already knew and gave you a due date that made it real in a new and specific way, and a strange careful politeness that exists between you like a temporary structure neither of you fully trusts.

He texts you on a Friday evening. how are you feeling

You look at it for a while. Fine. Less sick this week.

that’s good

A pause. Then: do you need anything?

You think about your sister’s voice. You don’t have to know anything yet except what you want. You think about Jake in your dorm room, the money on your nightstand, I’m not going to be the guy who just throws money at it. You think about how many times in the past three weeks he’s almost been decent and then done something to complicate it.

I’m okay, you send back. Thanks.

He sends a thumbs up and you put your phone face down and tell yourself this is fine, this arrangement is fine, and mostly you believe it.

You find out about the girl on a Saturday night.

You’re not looking for it — you’re not the kind of person who goes searching for things they don’t want to find, you learned that lesson with Sunghoon — but Caldwell is a big campus until it isn’t, and Mina’s friend group overlaps with the hockey crowd in the specific way that happens at schools where athletes are their own ecosystem but not a fully separate one.

It’s Mina who tells you, with the careful expression of someone who has been sitting on information and decided you’d rather hear it from her. “I heard Jake hooked up with someone last weekend,” she says. Not leading with it, not burying it either. Just: here is a thing that is true.

You look at your coffee. You’ve graduated back to coffee this week, weak and milky, which feels like a victory. “Okay,” you say.

“You’re allowed to have feelings about that.”

“We’re not together, Mina.”

“I know.”

“He can do whatever he wants. We’re not — there’s nothing between us. We’re just—” You move your hand in a vague gesture that encompasses the entire situation. “This.”

“I know,” Mina says again, in the tone that means she has more to say and is choosing not to. You continue to drink your coffee.

The thing is — and this is the part you don’t say out loud, the part you turn over privately in the quiet of your own head — the thing is that you know she’s right.

You are allowed to have feelings about it.

You do have feelings about it, somewhere underneath the very reasonable and correct observation that Jake Sim owes you nothing beyond basic decency and whatever co-parenting arrangement you eventually figure out.

You have feelings about it the way you have feelings about a lot of things lately — in the muffled, at-a-distance way, like they’re happening to someone slightly removed from you and you’re watching through glass.

You’re pregnant with his baby and he’s sleeping with someone else and you’re not together and you have no claim on him and all of that is true simultaneously and you’re not sure what to do with the fact that it still sits in your chest like something uncomfortable.

“I don’t care,” you tell Mina. She looks at you with the expression that means I know you and I know that’s not entirely true but I love you so I’ll let you have it.

“Okay,” she says.

—

Jake texts you on Sunday.

heard you’ve been doing better. that’s good

You stare at the message for a long time. Yeah, you type back. Thanks.

A pause. Then: can I take you to your next appointment?

You put the phone down. Pick it up. Put it down again.

The question sits there, simple and direct, and the thing about it is that it isn’t nothing. It’s not the gesture of someone who is just throwing money at a situation. It’s — something. Small and tentative and probably not enough and something nonetheless.

It’s in two weeks, you send back. I’ll let you know.

okay, he says. no pressure.

You put the phone down and look at the ceiling and think about a girl you don’t know and a Saturday night you weren’t part of and the specific stupidity of having feelings about either, and then you think about your next appointment and the due date the doctor gave you and the small impossible reality of all of it, and you decide that you are going to take a nap and deal with every single one of these things later.

Later, you think. All of it later.

He comes to the appointment, in the end you let him. You texted him the details the night before — time, building, room number — and he’s there when you arrive, standing outside the health centre with his hands in his jacket pockets and his breath fogging in the cold, and he looks up when he sees you coming and something in his expression does that thing, that complicated unreadable thing, and he falls into step beside you without saying anything.

Inside, in the waiting room, you sit next to each other in plastic chairs with a magazine between you that neither of you reads. A couple across the room are holding hands. You and Jake sit with six inches of space between you like a demilitarised zone.

“You okay?” he asks, quietly.

“Fine,” you say. “You?”

“Fine,” he says.

The nurse calls your name and you both stand up and Jake follows you in and stands slightly to the side while the doctor talks and asks questions and pulls up the scan on the screen, and you look at it — the small impossible blur of it, the heartbeat a flickering certainty on the monitor — and you feel the thing in your chest that you’ve been keeping at distance move closer without permission.

Beside you Jake goes very still.

You don’t look at him. You look at the screen.

“Everything looks perfect,” the doctor says.

You nod. You don’t trust your voice.

In the corridor after, walking back out into the cold, Jake is quiet for a long time. Longer than usual even for him.

You’re almost at the path that splits — his way, your way — when he says, without looking at you: “That was—”

“Yeah,” you say.

He nods. Puts his hands back in his pockets. “I’ll walk you back,” he says.

You think about the girl he slept with. You think about Sunghoon in the library café. You think about the scan on the monitor and the heartbeat that is real and certain and not theoretical anymore.

“Okay,” you say.

He walks you back. You don’t talk much. It’s not uncomfortable exactly — it’s something more complicated than that, something neither of you has a name for yet, and when you reach your building he stops at the bottom of the steps and looks at you and opens his mouth and then closes it again.

“What,” you say.

“Nothing,” he says. “Just — take care of yourself.” You look at him for a moment.

“You too,” you say, and go inside.

—

Sunghoon doesn’t give up. You’d half expected him to — one conversation in the library café, you’d said your piece, he’d said his, and you’d thought that would be the end of it. Sunghoon has always been precise about things, economical, not the type to repeat himself unnecessarily. You’d thought he’d take the answer and file it and move on.

Instead he texts you on a Wednesday. Just — how are you doing. No punctuation, which for Sunghoon is practically shouting.

You don’t reply.

He texts again on Friday. can we get coffee sometime? just to talk?

You stare at it for a long time.

You show it to Mina, who makes a face. “Don’t,” she says.

“I’m not going to,” you say.

He finds you on campus on Monday — the English building, your own territory, which feels deliberate. He’s waiting near the entrance when you come out of your seminar and you see him before he sees you and for one uncharitable second you think about turning around and going back inside.

You don’t. You keep walking. “Hey,” he says, falling into step beside you.

“Sunghoon.”

“I just want to walk with you.”

“I didn’t say you could.”

“I know.” He walks with you anyway, hands in his coat pockets, quiet for a moment in the way that used to feel comfortable and now just feels like pressure. “How are you feeling?”

You glance at him. “Fine.”

“You look better than last time I saw you. Less tired.”

“Thanks,” you say, flatly.

He’s quiet again. The path curves toward the quad and you keep walking and he keeps pace and you’re aware — acutely, uncomfortably aware — that you’re starting to show. Not dramatically, not in a way that’s obvious under your coat, but enough that you know. Enough that it’s a matter of time.

“I meant what I said,” Sunghoon says. “In the library.”

“I know you did.”

“I’m not trying to pressure you.”

“You’re walking next to me uninvited,” you say. “What would you call that?”

He stops. You stop too, half a beat later, and turn to look at him. He’s standing in the middle of the path with that precise, careful expression and something underneath it that isn’t quite what he’s performing, and you know him well enough to know the difference and wish you didn’t.

“I made a mistake,” he says. “I know I did. I know what I did and I know it was—” He stops. Starts again. “I just want a chance to—”

“Sunghoon.” You keep your voice even. “I can’t do this right now. I genuinely cannot — there is too much happening in my life right now for me to also be doing this. Okay? Please.”

He looks at you. Something in his expression shifts — a question forming, something he’s noticed that he can’t quite place. “What’s happening?” he asks. Carefully.

“Nothing that’s your business,” you say. “Please just — let me go.”

And he lets you go.

But the problem is that Caldwell is a big campus until it isn’t.

The problem is that two weeks later you’re at a party you didn’t particularly want to attend — a smaller thing, a friend of Mina’s, an apartment off campus — and both of them are there. Jake and Sunghoon.

You don’t notice Jake first. You notice Sunghoon, across the room with his circle, and you note it and move on, you’re good at that now. You get a drink — water, the specific reality of being the only sober person at a party hitting — and find Mina and settle into the corner and decide you’ll stay an hour and then leave.

You notice Jake about twenty minutes in.

He’s near the kitchen with Jay, and there’s a girl — tall, dark-haired, laughing at something he’s said with her hand on his arm and her body angled toward him in the specific way that means something. You see him lean in to say something close to her ear. You see her laugh again. You look away.

You look back to Mina, who is mid-conversation with someone and hasn’t clocked it, and you drink your water and you are fine, you are completely fine, this is exactly what you knew was happening and seeing it in person doesn’t change anything and you are fine.

You last another twenty minutes before you decide you’re going to get some air.

The problem is that getting air requires passing the kitchen. Jake sees you at the same moment you see him and something in his expression shifts — that recalibration, that adjustment — and the girl’s hand is still on his arm and you keep walking, eyes forward, almost past— “Hey.”

His voice.

You stop. You turn. He’s stepped slightly away from the girl, who is watching with a politely curious expression. “Hey,” you say.

“You’re here,” he says, which is not his most articulate moment.

“Briefly,” you say. “Don’t mind me.” Something moves across his face.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” You smile at him — pleasant, neutral, the smile of someone who is absolutely fine. “Enjoy your night.” You keep walking.

The air outside is cold and you stand on the small concrete step outside the apartment and breathe it and tell yourself the tightness in your chest is just the stuffiness of the party and not anything else.

You hear the door behind you. “Hey—”

You turn, expecting Jake, and it’s Sunghoon. Of course it’s Sunghoon.

He’s in his coat, hands in his pockets, and he looks at you with that careful expression and says “I saw you come out” like that explains what he’s doing here, which it does, which doesn’t make it better.

“I needed air,” you say.

“I know.” He comes to stand beside you. Close, but not touching. “You looked upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“You have a face,” he says, gently, and you hate that he’s right, hate that after four months and everything that happened he can still read you like that. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it Sim?” Something in his voice changes — not quite hard, not quite angry, threading the needle. “Are you involved with him?”

“That’s not your business.”

“I’m asking because I’m worried about you, not because—”

“Sunghoon.” You turn to face him. “Please stop. Please just—”

The door opens behind you. Jake comes out. He takes in the scene — you and Sunghoon, close, Sunghoon’s expression, yours — in about half a second and his jaw tightens in a way you’ve learned to read as something being suppressed.

“Everything okay?” he asks. Looking at you, not at Sunghoon.

“Fine,” you say, for what feels like the hundredth time tonight.

“She said she’s fine,” Sunghoon says. His voice is even. “So you can go back inside.” Jake looks at him. Something passes between them that has nothing to do with you — some older, unnamed thing.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Jake says.

“Then walk away.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Jake.” Your voice is sharper than you intend. “It’s fine. Go inside.”

He doesn’t go inside.

He stays where he is with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on Sunghoon, and Sunghoon stays where he is with that precise stillness, and the cold air between all three of you is doing a lot of work.

“You’re the one she’s been seeing,” Sunghoon says, to Jake. Not a question.

“That’s not your business,” Jake says.

“It is when you’re—” Sunghoon stops. Something has crossed his face — he’s looking at you, at your coat, and the realisation moves through his expression slowly and then all at once.

His eyes find yours. “Are you—”

“Don’t,” you say.

“Are you pregnant?”

The step goes very quiet.

Jake goes very still.

You look at Sunghoon and there is a specific kind of exhaustion that moves through you — the exhaustion of someone who has been managing too many things for too long and has just watched one of them slip out of their hands.

“That,” you say, carefully, “is none of your business.”

“It’s his, isn’t it.” Not looking at Jake. Looking at you. Something in his voice that you don’t have a name for — not anger, not hurt, something more complicated and less clean than either. “You hooked up with Jake Sim at a party and now you’re—”

“Sunghoon—”

“What were you thinking?” And there it is — the composure cracking, the precision slipping, something rawer underneath. “What were you actually — with him, of all people—”

“Hey.” Jake’s voice is hard. “Watch yourself.”

“You stay out of it—”

“She told you it’s none of your business—”

“I’m talking to her—”

“Then talk to her with some respect—”

“Oh that’s rich, coming from you.” Sunghoon turns to Jake fully now and the precise stillness has sharpened into something else. “Everyone knows what you are. Everyone knows how you treat—”

“And everyone knows what you did,” Jake says, low and flat. “So don’t stand here and act like you’ve got the moral—”

“Stop.” Your voice cuts through both of them. They both look at you. “Both of you. Stop.”

A beat. “I’m going home,” you say. “This is—” You gesture at the three of you, at the step, at all of it. “I’m not doing this.”

“I’ll walk you—” Both of them, simultaneously.

“Neither of you will walk me anywhere.” You pull your coat around you. “I want to go by myself and I want both of you to leave me alone tonight. Okay?”

Sunghoon opens his mouth.

And then — later, when you try to reconstruct the exact sequence, it’s hard to isolate the moment it tips — he reaches for your arm, a gesture, just trying to stop you leaving, and Jake moves at the same time, stepping forward, his hand coming out to push Sunghoon back, and Sunghoon turns, and the angles are all wrong, and Jake’s elbow catches you across the side of your face.

It’s not hard. It’s not a real blow — it’s the edge of the motion, glancing, the kind of thing that in any other circumstance would be an accidental knock in a crowded corridor that you’d shake off and keep walking.

But you make a sound and stumble back.

Jake turns and sees your face and goes completely white. “Fuck—” He reaches for you.

“Don’t touch me.”

Your hand comes up. Your voice has gone very quiet. The side of your face is throbbing, low and dull, and underneath it everything else — the tiredness, the party, Sunghoon’s face when he realised, the girl’s hand on Jake’s arm — all of it presses in at once and you are so, so tired.

“I didn’t — it was an accident, I didn’t mean to—”

“I know it was an accident,” you say. Still quiet. Still very controlled. “I know that.”

“Are you okay? The baby—”

“I’m fine. It was my face, not—” You stop. Press your fingers briefly to your temple. “I’m fine.”

Jake is looking at you with an expression you haven’t seen on him before — something undone about it, all the composure gone, something almost desperate. “Let me take you home—”

“No.”

You look at him. Then at Sunghoon, who has gone very still and very pale. “I’m going to get Mina. I’m going to go home. And I don’t want either of you to contact me tonight.”

You take out your phone. You text Mina. You wait on the step with your back to both of them until she comes out, takes one look at your face, takes your arm, and walks you away without saying a word.

Behind you, you don’t look back.

Jake texts at midnight. I’m so sorry. please tell me you’re okay

You look at it for a long time. I’m fine, you send back. Goodnight Jake.

He sends: I’m sorry again

Those two words, and you put your phone face down and stare at the ceiling of your dorm room and Mina is asleep in your desk chair with a blanket over her because she refused to go home and you love her for it, and the small dull ache in your temple has faded to almost nothing, and the baby is fine, you’re fine, everything is fine.

You don’t text him back.

He tries on Sunday.

A text at nine in the morning — can we talk please? — that you look at and put face down without replying.

Then at eleven: I know you’re angry. you have every right to be. I just want to talk.

Then at two in the afternoon, which shows either impressive persistence or a complete inability to read a room: I’m going to keep texting until you tell me to stop.

You text back: stop.

He texts back: okay. I’m sorry.

You put the phone in your drawer.

He doesn’t stop.

Well, he stops texting — he respects that, or he tries to, mostly — but he finds other ways. There’s a bag outside your dorm room door on Monday morning: crackers, the specific brand you’d been eating in the early weeks, ginger tea, a punnet of the green grapes that you’d mentioned once in passing to him that you’d been craving. No note. Just the bag.

You stand in your doorway looking at it for a long time.

You bring it inside. You eat the grapes. You do not text him to say thank you and you do not text him to say stop and the not-texting feels like its own kind of answer that you’re not ready to examine yet.

On Tuesday he’s outside your building.

Not lurking — he’s sitting on the low wall by the entrance with his hands between his knees and his jacket on against the cold, and he stands up when he sees you come out and he doesn’t move toward you, just — stands there, and waits, and lets you decide.

You stop on the steps. “Jake.”

“Five minutes,” he says. “I know I don’t deserve them. Five minutes and then I’ll go and I won’t — I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.”

You look at him. He looks back. He has, you note, the specific appearance of someone who hasn’t been sleeping well — not dramatic, just a tightness around his eyes, a quality of having been somewhere difficult in his own head for the past two days.

Good, says a part of you.

The other part steps down off the steps and stands in front of him and crosses her arms and says: “Five minutes.”

He exhales. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For Friday night. For — all of it, the whole night, but specifically for—” He stops. His jaw works. “I should never have let it get to that point. I should have walked away from him the second it started and I didn’t and you got hurt and you’re — the baby could have—” He stops again. Something in his face that isn’t composure. “I will never forgive myself for that. I need you to know that. It keeps me up.”

You look at him. “It was an accident.”

“It was an accident that happened because I couldn’t keep my head.” His voice is flat with self-assessment. “Same difference.”

“It’s not the same difference.”

“It’s close enough.” He looks at you steadily. “I’m also sorry for the girl at the party. I know you saw. I know we’re not — I know you don’t have any claim on me and I don’t have any claim on you and technically I didn’t do anything wrong but I’m still sorry because I saw your face and I knew and I did it anyway and that’s—” He stops. “That’s not who I want to be. With this. With you.”

The wall by the entrance is cold and grey and a girl from your floor passes you both with her earphones in and doesn’t look up and the world keeps moving indifferently around this conversation.

“You hurt me,” you say. Not the elbow. The other thing. The girl at the party and the ceiling of his bedroom and the weeks of almost-decency that kept getting complicated. “Not — not physically. You just keep—” You stop. “Every time I think maybe you’re a person you do something that reminds me why I shouldn’t think that.”

He takes that. Doesn’t deflect, doesn’t explain, just takes it. “I know,” he says.

“I need you to be consistent,” you say. “I can’t — I’m going to have your baby, Jake. We’re going to be in each other’s lives for a very long time. I need you to be someone I can rely on or I need you to be completely absent because the in-between is—” Your voice doesn’t shake. You’re proud of that. “It’s too hard. I can’t do the in-between.”

He’s quiet for a moment. The wind moves across the quad and he looks at you with that expression — the undone one, the one without composure — and says: “I don’t want to be absent.”

“Then be consistent.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? Okay?”

“What else do you want me to say?” He’s not defensive — it’s a real question, earnest in a way that sits oddly on him, like a piece of vocabulary he hasn’t used much. “Tell me what you need and I’ll do it. Specifically. I’m not good at—” He moves his hand. “Guessing. Feelings. Whatever this is. But if you tell me what it looks like I’ll do it.”

You look at him for a long moment.

“No more girls,” you say. “Not while we’re — not while this is what it is. I know I have no right to ask that but I’m asking.”

Something shifts in his expression. “Done,” he says. No hesitation.

“And show up. When you say you’re going to show up, show up.”

“Done.”

“And don’t fight people on my behalf. I can handle my own situations.”

His jaw tightens slightly. “That one’s harder.”

“Jake.”

“Done,” he says. “Okay. Done.”

You look at him. He looks back. The five minutes has long since passed and neither of you has moved and the cold is starting to get into your fingers.

“The grapes were good,” you say finally.

Something in his expression — brief, warm, gone almost immediately. “I’ll get more,” he says.

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” He says it simply. No performance in it.

You nod. You pull your coat tighter. “I have a seminar,” you say.

“I know. Go.” He steps back, hands in his pockets. “Thank you. For the five minutes.”

You go.

He tells his father that evening.

He doesn’t plan to. He goes to his dad’s office on the east side of the admin building for what is ostensibly a standing weekly dinner that they do on Tuesday evenings — a thing they’ve done since Jake’s freshman year, his dad’s attempt at maintaining something normal in the specific abnormality of being the dean’s son at your own father’s university. They go to the Italian place two blocks off campus. They talk about the team, the season, coursework, the usual rotation.

Except tonight Jake sits down across from his father and picks up the menu and puts it down again and his dad looks at him over his own menu with the steady, unhurried attention that has always been the most disarming thing about him — the way he looks at you like he has all the time in the world and means it — and says:

“What’s going on.” Not a question. His dad has never really needed to make them questions.

Jake puts his menu down. He looks at the table. He thinks about you on the steps this morning saying every time I think maybe you’re a person and the specific accuracy of it, the way it had landed not like an attack but like a diagnosis.

“I got someone pregnant,” he says.

The restaurant is quiet around them — mid-evening, not full yet, the soft noise of other people’s conversations providing cover. His dad sets his menu down with the deliberate care of someone who is choosing his response carefully.

“How far along,” he says.

“About eight weeks.”

His dad nods slowly. He’s a big man — Jake has his build, the same broad shoulders, though his dad carries more grey now at his temples and something steadier in his face, something earned. He looks at Jake with the expression that Jake has never been able to fully decode — not anger, not disappointment exactly, something more complicated and more patient than either.

“Tell me about her,” he says.

Jake blinks. Of all the things he’d expected — “What?”

“The woman. Tell me about her.”

Jake opens his mouth. Closes it. He thinks about you — the flat voice in the corridor at the rink, your hand cracking across his face, I can’t do the in-between. The grapes. The way you’d said the grapes were good like it cost you something to admit it.

“She’s—” He stops. Tries again. “She’s a third year. English lit. She’s sharp. Like — she doesn’t let me get away with anything, she just looks at me and calls it and moves on. She’s not—” He shifts. “She didn’t want this to be mine. She told me that. She wants the baby, she just didn’t want it to be complicated, and I’ve made it complicated.”

“How.”

Jake looks at the table. Lists it. The slap he deserved, the money that was clumsy, the girl at the party, Friday night and the elbow and her face and the specific look she’d had, controlled and exhausted and done.

His dad listens to all of it without interrupting. When Jake finishes there’s a pause — his dad picks up his water glass, drinks, sets it back down.

“Do you like her?” he asks.

Jake looks up.

“It’s a simple question,” his dad says.

“We don’t — I don’t know her. Not really.”

“That’s not what I asked, son.”

Jake is quiet for a moment. He thinks about you outside your building this morning, arms crossed, giving him five minutes you didn’t have to give. The way you’d said I need you to be someone I can rely on like it was the most reasonable thing in the world, like you weren’t asking for anything extraordinary, just — consistency. Basic human consistency. The thing he has never had to be for anyone.

“Yeah,” he says. Quiet. “I think so.”

His dad nods. Like that’s the piece he needed. Like everything else was context and that was the information.

“Then be someone worth liking,” he says. Simply. Like it’s obvious. Like it’s the only thing that matters and everything else is just logistics.

Jake looks at him.

“You’ve never had to work for anything,” his dad says, and it’s not unkind — it’s just true, delivered with the directness of someone who has been watching this coming for a long time. “Not really. Not the things that count. You’re talented and you’re smart and things have always — moved for you. And that’s partly my fault.” He meets Jake’s eyes. “But she’s right. You can’t be the in-between. You’re going to be someone’s father. That’s not a thing you can be inconsistent about.”

Jake absorbs this.

“I know,” he says.

“Do you?”

“I’m trying to.”

His dad looks at him for a long moment. Then he picks his menu back up. “Good,” he says. “That’s the right answer.” He glances over the top of it. “Order something. You look like you haven’t eaten good in a while.”

Jake looks at the menu.

“Dad,” he says.

“Mm.”

“I really—” He stops. “I’ve really made a mess of this.”

His dad lowers the menu slightly. Looks at him with that steady, unhurried attention. “Yes,” he says. “But messes can be cleaned up.” He raises the menu again. “The carbonara is good tonight.”

Jake picks up his menu.

He end up ordering the carbonara.

—

The thing about consistency is that it’s quiet.

It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive with a gesture or a speech or a moment you can point to and say — there, that’s when things changed. It just accumulates, slowly, in the background of your ordinary life, until one day you look up and realise the weight you’ve been carrying has shifted without you noticing.

Jake shows up.

That’s the only way to describe it. He shows up in the small ways, the unglamorous ways, the ways that don’t make for a good story but add up to something anyway. He texts when he says he will. He’s outside your building on Wednesday mornings because you have a seminar and the walk takes you past the science quad where the wind is brutal and he started walking with you three weeks ago without asking and has not stopped. He brings food — not always the crackers and ginger tea, sometimes just the grapes, sometimes something from the good Thai place near the rink that you’d mentioned once you were craving and didn’t expect him to remember.

He remembers things.

This is, you find, the most disarming thing about him. More than the jaw and the shoulders and the specific quality of his attention when he’s fully in a conversation.

He remembers that you take your tea with one sugar and that you’re writing your dissertation on George Eliot and that your sister’s youngest is called Lily and that you cannot watch medical dramas right now because they make you anxious in a way you can’t fully explain. He files things away and uses them with a quietness that suggests he’s not doing it to impress you — he’s just paying attention.

And god, it’s harder to be angry at someone who pays attention. You’re still trying.

Your bump begins appearing at eleven weeks.

Not dramatically — not one morning you wake up transformed, just a gradual undeniable softening of the line of your stomach that means your jeans sit differently and your favourite hoodie, the oversized one you’ve worn for three years, suddenly doesn’t hang quite right. You stand in front of your mirror on a Thursday morning and put your hand flat against it and stay there for a moment with the strange doubled feeling that has been following you for weeks now — the unreality of it and the complete reality of it, existing simultaneously, refusing to resolve.

Mina notices before you say anything. She’s been noticing for two weeks, you suspect, and has been waiting for you to bring it up, which is one of the reasons she’s your person.

“You’re showing,” she says, on Friday afternoon, without preamble.

“A little,” you say.

“How do you feel about that?”

You think about it genuinely. “Weird,” you say. “Good weird. Mostly good weird.”

Mina nods. “Have you told Jake?”

“He’ll notice,” you say. “We’re — we’ve been spending time together. He’ll see.”

Mina looks at you with the expression that means she has registered the significance of we’ve been spending time together and is choosing, for now, not to make anything of it. “Okay,” she says.

“Don’t,” you say.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I really wasn’t,” she says, in the tone that means she absolutely was.

He notices on Saturday.

You’re at this Thai place — his suggestion, your agreement, the two of you in a corner booth with menus neither of you needs because you’ve been here enough times now that you already know — and you’ve taken your coat off because the restaurant is warm and you’re wearing a fitted top and when you reach across the table for the soy sauce you catch him looking.

Not rudely. Not in a way that makes you want to cover yourself. Just — looking, with that attentive expression, taking in information.

“Don’t,” you say.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You have a face.”

“I have a face,” he says, which is almost a smile. “You’re showing.”

“I know.”

“You look—” He stops. Considers his word choice with unusual care. “Good,” he says finally. “You look good.”

You look at him across the table. “That was very diplomatic.”

“I meant it.”

“Jake.”

“I genuinely meant it.” He meets your eyes. “You look good. You’ve looked good for a while. I just—” He stops again. “Didn’t say it. You looks beautiful actually.”

The restaurant is warm and smells like lemongrass and the couple at the next table are arguing quietly about something and the ordinary world is going on all around you and Jake Sim is sitting across from you saying you look good with an expression that has nothing performative in it, no angle, no formula.

You pick up your menu that you don’t need and look at it. “Thank you,” you say, at the laminated page.

He goes back to his menu too. Neither of you says anything else about it. But the air between you has shifted by some small degree and you both know it and neither of you is ready to name it yet and that, you think, is okay.

For now that’s okay.

The not-naming becomes its own kind of language eventually.

He walks you to your seminar on Wednesday and waits fifteen minutes in the wrong direction from the rink to do it, which you know because you’ve looked at the campus map, which you will not be telling him. You bring him coffee one morning — just once, without explanation, the specific order you’ve heard him give three times now — and he takes it without making anything of it which is exactly right. You text him a photo of a onesie Mina finds online that says future hockey player as a joke and he sends back a voice note that is mostly him laughing, genuine and unguarded, and you listen to it twice.

You do not examine why you listen to it twice.

Sunghoon texts once more — I hope you’re okay. I mean that.

You look at it for a long time. You think about the library café and the step outside the party and the way his face had looked when he realised. You think about two years and what they were and what they turned out to be underneath.

I’m okay, you send back. Take care of yourself.

He sends a single: you too.

And that, you think, is the end of that chapter. It doesn’t feel like closure exactly — closure implies a clean line, and there is no clean line, just a gradual and mutual putting down of something that had gotten too heavy to carry. But it feels like something finished. Something that needed to be done.

You feel lighter, after.

Jake finds out about the dissertation.

Not in a dramatic way — you’re in the library one afternoon, the two of you at adjacent tables because you’d both ended up there independently and moving would have been more pointed than staying, and he leans over at some point and looks at your screen and reads two sentences and says: “You write like this normally?”

“Like what.”

“Like—” He gestures at the screen. “Like that. Like it means something.”

You look at him. “It’s an academic paper.”

“I know what it is.” He looks faintly annoyed, the way he gets when he’s trying to say something and the words aren’t cooperating. “I’m saying it’s good. It sounds like you.”

You turn back to your screen. You are not going to make anything of this. You are a reasonable and self-possessed adult and you are not going to sit in the library and catch feelings because Jake Sim said your writing sounds like you.

“Thanks,” you say, at your laptop.

“I’m serious. It’s—” He picks up his pen. “Good.”

“You said that.”

“Because I mean it.”

You look at him. He looks back, pen between his fingers, entirely unaware that he’s just done something dangerous, and you look back at your dissertation and breathe carefully and remind yourself of all the reasons this is complicated.

There are many reasons. They are good reasons. You know them all.

The night it almost becomes something, it’s late November and it’s cold enough that your breath fogs and Jake has walked you back from the library and you’re standing at the bottom of your building’s steps in the dark and neither of you is moving.

“I should go in,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says.

Neither of you moves.

You’ve been doing this — the standing, the not-moving, the conversations that go slightly longer than they need to — for three weeks now. It has a shape, this thing between you, even if it doesn’t have a name. It has weight. You’re both aware of it and both moving around it with the particular carefulness of people who have been burned recently and are not in a hurry to be burned again.

“Jake,” you say.

“I know,” he says. Like he already knows what you’re going to say. Like he’s been having the same conversation in his own head.

“I just need it to stay—” You gesture between you. “Like this. For now. Okay? I need it to stay manageable.”

He looks at you. “Is it not?”

You look back. “Less and less,” you admit.

Something moves through his expression. Warm and complicated and controlled. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll keep it manageable.”

“Okay.”

“I just need you to know—” He stops. Starts again. “I’m not going anywhere. Whatever this is, whatever speed it goes. I’m not going anywhere.”

The cold is sharp and the steps are lit by the yellow glow of the entrance light and you are eleven weeks pregnant and standing in the dark with the father of your baby who is looking at you like you’re something worth staying for, and you think about all the reasons this is complicated and you think about your sister’s voice — those are two separate things — and you think that maybe, maybe, the situation and the feeling don’t have to be the same thing.

“Goodnight, Jake,” you say.

“Goodnight,” he says. You go inside.

At the top of the first flight of stairs you take out your phone.

You open his name — Jake Sim (do not text unless necessary) — and you look at it for a long moment.

You change it to Jake.

Just Jake. Nothing else.

You put your phone in your pocket and go to bed.

—

He asks you out on a Tuesday.

Not dramatically — not with any of the ceremony you might have expected from someone who has spent the better part of four months being alternately infuriating and disarming. He just falls into step beside you on the Wednesday morning walk to your seminar and says, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes forward: “Let me take you to dinner. A real one. Not Thai because we’ve done that.”

You look at him. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that.”

“Did you want me to make it complicated?”

You look back at the path ahead. The quad is grey and cold and a girl on a bike nearly takes out a first year near the fountain and life goes on all around you, indifferent and ordinary. “No,” you say. “I didn’t want it complicated.”

“Friday,” he says. “Seven. I’ll pick you up.”

“I know where the restaurants are, Jake. I go here too.”

“I know you do.” He glances at you sideways. “Let me pick you up though.”

You look at him. That expression — patient, certain, not performing anything. Just asking.

“Friday,” you say. “Seven.”

He nods. Looks back at the path. The corner of his mouth does something that isn’t quite a smile and is better than one.

The restaurant he takes you to is small and Italian and not the kind of place you’d have expected from him, which you’re finding is a theme — Jake Sim consistently failing to be what you expect in the specific ways that make him hardest to keep at distance. It’s candlelit without being try-hard about it, the kind of place where the pasta is made that morning and the wine list is handwritten and the tables are close enough that you’re aware of his knee near yours under the table for the entirety of dinner.

You talk. That’s the thing — you just talk, the way you have been talking for weeks now on walks and in the library and over Thai food, except tonight there’s no pretence of it being anything other than what it is. He asks about your dissertation and actually listens to the answer. You ask about the season and he tells you about the conference standings with genuine animation, hands moving, and you watch him and think about the ceiling of his bedroom in September and the corridor at the rink and the bag outside your dorm door and all the distance between those things.

“What,” he says, catching you looking.

“Nothing,” you say. “You’re different.”

“From what?” He laughs.

“From who you were in September.”

He’s quiet for a moment. He turns his wine glass slowly on the table. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I am.”

“Is that — do you mind that? Being different?”

He looks at you. “No,” he says. Simply. “I don’t mind it at all.”

You look back at your pasta.

Under the table his knee settles against yours and stays there and you don’t move away from it and neither does he and you eat your dinner in the warm candlelit ordinary of it and let yourself be there, fully, without managing it from a distance.

Outside afterward the cold hits and you’re pulling your coat around you when his hand finds yours. Not reaching, not making a thing of it — just his hand finding yours in the dark like it already knows the way, fingers threading through, warm and certain.

You let him.

You walk back across campus like that, not talking much, and when you reach your building you stop at the bottom of the steps and he turns to face you and you look at him in the yellow entrance light and you think about goodnight, about all the goodnights, about the careful distance you’ve been keeping.

“Come up,” you say.

His expression does that thing — complicated and warm and something that isn’t quite controlled anymore. “You sure?”

“I just asked, didn’t I?”

He follows you up.

Your room is warm and small and familiar and he’s been in it before but not like this — not with the door closed and the lights low and both of you knowing exactly what this is. He stands just inside the door and looks at you and you cross the room and kiss him.

It’s different from September.

September was heat and momentum and two people who didn’t know each other doing something that felt like a decision.

This is — slower. His hands come up to your face the way they did at the party but gentler, more deliberate, like he’s paying attention to something he nearly missed before. He kisses you like he has something to say and this is the only language that fits, and you feel it move through you differently than anything has moved through you in a long time.

“Hey,” he says, against your mouth.

“Hi,” you say back.

He pulls back just enough to look at you — really look, the way he does now, the full attentive weight of it — and his thumb traces your cheekbone and he says, quietly: “You’re so beautiful. Do you know that?”

“Jake—”

“I mean it.” You can tell he means it. It’s in his face, unguarded and certain. “I’ve been — I should have said it a long time ago.”

You look at him for a moment. Then you pull him back down.

He undresses you slowly, which is new — September was efficient, purposeful, barely stopping. Now he takes his time like he’s making up for it, his mouth following the line of your throat, your collarbone, his hands sliding your top off with a care that makes your breath catch. When he gets to the soft curve of your stomach he stops.

He goes to his knees.

You look down at him, breath held, and he puts both hands flat and warm against your bump and just — holds them there. His forehead drops forward to rest against you. The room is quiet. You put your hand in his hair without thinking about it.

“Hey,” he says softly. Not to you.

Your throat tightens.

He turns his head and presses his lips to the curve of your stomach, gentle, then again, then moves his hands slowly like he’s learning the shape of it, and you feel something in your chest come undone quietly and without ceremony.

“Jake,” you say, and your voice is not entirely steady.

He looks up at you. His eyes are dark and very serious. “Okay?” he asks.

“More than okay,” you manage.

He stands back up and kisses you again and walks you back to the bed.

He lays you down and settles over you and his mouth goes back to your tits immediately — you’d forgotten, or you’d tried to forget, the specific focused obsession of it — his hands cupping them, heavier now, thumbs dragging slow over your nipples until you’re arching up into his mouth.

“Perfect,” he murmurs against your skin, “you’re so perfect,” and the praise lands warm and low in your stomach and you pull at his shirt until he lets you get it off.

He’s as good-looking as you remembered, which is annoying.

His mouth works down your body and his hands slide your underwear off and then he looks up at you from between your thighs with an expression that makes your brain go briefly offline. “Okay?” he says again.

“If you don’t—” you start.

He puts his mouth on your pussy and the rest of that sentence evaporates.

He goes slower than September. That’s the difference — the same precision, the same devastating accuracy with his tongue on your clit and his fingers curling deep into your walls, but slower, like he wants to take you apart carefully this time, like he’s paying attention to every sound you make and adjusting accordingly.

Your hands find his hair. Your hips roll up. He holds them down with one forearm across your hips and doesn’t stop, doesn’t change pace, just keeps that steady merciless rhythm until you’re shaking and pleading and your walls are clenching around his fingers and you cum on his tongue with his name coming out wrecked and too loud for the room.

He comes back up your body looking — different than September. Still composed, still that infuriating ease, but underneath it something open. Something that wasn’t there before.

He reaches for his jacket on the floor. Finds his wallet to grab a condom.

You start laughing.

He looks at you confused. “What.”

“Jake.” You press your lips together. “We don’t — I’m already pregnant.

He looks at the condom in his hand. Looks at you. Something crosses his face and then he laughs too — real and unguarded, the laugh from the voice note, the one you listened to twice — drops it back on the floor and comes back to you.

“Fair point,” he says, against your mouth.

“Incredible,” you tell him. “You’re incredible.”

“Shut up,” he says, warmly, and kisses you.

He flips you over.

Not roughly — carefully, one hand at your hip and one at your shoulder, mindful, and you end up straddling him and looking down at him and his hands settle on your hips and he looks up at you like you’re the best thing he’s seen.

“You good?” he asks.

“Very,” you say, and sink down onto him.

The sound he makes is low and immediate and deeply satisfying. You feel every inch of him filling you, your walls stretching around his cock, and you go slow — partly because of the bump, partly because you want to, partly because watching his face as you take him is something you want to draw out. His jaw is tight. His hands on your hips are firm but not directing, just — there, holding on.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “You feel—”

“I know,” you say, and roll your hips.

His head drops back.

You find your rhythm — slow, deep, the grind of your hips meeting his, and his hands tighten and his hips push up to meet you and his mouth falls open and he is, you think, the best-looking thing you’ve ever seen like this, undone and flushed and completely present, all the composure stripped away.

“Perfect,” he says, rough and low, watching you move. “You’re so perfect, look at you—”

The praise moves through you like heat and you move faster, his thumb finds your clit and you gasp and his other hand spreads warm and careful over your bump and the gesture — the gentleness of it, the instinct of it — tips something over in your chest that you’re not going to examine right now because you’re busy, but you feel it, you feel it clearly.

You cum the second time with his cock buried inside you and his thumb on your clit, his hand on your stomach and his eyes on your face. He follows you not long after with his hips driving up and your name in his mouth, said like it means something, said like he’s been saving it.

Afterward you lie tangled together in your narrow dorm bed, which is not really built for two people but is managing. His hand is resting on your stomach with a naturalness that would have been impossible three months ago and you’re staring at the ceiling and feeling the particular peace of someone who has been braced for a long time and has just, finally, put it down.

“Come to my game next week,” he says.

You turn your head to look at him. “What?”

“Home game. Friday.” He’s looking at the ceiling too. Casual. Except you know him well enough now to know when the casual is covering something. “Come watch.”

You look back at the ceiling. “Okay,” you say.

He turns his head. “Actually?”

“Don’t make it weird,” you say. “Yes. I’ll come to your game.”

The corner of his mouth. That almost-smile that’s better than a real one. “Okay,” he says, and looks back at the ceiling, and his hand stays where it is, warm and certain.

—

The following week is small moments.

Tuesday he brings you the grapes and stays to help you outline your next dissertation chapter, sitting on your floor with his back against your bed and your notes spread between you, and he asks better questions than you expect and you don’t tell him that.

Wednesday the walk to your seminar, his shoulder bumping yours, the coffee he brings without asking — your order, exact, without you saying anything.

Thursday a voice note at eleven at night: just wanted to check you were okay. don’t reply if you’re asleep.

You reply and end up talking for forty minutes.

Friday morning he’s at your door.

In one hand, coffee. In the other, folded fabric — dark blue, the Caldwell Wolves crest on the chest, white lettering across the back. SIM. 9.

He holds it out. “You don’t have to,” he says, before you can say anything. “It’s not — I’m not trying to make it a thing. I just thought—”

You take it from him.

You pull it over your head immediately. It’s enormous on you — falls to mid-thigh, swamps your shoulders, the fabric soft from washing. You look down at it and then up at him. His expression is something you don’t have a word for.

You reach up and pull him down by his jacket lapel and kiss him, there in your doorway, in the yellow morning light, slow and certain.

When you pull back he looks — stunned, almost. Like he didn’t expect it even after everything.

“What was that for,” he says with a big grin.

“The jersey,” you say. “Come on. We’ll be late.”

The Hargrove Center is loud in a way that is different when you’re in the stands rather than the corridor — a living, moving noise, four thousand people and the echo of the ice and the announcer’s voice bouncing off the rafters. Mina is beside you, which you’d insisted on, and she’s wearing a Wolves scarf she definitely did not own before today and is eating a pretzel with the focus of someone who has decided to enjoy this.

Someone sits down on your other side.

You look over. He’s older — Jake’s build, the same broad shoulders, grey at his temples, a Wolves cap and a measured, unhurried expression.

“You must be—” he starts while smiling at you with the same grin Jake gave you not long ago.

“Dean Sim,” you say. “Hi.”

He looks at you for a moment with that steady attention that is so recognisably Jake’s that it almost makes you laugh. He’s smileing — warm, real. “He talks about you,” he says. “Quite a lot.”

“Good things, I hope.”

“Mostly.” He settles back in his seat. “He told me about the grapes.”

You look at him. He looks back with an expression of someone who finds this mildly amusing and is being polite about it.

“He remembered I was craving them,” you say.

“I know,” Dean Sim says. “That’s why he told me.” He looks out at the ice where the Wolves are warming up, Jake moving with that particular ease that is the same on ice as off it, unhurried and certain.

“He’s better than he knows how to show yet,” his dad says, quietly. Not performing it. Just — true. “But he’s getting there.”

You watch Jake on the ice.

“Yeah,” you say. “I know.”

The Wolves win.

Not narrowly — convincingly, the way they do when Jake is in the kind of form he’s been in lately, sharp and present, the kind of player who makes everyone around him better just by being fully there. You find yourself on your feet twice without meaning to be and Mina is absolutely losing her mind beside you in a way that suggests she has been quietly wanting to attend a hockey game for some time and has simply been waiting for the invitation.

After the final buzzer the arena stays loud, the celebration on the ice spilling into the stands, and Dean Sim shakes your hand and says it was lovely to meet you with a warmth that is entirely genuine, and you watch him go and think that Jake got the best of him, underneath everything.

And then the jumbo screen above the ice lights up.

You see it before you process it — your name, in big white letters, and then: JAKE SIM WANTS TO KNOW — WILL YOU BE HIS GIRLFRIEND?

The arena does not go quiet because four thousand people do not go quiet, but there is a definite shift — a ripple, a collective awareness, people turning and pointing and the noise changing character. Mina grabs your arm. You stare at the screen.

“Oh my god,” Mina says.

“Oh my god,” you say.

“Are you — are you going to—”

And then he’s there.

Full hockey gear, skates and all, somehow having gotten from the ice to the stands in the time it took you to register what the screen said, and he’s standing at the end of your row with his helmet under his arm and his hair damp and his face doing that thing — the unguarded thing, the thing without composure — and four thousand people are watching and Mina has both hands over her mouth.

“Well?” he says. Over the noise. Just to you.

You look at him. You look at the screen. You look back at him.

“You’re insane,” you say.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Is that a yes?”

You laugh — real and helpless, the kind that comes from somewhere you haven’t accessed in a while — and you step over Mina’s knees and go to him and he meets you halfway and you kiss him in the Hargrove Center in front of four thousand people and full hockey gear and the crowd does what crowds do when they witness something and the noise is enormous but you don’t hear any of it.

When you pull back his forehead drops to yours.

“Yes,” you tell him. “Obviously yes.”

He exhales — slow, like something released. His hand comes up to your face. His thumb at your cheekbone, the way it always is. “Good,” he says.

“Good,” you say back.

Behind you Mina is making a noise that suggests she is going to be telling this story for the rest of her natural life.

—

Three weeks later you are officially four months pregnant and the bump is undeniable now, round and real, and you’re sitting on Jake’s bed in his room — tidier than September, same room, different everything — with your legs across his lap while he reads something for class and his hand rests on your stomach with the absent certainty of someone who has stopped thinking about it and started just doing it.

The Wolves won again last night. His jersey, what you wore last night and have been to every game, is on the back of his chair.

Outside the window Caldwell goes on being large and indifferent and fully lit up, and in here it is warm and quiet and ordinary in a way that is — everything, actually. The whole thing. The specific ordinary of someone else’s presence that you’ve been missing without knowing how to name it.

“Hey,” Jake says, without looking up from his page.

“Hey,” you say.

“You good?”

You look at him — at the line of his jaw and the hand on your stomach and the room that used to be just a room and is now something else, something yours — and you think about September, about the corridor and the money and the slap you don’t regret. You think about Mina in the drugstore bathroom and Hannah on the third ring and the heartbeat on the monitor that made everything real.

You think about how none of this was the plan and how a plan was never the point.

“Yeah,” you say. “I’m good.”

He turns a page. His hand stays where it is. Outside, Caldwell. Inside, this.

Good, you think. I’m more than good.

senior year was supposed to be unforgettable, for you at least, prom, boyfriends, talking stages, liberated from the grip of the overwhelming academic pressures to graduate and land a scholarship at a worthy university up to your parents' standards.

you thought you had it all, an amazing friend group, friendships you cherished till the day you die, a best friend, good grades, and you were happy. everything you thought you ever wanted was there, but the more you dwelled on this feeling in your gut, the more uneasy you felt, and time was running out. you had everything right? but why did it feel like something so immense, a want, a need for something or someone so grand you cant shake it off, youre yearning for something you cant seem to put a finger on and its driving you insane.

"y/n?" there it is, the soft melodic voice of your best friend jungwon, lulles you out of your reeling thoughts, "hm?"

"thought we lost you for a second" he giggled, and you turned to see your entire friendgroup looking at you with slight concern, you dismissed the lingering looks, "sorry, just thinking about something", you replied, your head leaning against yoonchae's shoulder for support.

"probably worrying about a prom date huh" jake snickered, looking softly at jungwon, then back at you.

ah yes, prom. one week away, and you still had no plan, no date, nothing. it bothered you more than you wanted to admit. this was your last year, your last chance to make something out of it, and the idea of letting it pass by uneventfully sat heavy in your chest.

"ill figure it out eventually, unless some degenerate wants to take me" you snort.

It earned a few laughs, and just like that, the attention shifted, the table was quiet for a moment and this time toward Jungwon. there was something in the way everyone looked at him, like they were holding onto a joke you weren’t fully in on.

“speaking of dates,” sunghoon added casually, “what about your ex?”

the mood shifted, subtle but noticeable. you noticed the way yoonchae shifted uncomfortably in her seat, nudging you accidentally, and niki throwing an unreadable look at sunghoon.

you didn’t say anything, but you felt it, that weird yet familiar tension that always boiled over whenever she was mentioned. hana. she had never liked you, not really from what you saw and heard. even during their short three-month relationship, your name had come up more times than it should have. not because jungwon meant anything by it, at least, that’s what you told yourself, but because you were always there. his best friend. his constant.

“she’s still trying, you know,” hoon mentioned. “to get back together.”

jungwon scoffed, shaking his head. “i don’t care what she’s doing,” he said flatly, final. the rest of the table nodded in agreement, almost like they knew not to mention it again.

you glanced at him briefly. he’d never told you why they broke up, not really, nor did he ever even really talked about his relationship with her. and you’d never asked, you didnt feel like you needed to. that was just how things worked between you. no pressure, no pushing. whatever existed between you stayed unspoken, tucked neatly beneath the surface where it couldn’t ruin anything.

it felt easier that way.it was calm. safe. comfortable.

but lately, it didn’t feel as simple.

jungwon leaned forward slightly, resting his arms on the table, he had this look, he was thinking about something before he spoke up again, “hey y/n, can i pull you aside for a sec”

there was a pause. and you nodded slowly.

you stood up to follow him, as yoonchae looked up at you now standing, "whats up?"

"ill be right back, ill meet you in class" you say as you give her a tight shoulder squeeze and slung your bag on your shoulder. the group didnt pay attention, and hadnt really realized you and jungwon departed from the table, as the conversation swiftly changed to what color their suits and ties would be as yoonchae scoffed at the thought of jake pulling up to prom in a neon orange bow tie.

the walk with jungwon was silent, while he steadily guided you down the hall where less students would be hanging around since everyone was either in the field or in the cafeteria.

"youve been oddly quiet lately" you broke the silence, looking up at him with a slight smile, "ive been thinking about something.. and i need to know if youre okay with it" he replied

the further you two walked, the quieter it got, and the gap between you and jungwon closed, hands ever so slightly touching. you zeroed in on him, your full attention on him, like he was the only person that mattered and the world stopped spinning, time moved slower and you were at peace.

your conversations were always so soft, so endearing, you could talk about whatever, wherever for hours on end and it never seemed too much. he never wanted you to stop talking, he would sit there and listen, eyes on you, unwavering, whatever the topic of your conversation was, he was all ears and invested, and vice versa.

but when things needed to be quiet, and you both needed the time to just sit and relax, side by side, in silence doing whatever, it was calm and tranquille, you both understood each other in a way that you felt that no one else in the world could. he needed you just as much as you needed him.

however, when he got into a relationship with hana, things between you two slowly came to a halt, not abruptly and it wasnt sudden, you knew why and you never felt wronged for it. you spent less time alone together, and mainly talked and caught up over text or when you were with friends.

it lasted 3 months the relationship, your friends often gave you these looks that you could never figure out what they meant, you continued living out the year just as you normally would, but with less jungwon and more your friends, yoonchae stayed by your side and you were thankful.

life continued on, things were normal, you would tell yourself, its normal that a teenage boy, gets a girlfriend.

but everytime you saw them together, you felt this strange tension creeping in, you couldnt figure it out and it would often send you spiraling, and you would constantly deny your not so obvious feelings for him. hes your best friend afterall, and the mere thought of ruining that friendship just because you couldnt control whatever you were feeling, scared you so much.

as for jungwon, hana was a distraction. he knew it was awful on his part, but he needed to try to move on from these feelings creeping up on him, as for him, whether he was just a friend, or best friend, he was okay with that, as long as you were by his side, he settled for it. but he knew he wanted more, and thats why he came up with this utterly stupid idea. jungwon confided in niki, after niki caught him staring at you. to set the scene, everyone was at the beach, the air was fresh, the sun beaming harshly, and the ocean glittering in the light, and you were splashing around in the water with yoonchae and minju.

while he and the guys were in the sand playing volleyball, he was distracted, often getting yelled at by jake and sunghoon for not focusing but he thought you looked gorgeous, he couldnt stop looking at you, unti hana grabbed his arm and pouted at him. "focus on the game won we're losing" she whined "sorry.."

his breakup hadn’t been sudden, it had been building quietly for weeks, maybe longer. hana had grown tired of it, of him, of the way your name seemed to exist between them even when you weren’t there. At first it was small things, sharp comments, subtle digs thrown your way whenever she got the chance, all masked as jokes that didn’t quite land. but it didn’t take much to see through it. It wasn’t really about you. It was about what you represented. something she could feel but couldn’t compete with.

by the time it ended, it was almost inevitable. at a party, surrounded by people and noise and everything that made it easy to act without thinking, she cheated on him. word got around quickly, but when it reached jungwon, he barely reacted. no anger, no confrontation, just a quiet acceptance that settled in almost too easily. a part of him felt like he deserved it. not because of anything he had done outright, but because of everything he hadn’t said. because even while he was with her, some part of him had always belonged somewhere else, with you.

after that, whatever restraint she had left disappeared. the remarks became more direct, less disguised, her frustration spilling over into open hostility. and eventually, she gave him an ultimatum one that hung between them like a final line drawn. either he got back with her and proved, clearly and undeniably, that he didn’t love you, in a desperate last resort to keep him for herself and she would stop and leave you alone, let everything go, or he finally admitted the truth, to her, himself and to you, and took you to prom instead.

thats when niki cornered him and started questioning his actions. jungwon ended up telling him his feelings, and expressed remorse for what he did to hana, but admittingly would never mention his feeliings to you, worried that he could ruin this safe space he built with you.

"take y/n to prom then" niki deadpanned, "won im serious, ask her to be your date, take things slow, its a small step, and its nothing crazy, you guys do everything together anyways, what difference would it make if you took her to a stupid dance"

and that lands you back here, in the quiet of the hallway, just around the corner. jungwon had planned this in his head for the last week or so, to ask you to prom and to finally take a small step forward, as niki said. and then everything got too real and he got scared.

youre looking up at him, your glittering eyes staring into his, waiting for what he has to say, that he had dragged you all the way out here for privacy. you almost felt giddy.

when they broke up, you told yourself it didn’t matter and that it wasn’t your place to feel anything about it. but the truth settled in quietly, undeniable and sharp: you were happy. not in a loud, obvious way, not in anything you would ever say out loud, but in the way your chest felt lighter, in the way something tense inside you finally loosened. and when Jungwon came back to you, falling so easily into what you had always been to each other, it felt right in a way that made you uncomfortable if you thought about it for too long. because beneath it, there was something selfish you couldn’t ignore. you had hated seeing him with her. hated knowing that, for a while, he belonged to someone else in a way he had never quite belonged to you.

youre waiting for him to speak him, and by the way his foot shuffled, the way he had wiped his palms on his jeans, he was nervous.

your chest tightened, anticipation creeping in before you could stop it. you knew him well enough to recognize when something was coming, when he was working up to say something that mattered. and for a second, just a second, you let yourself believe it.

his eyes flickered up to meet yours, then away again. He inhaled like he was about to jump.

“can I ask you something?” your heart skipped. “yeah, of course.”

another pause. longer this time. his shoulders tensed, jaw tightening as if he was fighting himself.

you waited.

and then you watched it happen. the shift. the hesitation turning into doubt, doubt folding into fear. whatever he was about to say, whatever had been sitting right there on the edge, he pulled it back.

“would you…” he trailed off, swallowing, his voice coming out quieter. “would you be my girlfriend?”

your breath caught—

“like, fake,” he added quickly, almost stumbling over the words. “just for prom. So hana backs off. she won’t stop unless she thinks i’ve moved on, and… if we go together, it’ll be easier. for both of us.”

the moment cracked.

you forced yourself to stay still, even as something inside you dropped. he wasn’t looking at you now, his gaze fixed somewhere else, like he couldn’t bear to see your reaction.

“it wouldn’t mean anything,” he continued, more controlled now, like he’d settled into the safer version of what he almost said. “we can set rules. keep it simple.”

for a second, you just looked at him.

he had been right there. right on the edge of something real.

and then he chose this instead.

and he immediatly regrets it, he saw your smile falter and you look lost, disappointed. and now he too was confused.

you blinked, the silence stretching just a second too long as your thoughts scrambled to catch up with the shift. “oh—uh… yeah,” you stammered, forcing a small nod. “sure.”

the word felt strange coming out, heavier than it should’ve been.

he exhaled, relief flickering across his face, and that alone told you everything you needed to know or at least, everything you thought you did. If he had wanted to confess, he would have. if he had meant something more, he wouldn’t have taken it back so quickly, hidden it behind something safe, something controlled.

so this was what he preferred.

and you accepted it for what it was.

“yeah, it’s fine,” you added, a little more steady now. “we can… figure out the details later.”

you didn’t stay long after that. you made some excuse something about needing to get to class, or meeting someone and left before the conversation could stretch into something worse, something harder to hold together. "y/n wait..."

walking away, your mind spun, trying to make sense of the moment that had almost been something else. It left you confused, caught between what you thought you saw and what actually happened. but beneath that confusion, there was a quieter realization settling in.

he didn’t want you like that.

not really.

you were the safe option. the easy one. the one that wouldn’t complicate things.

and somehow, that hurt more than if he had just said nothing at all.

but still you said yes.

because even if it wasn’t real, even if it didn’t mean anything to him, it was the closest you were ever going to get to knowing what it might feel like to be with him. just for now, you'll bear it.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

“I can’t pretend anymore.”

That sentence had been looping in my head so long it no longer sounded like words. It was just a pressure behind my eyes as I stood in the middle of the crowded hallway, pressed up against a line of lockers like I could disappear into the metal.

Ahead of me, the hall seemed to curve around a center that wasn’t me.

I watched Yeonseo laugh at something Jungwon said, her head tipping back, ponytail swishing. Her laugh carried above the general noise—that kind of easy, bright sound people turned toward without meaning to. Around them, the flow of students split and reformed as if they were a rock in a river: classmates, teammates, random kids from other grades who didn’t know them but knew of them.

I hugged my books tighter and looked away.

I was used to being on the outside of circles like that. It had always been that way: me at the edge, watching her in the middle. I’d been in Yeonseo’s shadow for as long as I could remember. It never used to bother me. If anything, her brightness shielded me. I could follow a few steps behind, walk in the outline of her shape, and quietly exist. I told myself that was enough.

Lately, though, the space between us felt less like a shadow and more like an actual gap—one that kept stretching, day by day.

“Y/n!”

My name pulled me back. I glanced up.

Yeonseo was waving me over, eyes warm, face still flushed from laughing. She stood with one hand on her hip, the other in the air like a tiny sun I’d been invited into. Beside her, Jungwon leaned against the lockers, tall and relaxed, his basketball bag slung over one shoulder.

“There you are,” she said when I reached them, like I’d been missing for hours instead of minutes. “You always vanish between classes. We should just tie a string around you or something so I don’t lose you.”

I managed a small smile. “I don’t think that’s allowed. Pretty sure the school handbook says no human leashes.”

She laughed and, in one smooth motion, slipped her arm through mine and pulled me closer. I could feel a faint sheen of sweat on her skin from rushing between periods. She smelled like citrus shampoo and the cafeteria’s over‑buttered toast.

“You remember Jungwon, right?” she asked.

Jungwon nodded politely. “Hey.” His voice was lower than I remembered from the times I’d heard him shouting on the court.

“Hi,” I murmured, my voice coming out softer than I intended.

I remembered him, of course. We’d been in the same year for a while, and I’d seen him around—mostly on the basketball court, or surrounded by teammates, or asleep on his desk before homeroom. He’d been around our classroom more often recently. At first, I thought it was just because there was a practice room nearby or because he had some project with another classmate.

Then I realized: Yeonseo was dating him now.

The athlete everyone liked. The one people stopped to watch when he played; the one girls whispered about in the bathroom mirror, trading rumors about his last game or who he might like.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

Over the next few weeks, school began to feel like one long, empty stretch of time with a few bright interruptions I wasn’t sure I belonged in.

When the final bell rang, I walked home alone more often than not. It wasn’t that Yeonseo had suddenly abandoned me. Sometimes she had committee meetings or practice. Sometimes she wanted to stay behind and talk with her new friends. Sometimes she and Jungwon left together, shoulders brushing as they disappeared down the hallway.

In our group chats, the familiar back‑and‑forth that used to be just the two of us was now layered with names I didn’t recognize and inside jokes I hadn’t been present for. Messages scrolled by faster, full of stickers and emojis and references to places I hadn’t gone, conversations I hadn’t heard.

I told myself it was fine. People grow. People date. People get busier. I was just being childish.

But one afternoon, as we sat on a bench under the cherry trees behind the gym, petals gathering in the folds of my skirt, even Yeonseo seemed to notice.

“You’ve been weird lately,” she said.

She was peeling the label off her bottle of orange juice, edges of paper piling in her hand. Her brows had that tiny pinched line they got whenever she was thinking too hard about something.

“Did I do something?” she asked.

A breeze pushed a strand of hair into my face. I tucked it behind my ear, staring at the cracks in the pavement. There was a loose thread on my skirt hem, and I picked at it like I could pull my restlessness all the way out through that single thread.

“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

She frowned. “That’s exactly what people say when they’re not fine.” She straightened up, turning fully toward me, knee bumping mine. “Seriously. Tell me. I can’t fix something if I don’t know it’s broken.”

The words sat in my throat, heavy and jagged. I didn’t want to sound clingy or pathetic. I didn’t want to sound like I couldn’t survive without her.

But pretending hurt more.

“I just…” I stared at the ground until the shapes blurred. “I miss you.”

She blinked. “You see me every day.”

“Yeah, but not really.” I swallowed. My voice felt too big for my mouth. “You’re always with other people now. With him. With his friends. I know that makes me sound selfish, but I don’t know how to…fit anywhere else.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. I could hear shouts from the gym behind us, the thud of balls, and a whistle blowing. A petal landed on the toe of my shoe and trembled there.

Then I felt her hand cover mine.

“Y/n,” she said softly. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Because it’s stupid.” I huffed out a laugh that didn’t sound like one.

“It’s not,” she said, squeezing my fingers. “I don’t want you to feel left out. Actually, I was thinking about this. I could introduce you to my other friends properly. To Jungwon’s friends. You always just stand at the edge like you’re about to run away.”

“That’s because I am about to run away,” I muttered.

She laughed, bumping her shoulder against mine. “You won’t have to if they’re your friends too. Let’s fix this, okay? I don’t want you to feel lonely.”

Her certainty settled into me like warmth I wasn’t sure I deserved.

Being introduced to Jungwon’s friend group felt like being placed in the middle of a circle I hadn’t asked to stand in.

“This is Y/n,” Yeonseo said at lunch one day, her voice bright. “My best friend since forever.”

We were at one of the bigger tables in the cafeteria. Trays crowded the surface: half‑eaten rice, bowls of soup, the inevitable pile of kimchi on someone’s tray that they never touched. Sunlight from the high windows pooled on the scratched plastic.

A few of the boys nodded. One of them, I remembered vaguely from seeing him on the court, grinned and jerked his chin at the empty space. “Sit.”

I slipped into the seat beside Yeonseo, directly across from Jungwon. Up close, without the stage of the court between us, he seemed strangely normal—tired eyes, slightly messy hair, a faint red line on his arm where a ball had probably smacked him.

He didn’t talk much at first. Neither did I.

Around us, loud voices overlapped—arguments over which teacher was the worst, jokes only they understood, someone complaining about extra laps in practice. Every now and then, one of the guys would nudge another and say, “Hey, pass the kimchi, idiot,” and they’d start mock arguing again.

I listened. I nodded when it felt appropriate. I answered questions when someone asked me directly: what class I was in, whether I liked this teacher, whether I watched their games. I was quiet, but they didn’t push.

It surprised me how, little by little, the typical silence between me and Jungwon stopped feeling as heavy.

He’d ask how my classes went. I’d ask about his upcoming games. Sometimes he’d complain about his coach; sometimes I’d complain about group projects where I ended up doing everything.

And sometimes, after school, the three of us would go to a café or the convenience store by the bus stop or just wander aimlessly until we reached someone’s neighborhood. It always started with “I’ll walk with you,” and ended with, “Oh, I guess I kept going,” until our routes split and we realized how far we’d gone without noticing.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” he said once as we walked home, plastic bags swinging at our sides. Yeonseo was a few steps ahead on a phone call, gesturing wildly as she talked.

I glanced at him, suddenly nervous. “Is that…bad?”

He shook his head. “Nah. It’s just different. Everyone around here shouts over each other. It’s kind of nice that you don’t.”

I wasn’t sure what to do with that, so I just smiled faintly and looked back at the road.

One evening, a message from Jungwon popped up on my phone.

Jungwon: hey, do you have a sec?

Me: yeah?

Jungwon: i want to do something for yeonseo’s birthday

Jungwon: like a surprise

Jungwon: but i’m bad at that kinda stuff lol

Jungwon: can you help??

My stomach tightened with nerves, but my fingers were steadier than my heartbeat.

Me: sure. what were you thinking?

We ended up meeting at a small bakery near the station to plan. The place smelled like warm bread and sugar. The display case glowed with rows of cakes and tarts. Watching him agonize over which cake flavor she’d like best made me realize how much I knew about her.

“She doesn’t like overly sweet things,” I said automatically. “Strawberry shortcake is safe. But if there’s too much cream, she’ll scrape some off. So this one.” I pointed.

“Right,” he said, nodding like I’d given him secret intel. “You’d know better than me.”

Hearing that should have made me feel secure, like I had a permanent, irreplaceable place in her life. Instead, something jittery moved under my ribs.

We bought decorations from the discount store down the street, argued over which playlist she’d like, reserved a table at her favorite restaurant, and spent hours texting her other friends to coordinate who would arrive first.

Somewhere between carrying bags of streamers and choosing between two nearly identical gift bags, I found myself talking.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know who I am without her,” I admitted as we walked to the bus stop, arms full of party supplies. The plastic bags bit faintly into my fingers. “We’ve always just…been together. People know me as ‘Yeonseo’s friend.’ Not as…anything on my own.”

He glanced at me, his expression softer than usual. “Is that why you were upset before?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged, my shoulders curling in. “It’s not her fault. I just don’t know how to be any other way.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being close to someone. Or depending on them sometimes. But…it would suck if you thought you were nothing without them.”

“I don’t think I’m nothing,” I said quickly, then faltered. “I just don’t know who I am outside of ‘with her.’”

He didn’t push. His words stuck with me the rest of the night, even as we messaged back and forth about candle colors.

When the surprise finally unfolded—lights flicking on as Yeonseo walked into the decorated room, everyone shouting “Happy birthday!”—her eyes went wide, then wet. The room was a blur of balloons, laughter, and the smell of food.

“Did you do all this?” she asked later, pulling me aside, her voice thick.

“Jungwon did,” I said. “I just helped.”

She hugged me so suddenly I almost dropped the cup in my hand.

“I don’t deserve you,” she murmured into my shoulder.

I didn’t know then how much I’d cling to those words later, turning them over and over like a charm I’d eventually crack.

After most people had gone home, Jungwon found me outside, leaning against the railing. The night was cool; the music inside was muffled by the door.

“Hey,” he said. “Thank you. Really. I couldn’t have done that alone.”

“It was nothing,” I said automatically

“It wasn’t.” He studied me for a long moment, as if trying to see past my shrug. “You always know what she needs.”

I looked down at my shoes. “I grew up learning it.”

He smiled a little. “You did good today, Y/n.”

Something warm flickered in my chest, small but insistent.

The three of us were closer after that. At least, that’s how it looked from the outside.

We ate lunch together almost every day. We shared stupid memes in a group chat, the notifications lighting up my screen late into the night. I watched as people teased Yeonseo and Jungwon for being “disgustingly cute” and rolled my eyes when she pretended to be offended but leaned into his side anyway.

One afternoon, while we were eating in the courtyard, a girl from another class leaned over from the next table.

“Yeonseo,” she said, smirking, “how’s it going with your boyfriend?”

Yeonseo grinned, eyes flicking toward Jungwon. “Good.”

“Do you love him?” someone else asked, half‑teasing, half‑serious.

She hesitated—just long enough that even I noticed.

“I…maybe?” she said finally. “I really like him. A lot.”

The table erupted.

“Whoa, love!”

“Already?”

“Have you guys kissed yet?”

Yeonseo flushed, pressing her palm to her cheek. “That’s private.”

“C’mon, just tell us!” someone whined.

She peeked at Jungwon, who scratched his cheek, looking vaguely embarrassed but not exactly protesting. Then she sighed.

“Fine. We kissed before we even started dating,” she admitted.

That set off a whole new round of squealing.

They demanded details. Yeonseo gave in, telling them about the day she and Jungwon ran into each other at a festival game booth—how he’d helped her win a stuffed toy because the stall owner was clearly cheating her, how they’d ended up walking around together after that, how, after moments of private feelings, one thing had led to another at the edge of the fireworks crowd.

As she described the moment—how nervous she’d been, how he’d leaned in, how their friends had yelled in the background—I felt everything slow down around me.

In my head, I rewound the memory I didn’t have.

I imagined standing where she had been, feeling his breath ghost over my lips, hearing the noise around us fade. I imagined being the one he looked at that way.

And then I hated myself for it.

A few days later, Yeonseo stayed late after school to help decorate for an upcoming event.

“Go ahead without me,” she told us, wiping her hands on a roll of tape, streaks of marker on her fingers. “I’ll be here forever if I don’t finish this.”

“You sure?” Jungwon asked, lingering near the doorway.

“Yeah. You two can walk home together.” She winked. “Keep each other company. Make sure Y/n doesn’t get lost in her thoughts.”

Her joke lodged in my throat like a stone.

As we left the school gates, the evening light was soft and gold. Our footsteps echoed in sync on the pavement. Usually, if it was just the two of us, either one of us filled the silence quickly with small talk. That day, the quiet stretched, taut and humming.

I thought about that first kiss she’d described, wondering if I would’ve had a chance with him if I’d been braver the day we first met—if I’d talked more, smiled more, been more like her.

“Should I be worried?” he asked suddenly.

I blinked. “About what?”

“You’ve been quiet,” he said. “Quieter than usual.”

“I’m always quiet,” I deflected.

“Yeah, but this feels like a different quiet.” His tone was light, but his eyes were searching my face.

“I was just thinking,” I lied. “About exams.”

He studied me for a second longer, then nodded. “Makes sense. They’re coming up fast.” He didn’t push. I was grateful—and annoyed at myself for wishing he would.

Still, that night, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, all I could think about was him. The way he listened when I spoke. The way he remembered small details I’d mentioned once. The way my chest tightened uncomfortably whenever he smiled at me.

Guilt pooled in my stomach like lead.

I knew it was wrong. He was my best friend’s boyfriend. There were rules—unspoken but understood. I’d always believed I would never be that kind of person.

And yet, whenever I tried to remind myself of that, my mind slipped back into daydreams where he looked at me like I mattered the way she did.

When Jungwon’s big basketball game rolled around, the gym buzzed with noise. Banners waved from the bleachers, sneakers squeaked on the polished floor, whistles shrilled every few seconds. The air smelled like sweat, floor polish, and the faint tang of the cheap snacks they sold at the entrance.

I stood near the back of the bleachers, clutching a plastic bottle of water and scanning the crowd for a familiar ponytail.

Yeonseo wasn’t there.

She hadn’t wanted to come.

Earlier that day, her voice had cracked when she told me why.

“I told him I loved him,” she said, perched on the edge of my bed, twisting the hem of my pillowcase. “And he just…couldn’t say it back. He said he still wanted to date, but he wasn’t sure yet. Like love is some exam he hasn’t studied for.”

I’d struggled for words. Part of me ached for her—for how brave she’d been, for how hard it must’ve been to hear that. Another part of me felt an ugly, invisible relief I couldn’t admit to anyone.

“That’s not…wrong of him,” I said slowly. “It’s honest. You can’t make someone feel something before they’re ready.”

Her eyes flashed. “You’re taking his side?”

“I’m not. I just—”

“You are,” she snapped, standing up so quickly the bed creaked. “You always think I’m the one overreacting. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Later, she texted that she wasn’t going to the game. I can’t cheer for someone who made me feel that stupid, she’d added, then unsent it.

So I went alone.

When the final whistle blew and the team huddled in the center of the court, Jungwon’s eyes scanned the crowd. For a second, I could see the hope on his face—searching for someone who wasn’t there.

When he saw me, his shoulders relaxed, but there was a flicker of something else too: resignation.

He jogged over, still catching his breath, his hair damp with sweat.

“Where’s Yeonseo?” he panted.

“She…” I hesitated. “She didn’t want to be around either of us. I told her I understood where you were coming from.”

His expression shifted, a quick flash of disappointment and guilt. “Figures,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, though I wasn’t sure who I was apologizing for.

He shook his head, forcing a small smile. “Not your fault. Thanks for coming, though. Want to grab food? My treat. As a thank‑you for cheering.”

I knew I should have said no—for her, for me, for the thin line we were already walking.

But I was tired of being guided only by what I should do.

“Okay,” I said.

The restaurant was mostly empty: humming fluorescent lights, the faint echo of the TV playing some variety show in the corner. We sat in a worn red booth, steam rising from bowls of noodles between us.

“She’s really upset, huh,” he said, prodding his food.

“She feels…rejected,” I said. “Like she was risking everything by saying it, and she wanted you to jump with her. When you didn’t, it felt like she jumped alone.”

He sighed, chopsticks stilling. “I know. I just…can’t fake something like that. I tried to explain, but it came out wrong. It always does.”

“Have you ever been in love before?” I asked before I could stop myself.

He looked up, startled, then nodded slowly.

“Yeah. I have,” he said. “With my ex. She was my first love. We thought we could handle the distance when she transferred, but it fell apart. I tried so hard to keep it together. It still ended anyway.”

He stared at his soup like it might give him a different answer.

“After that, I didn’t know what love was supposed to look like anymore. Or if I even wanted it,” he continued. “With Yeonseo…it’s not that I don’t care. I like being with her. She’s fun and warm and everyone likes her. But when she said she loved me, I felt like I was back there again—about to promise something I didn’t fully understand. I don’t want to hurt her like that.”

“You’re not a bad person for being careful,” I said quietly.

He studied my face, searching for judgment and finding none.

“You always say the right thing,” he said.

“I don’t think she’d agree with that.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded, “but I do.”

On the way home, he walked me to my door even though it meant doubling back from his usual route. The street was still damp from an earlier drizzle; the pavement glistened under the streetlights.

“Can you not tell her everything I said?” he asked, stopping just short of my gate. “About my ex and all.”

“I won’t,” I said. “It’s your story.”

He nodded, looking oddly relieved. “Thanks. And…thanks for tonight. You made it easier to breathe.”

He left before I could answer.

The next day, Yeonseo cornered me by my locker, her eyes still slightly swollen from crying.

“I went to see him last night,” she said.

My heart sped up. We hadn’t talked much since the argument.

“We talked,” she continued. “I apologized. I realized I was kind of…forcing something. We’re still young. Maybe I don’t even know what love is yet.” She tried to smile. “All I know is that I like being with him. I don’t want to lose that because I’m impatient.”

“Did he forgive you?” I asked.

She nodded. “He said he’s been hurt before because of love, but he didn’t say much about that. Just that being with me reminds him he deserves to be loved. He wants to make me happy.”

Her voice wobbled. “Still…it feels a little different now. Like there’s a crack we’re both ignoring. But I’m scared that if I keep pushing, it’ll break completely.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. How could I tell her that from the outside, I could see both of their fears like a thin film neither of them could quite peel away?

Later, as we walked home together with Jungwon, I watched them from the corner of my eye. On the surface, they looked the same—teasing, bumping shoulders, stealing glances. But I could see the stiffness in Yeonseo’s smile, the way Jungwon’s laugh didn’t reach his eyes.

When we reached her house, she waved and left us at the corner.

“I’m glad you guys made up,” I told him as we continued down the street.

He frowned faintly. “Is she really okay? It didn’t feel like she was.”

“She’s…trying,” I said. “But she wasn’t satisfied with your answer.”

“I figured.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wish she could be more like you.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah. You understand that I’m still figuring things out. You don’t make me feel like I’m failing some test.”

“She just wants to be loved,” I said quietly. “She feels like she has everything else. She doesn’t see why she shouldn’t.”

“And what if I can’t give her that?” he asked.

“Then it’s not fair to either of you,” I said.

He fell quiet until we reached my house.

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” he asked suddenly.

I shook my head. “No. I think you’re just scared. And that you don’t want to repeat your past.”

He looked strangely moved. “I’m surprised you can still be this kind to me. I’m not exactly being fair to your best friend.”

“I care about her,” I said. “But I care about you too. You’re my friend now. I don’t want to choose between you.”

He let out a soft huff, something like a laugh. “You have a big heart, you know that?”

No one had ever told me that before. I wasn’t sure I believed it.

Weeks later, the inevitable happened.

“We broke up,” Yeonseo said one afternoon, her voice flat like all the emotion had drained out and left only the outline.

We were sitting on the swings at the park where we used to go as kids. The chains squeaked every time we shifted our weight. Little kids ran across the sand, their shouts carrying easily in the late afternoon air.

“He said we were both being selfish,” she continued. “That there was no point in pretending. I was willing to wait for him, but he said that would only burden him. That I deserved someone ready to love me now.” She scoffed. “He also said he couldn’t risk getting his heart broken again. As if I was about to stomp on it.”

I thought of how tense he’d been each time the word love came up, how careful he was not to step on what he couldn’t yet name. I didn’t know if he was wrong or right. I only knew that whatever line they’d been tiptoeing along had finally snapped.

“What did you say?” I asked quietly.

She dug the toe of her shoe into the dirt. “I told him he was a coward. That he wasn’t even giving us a chance. I said I wished I’d never tried so hard.”

The words hung between us, heavy.

Later that day, I got a message from him.

Jungwon: can we talk?

We met at the park, under the same tree where we’d once waited for Yeonseo to finish buying snacks.

“I told her it was for her sake,” he said, staring at the ground. “That she deserved better. But…honestly, I couldn’t take the pressure anymore. Everyone expecting us to be this perfect couple. Her expecting me to catch up to her feelings. Every time we hung out, I could feel how much she loved me, and I felt like a villain.”

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I broke up because I was overwhelmed. That’s the truth. Not because I was being noble.”

“You were still brave,” I said. “You chose what you could handle instead of lying and dragging it out. That doesn’t make you good or bad. Just honest.”

“Yeah, and now she hates me. And you’ll probably have to stop talking to me too, since she needs someone on her side.”

“No,” I said quickly. “You’re both my friends.”

He shook his head. “You can’t have it both ways forever.”

I wanted to prove him wrong. I wanted to believe that if I tried hard enough, I could hold everything together—her, him, myself.

I didn’t understand yet that trying to hold everything sometimes meant crushing it in your hands.

We started meeting more often after that.

At first, it was accidental run‑ins—at the riverbank, near the convenience store, on the walk home when our routes just happened to overlap.

Then it became…less accidental.

“Yeonseo knows we’re hanging out, right?” he asked me one evening as the sky turned orange over the water.

“Yes,” I lied. “She doesn’t mind.”

In reality, I’d barely mentioned him. The breakup sat like a sore spot I was afraid to bump.

“She doesn’t think it’s weird?” he pressed.

“She’s…okay with it,” I said, the lie scraping my tongue on the way out. “We’re all just friends.”

He sighed in obvious relief. “I wish we could all hang out together again,” he said. “But I guess that’s not happening.”

“Do you still have feelings for her?” I asked.

He thought for a long moment. “I’m not sure. I think about her sometimes. She made me laugh a lot. It hurts when she walks past me like I’m no one. But when I imagine getting back together, I just feel…tired.”

Something in my chest twisted.

“I’m scared that would happen to me,” I said before I could stop myself.

“To you?”

“If she ever stopped being my friend,” I said, eyes on the river. “I don’t think anyone would miss me like that. I’m not…special like she is.”

He turned fully toward me.

“That’s not true,” he said firmly.

I shrugged, trying to make it a joke. “It’s fine. I’m used to being the background character.”

“Y/n.” His voice was gentler than I’d ever heard it. “You’re not anyone’s background.”

I swallowed.

“You helped me when I couldn’t even understand myself,” he said. “You’ve been there when I felt like I was the worst person alive. You see things other people don’t. And you don’t do it to get attention. You just…see. That’s special.”

I felt my throat close up.

“I didn’t know who I was without her either,” I admitted quietly. “But with you, I started to feel…like I could be a person on my own. Not just her shadow.”

He smiled, soft and a little sad. “I’m glad. There was never anything pathetic about you, you know. So what if you’re quiet? That just makes getting to know you feel like a privilege.”

Something inside me cracked open then.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

We sat in silence for a while, the air between us warm and buzzing with something I was too scared to name.

Then, without warning, he leaned in and kissed me.

I froze. My mind went utterly blank, like someone had wiped the slate clean. His lips were soft and hesitant, tasting faintly of the soda we’d shared earlier. For a heartbeat, my world shrank to just that feeling—the surprising rightness of it, the dizziness of being wanted.

When he pulled back, his eyes were wide with the same shock I felt.

“I—I’m sorry,” he stammered. “Is that…okay?”

My heart was pounding so loudly I almost couldn’t hear my own voice.

“Yes,” I breathed. “But…why?”

He exhaled shakily. “I just…followed my heart. Like you told me to.”

The worst part was, I knew exactly which conversation he meant. Months ago, when he’d agonized over whether to keep dating Yeonseo despite his fears, I’d said the words like some kind of advice: You have to follow your heart. Otherwise you’ll always wonder.

He kissed me again, and this time, I let myself respond.

For a moment, there was no Yeonseo. No rules. No guilt.

Just us.

Guilt returned quickly.

It started as a cold spot beneath my ribs, then spread into a steady ache I couldn’t ignore.

A few days later, he asked to see me again.

We met at the river, in the same place we’d kissed. The water looked exactly the same. I didn’t.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he said, staring at the ground. “It was the heat of the moment. I don’t want to hurt you. Or Yeonseo.”

The words stung, even though a part of me had been expecting something like them.

“It’s okay,” I said, forcing a little laugh that scraped my throat. “We can just…pretend it never happened.”

“I like being your friend,” he said earnestly. “I don’t want to destroy that. Friends mean more to me than…than whatever that was, if it’s just going to blow everything up.”

“Me too,” I lied.

A classmate biked past us then, slowing down.

“Hey, Jungwon. Y/n,” she said, eyeing us curiously. “What are you two doing?”

“We’re just hanging out,” he said easily, the practiced nonchalance making the lie feel bigger.

She nodded slowly, then pedaled away.

Something cold settled in my stomach.

People were watching.

People would talk.

I realized then: no matter how careful we were, there was no version of this where no one got hurt. We could pretend the kiss meant nothing, but we couldn’t un‑mean it.

The next day at school, the same classmate approached me near the lockers.

“So…what were you doing with Jungwon yesterday?” she asked, her tone light but probing.

“He was asking about Yeonseo,” I said quickly. The lie slid out so smoothly it scared me. “He still cares about her, you know.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Does he want to get back together?”

“I don’t know,” I lied again. “Maybe he still has feelings for her. I was going to talk to her about it after school.”

That afternoon, as I walked home with Yeonseo, my pulse thudded in my ears.

“Have you talked to him since the breakup?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

She shook her head. “No. Why would I?”

“I ran into him by the river,” I said. “He…asked me about you. Said he misses spending time with us. The three of us.”

Her steps faltered.

“He asked you that?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, staring straight ahead. “I told him it wouldn’t be a good idea. That it would just drag things out for you.”

She scoffed. “It’s strange,” she muttered. “The only reason we hung out was because I was dating him. Now that we’re not, there’s no point in us all being friends. That’s what you told him, right?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice small.

“Good,” she said curtly. “If he has something to say to me, he can say it to my face. I don’t need you to be the messenger.”

My chest burned.

That night, I went to the river alone and found him already there, sitting on the low wall and tossing pebbles into the water.

“Hey,” he said, looking up in surprise. “We keep running into each other here.”

I sat beside him and told him about the nosy classmate, about what I’d said.

“They don’t know we kissed,” he said. “So it’s fine.”

“Do you regret it?” I asked, the question like a splinter I couldn’t stop poking.

He stared at the water for a long moment.

“No,” he said finally. “I don’t regret feeling what I felt. But I know it’s not…right.”

“Why isn’t it right if you followed your heart?” I asked, frustration threading through my voice. “You tell me that’s what I should do, too.”

He sighed. “I followed my heart with my ex. It still ended, and I felt stupid. I followed it with Yeonseo. We both got hurt. Following my heart doesn’t mean I get to be selfish.”

“Do you have feelings for me?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.

He froze.

After a long pause, he said softly, “Maybe I do. But I can’t act on them. You’re her best friend. It would make everything worse. For you. For her. For me.”

Something inside me crumpled.

I thought about telling him the whole truth—that I’d fallen for him quietly, piece by piece. That every kind word and shared secret had stitched him into my ribs. That the kiss had only confirmed what I’d been too afraid to admit.

But if I did, what then? Would he think I’d only been there for him because I liked him? Would he pull away completely to protect me, or himself, or her?

“I get it,” I said instead. “You’re right.”

I hated myself for agreeing. I hated that I’d pushed him to follow his heart only to flinch when it led him to me.

When I got home, Yeonseo was sitting on my bed.

“Your mom let me in. I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Where were you?”

“Just walking,” I said, heart racing. “By myself.”

Her eyes searched my face, catching on things I hadn’t hidden well enough.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. “We barely hang out these days.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I just…don’t feel as lonely when I’m by myself anymore.”

Her brows knit. “Why?”

“Because I’ve made more friends,” I said. “At school.”

“My friends?” she asked slowly. “You barely talk to them when I’m not around.”

I bristled. Shame and defensiveness tangled in my chest.

“What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I just…never see you with anyone else. That’s all.”

“Do you think I’m incapable of making friends?” I snapped before I could stop myself. “Do you honestly think I’m that pathetic?”

Her eyes widened. “I didn’t say that. I’ve just…never seen you do it. That’s why I was surprised. Why are you so defensive? Do you have a problem with me?”

“Yes,” I said, the word cracking out of me before I could tame it.

Silence crashed between us.

“I’m tired of everyone acting like I need you to survive,” I continued, the dam broken. “Maybe that used to be true, but it’s not anymore. Instead of telling me to be myself, you’re always telling me how to act, like I’m some extension of you.”

“That’s not fair,” she shot back. “The only reason we’re so close is because we’re similar. You were always too scared to take initiative. I just pushed you a little. If you’ve been thinking this way the whole time, you don’t know me at all.”

Frustration boiled over.

“You always have to be right,” I said. “If things don’t go your way, everyone else is the villain. Just because Jungwon wasn’t ready to love you, you threw him away completely.”

Her eyes flashed. “Why are you defending him? I didn’t do anything wrong by expecting my boyfriend to love me. And why would I stay friends with someone I still liked? I’d only get led on. You wouldn’t understand any of this anyway. You’ve never been in a relationship.”

“Maybe I understand more than you think,” I said quietly. “He hurt you. You hurt him. You’re the one keeping that hurt alive.”

“If he’s still hurt, that’s his problem,” she snapped. “Love is unfair, Y/n. That’s what you don’t know.”

“I know exactly how unfair it is,” I said, my voice shaking.

She stared at me for a long moment, her gaze sharp and wounded.

“You’re hiding something from me,” she said finally. “I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it. And it hurts that you don’t trust me enough to be honest.”

Her words hit exactly where they were aimed. Because she was right.

“Just leave,” I whispered. “Please.”

She left.

I collapsed onto my bed and cried until my chest ached, not just from what I’d said but from what I still couldn’t.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. It was that the truth would shatter whatever was left between us. I wasn’t ready to watch that happen.

For the first time, I started to hate the version of myself who thought silence was kindness.

That night, I called Jungwon.

“Do you think love is unfair?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

He was quiet for a long time.

“Yeah,” he said eventually. “I think it can be. A lot of the time.”

“Your ex,” I said. “If she had to move away because of her parents, that must have been unfair for her too. Maybe she didn’t want to end things. If you forgave her, maybe you’d finally let go.”

“Why are you worrying about that now?” he asked softly. “Did something happen with Yeonseo?”

“We fought,” I admitted. “Because I’m a coward. Because I couldn’t tell her the truth.”

“About the kiss?”

The word sat like a stone in my throat.

“Yes,” I forced out. “About you. About me.”

He sighed. “Do you want me to get back together with her?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I just want you to be happy.”

Silence stretched between us, full of things we understood but still refused to say.

“I want you to be happy too,” he said finally.

I looked at my reflection in the dark window and barely recognized the person staring back.

The next day, as we walked home together, my chest felt heavy with the decision I kept postponing.

“I have to tell her,” I said. “I can’t keep lying.”

He nodded, though his jaw tightened. “Whatever happens…that’s between you and her,” he said. “I don’t want to be the reason you lose your best friend.”

“You’re not the reason,” I said. “I am.”

“Still,” he said. “If she hates me more, I’ll live. If she hates you…that’s different.”

I didn’t answer.

I found Yeonseo after school the day after, near the shoe lockers.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

She crossed her arms. “About what?”

“About Jungwon,” I said. “And about me.”

On the walk home, my words stumbled out in halves and starts. I didn’t tell her about the kiss. I told myself I was protecting her from more pain. I knew, even as I spoke, that I was also protecting myself.

“After we became friends, I started to like him,” I said quietly. “More than a friend.”

She stopped walking.

“Keep going,” she said, her voice low, controlled.

“After you broke up, we kept hanging out,” I confessed. “I hid it from you. I told myself I just liked being his friend, that it wasn’t about wanting him. But I was wrong. I should have told you sooner.”

Her eyes shone with something brittle.

“Does he know?” she asked.

“No,” I lied about that part. “And I’m not going to tell him. I just…want things to go back to how they were.”

“They can’t,” she said flatly. “You wanted him for yourself. Even if you didn’t date, you built something with him that I didn’t get to see. You chose him over me and then lied about it.”

“That’s not—”

“I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” she said, cutting me off. “I don’t trust you. Do whatever you want with him. I don’t care.”

It was only later, turning her words over in my head, that I understood: she cared too much. That was the point.

I watched her walk away, my heart splintering in slow motion.

I didn’t chase her. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t think I deserved to.

When I told Jungwon, his face fell.

“She doesn’t want to fix it?” he asked.

I shook my head. “She said she can’t forgive me.”

He stared at me for a long moment.

“I’m still your friend,” he said softly.

“I don’t feel like I’ve been a very good one,” I said. The truth about the kiss pressed against my teeth. “She didn’t know about us. About…any of it. I lied to both of you.”

“You said you’d never choose,” he said quietly. “But you did. You chose me.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why choose me?”

Because I loved you, I thought.

“I developed feelings for you,” I said instead. “But that’s not why I stayed. I wanted to be your friend because you made me feel seen. I lied because I was scared of losing that. Of going back to being just…someone’s shadow.”

He exhaled slowly. “I understand why you did it,” he said. “I just wish you hadn’t. I know you’re trustworthy, but right now…I don’t know how to give you that trust again.”

“If I’d told you sooner how I felt,” I said bitterly, “would you have still kissed me?”

“No,” he said immediately. “I wouldn’t have wanted to confuse you like that. None of this would have happened if I’d controlled myself.”

He looked away, jaw clenched.

“I’m sorry too,” he added quietly. “I knew how complicated it was with Yeonseo. You trusted me not to cross that line, and I did. I put you in an impossible position. That’s on me.”

“This is my fault,” I said. “I tried to have everything and ended up with nothing.”

He didn’t argue. Maybe because we both knew the truth was somewhere in between.

The next few days passed with no words from either of them. I felt like I was being punished, so I accepted it.

Yeonseo now walked past me in the hallway without a glance.

At lunch, a few classmates approached my table, where I sat alone with my untouched food.

“Did something happen between you and Yeonseo?” one of them asked. Everyone had started noticing the tension between us.

I stared at my tray. “I made a mistake,” I said. “I’m dealing with the consequences.”

They tried to pry, but I shook my head.

“It’s between us,” I said. “I just…hope she forgives me someday.”

To my surprise, one of them sat beside me and nudged my shoulder.

“You can sit with us,” she said. “So you don’t have to eat alone.”

“Yeah,” another chimed in. “You look like you’re about to cry.”

I almost laughed.

Their kindness felt strange and new, like a pair of shoes I hadn’t broken in yet—stiff, a little uncomfortable, but warming my feet anyway.

During PE, I saw Jungwon across the gym. To my surprise, he waved. My new friends glanced between us.

“Are you guys close?” one of them asked.

“We were,” I said. “When he was dating Yeonseo.”

Later, as we rested by the bleachers, I asked them about his ex.

“Oh, her,” one girl said. “She was smart. Quiet. A nerd, kind of like you. They started dating when she tutored him. Her parents were strict, though. They didn’t like her dating. I heard she got transferred to an all‑girls school when they found out.”

“So it wasn’t just the distance,” I murmured.

They shrugged. “Guess not. Parents like that…what can you do?”

I thought of what I’d told him, about forgiveness and unfairness.

Maybe his ex hadn’t wanted to leave him at all. Maybe she’d been trapped by something bigger than them. Maybe they’d both spent years blaming themselves for a choice that had never really been theirs.

On the walk back to class, my classmates giggled about seeing me with him at the river before.

“Sorry I told everyone,” the girl with the bike said, grinning. “But you two looked like you were on a date. You kind of suit each other.”

My face burned.

“I wouldn’t date him,” I said quickly. “He’s Yeonseo’s ex.”

“They don’t talk anymore,” one of them pointed out. “Why does it matter?”

“Because it’s still wrong,” I said. “And he wouldn’t go for it either.”

They traded looks.

“Doesn’t look like he minds walking with you,” someone muttered.

I changed the subject.

After school, Jungwon caught up to me near the gates.

“Hey,” he said. “Want to walk together?”

I hesitated. It was surprising that he wanted anything to do with me. Walking with him felt like sliding back into a familiar rhythm I wasn’t sure I deserved.

Then I nodded.

“Why aren’t you avoiding me?” I asked bluntly once we’d fallen into step.

“I thought about what you said,” he replied. “About honesty being brave. You told me the truth even though it cost you everything. I respect that. It would be stupid of me to punish you for the thing I always say I want.”

He glanced down the road, where Yeonseo had just passed us earlier without a glance.

“When I saw her ignore you,” he said quietly, “I remembered how it felt when my ex moved away. Like I’d been erased. You don’t deserve that.”

My throat tightened. “I hurt her.”

“You lied to protect her feelings,” he said. “If I were you, I might’ve done the same. It was a mistake, sure. But not evil.”

I exhaled shakily. “I asked my classmates about your ex,” I said. “I hope that’s okay.”

He shrugged. “What did they say?”

I told him everything.

He looked stunned. “I knew her parents were strict. She always wanted to keep us a secret. At some point, I thought she was embarrassed by me. That I cared more than she did.”

He laughed bitterly. “Then she agreed to let people know. Took that risk. And I thought, ‘Okay, she really loves me.’ I never knew that might be what got her sent away.”

“She might not have had a choice,” I said softly.

“Maybe,” he said. “But that just means I should be with someone who’s free to follow their heart. No restrictions. No secrets forced on them.”

I thought of Yeonseo. Of the invisible tether between us. Of how it tied my heart to hers even now, when we weren’t speaking.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m still restricted,” I admitted. “By her. By what I did. Even when she’s not around, I’m measuring every step against what she’d think.”