K.

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 ; Headcanons on how I view Yeosang as an overly freaked out boyfriend.

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 ; Freak!Yeosang x Fem!Reader.

☆ — 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 : 345. ☆ — 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞 : Smut. ☆ — 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 : Matching nails to tip color, fantasizing, masturbation (m!rec), videoing, panty stealing, finger sucking, primal instincts, oral (f!rec), mention of Yeosang humping the bed, whining, orgasm control, fingering is mentioned, begging, piv, moaning, restraints, and multiple creampies are implied.

♡ — 𝐕𝐢𝐩 𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 ; @kissmatz @eggielix @miisanthropology @liaaaafixofff @chanscappuccino @eunseoksgirl @threepointstogrifendor @fixon-min @groovyravenagain @matznana @smuttaburger @barbtiny @yeosangholic1 @maliabobea15 send a ask to be added or removed!

SYNOPSIS ; You’re a hyper-independent student pulling back-to-back shifts just to keep your head above water. He’s Park Seonghwa—the untouchable, clinical heir to a multi-billion-won empire, suffocating inside a golden cage. When his family’s corporate meddling forces you into a high-stakes, transactional fake-dating contract, you think you’ve negotiated the ultimate hustle. Rule one: it’s just a performance. Rule two: no touching. But between quiet, reverent midnights in the dimly lit campus lab and the suffocating pressure of his world, the lines of the contract don't just blur—they catch fire. Old money plays dirty, but they underestimated a girl who has nothing left to lose.

PAIRING(S) ; Frat!Park Seonghwa x F!Reader

WARNING(S) ; !! MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!, explicit content/smut, heavy angst, emotional manipulation (by family members), financial sabotage, classism, temporary heartbreak/breakup (but a very happy ending), light violence (bruised knuckles/shattered glass), alcohol consumption, praise/worship, unprotected sex, and mutual desperation.

WC ; 14k

Part 5/8 of THE REVERENCE SERIES

Inspired by everytime by Ariana Grande

The front door of the frat house didn’t just close; it practically shuddered on its hinges, the echo reverberating through the crown molding of the foyer like a physical blow.

Upstairs, PARK SEONGHWA didn’t blink. He stood by the grand arched window of his room, buttoning the cuffs of a crisp, tailored shirt with practiced, clinical precision. Down the hall, he could hear the faint, exhausted murmur of Hongjoong’s voice—the infamous campus kingpin, the man who had literally written a rulebook to keep his heart under lock and key, now completely dismantled. Defeated. Whipped.

Hongjoong had broken his own rules for a girl. And the terrifying part? Looking at the quiet, breathless peace settled over the hallway, Seonghwa knew Hongjoong didn't regret a single second of the ruin.

Seonghwa’s phone vibrated violently against the mahogany dresser, shattering the silence.

[1] New Message: Lee Jiyeon Your father said you haven't confirmed the venue for Friday. Don't be childish, Seonghwa. We have a timeline to keep.

Right on cue.

He stared at the screen, a muscle feathering in his jaw. For months, he had played the dutiful heir, dodging his father’s corporate matchmaking and Jiyeon’s passive-aggressive ownership over a life he hadn't even chosen. But Hongjoong’s sudden surrender had lit a fuse. The clock had officially run out. He needed a shield, a distraction, a weapon to throw into his father’s meticulously planned boardrooms—and he needed it before Friday.

A sharp knock at his open door cut through his thoughts. Hongjoong was leaning against the frame, looking exhausted but clearer than he had in months.

"You're still brooding," Hongjoong observed, his voice quiet. He didn't need to ask to know what was on Seonghwa's phone. The whole house knew about the impending Park empire merger. "You need to figure something out, man. Fast. Before your old man locks you in a contract you can't claw your way out of."

"I'm working on it," Seonghwa replied smoothly, adjusting his collar.

Hongjoong let out a dry, humorless laugh. "Right. With who? Because the last time we talked about this, you mentioned that girl from the campus diner. The one working three jobs who looked at you like you were dirt beneath her shoes when you tried to tip her a hundred bucks." Hongjoong crossed his arms, a knowing smirk playing on his lips. "You've been tracing her schedule for a week, Seonghwa. The guys think you're losing your mind. She’s a hustler. She doesn't have time for your family drama."

"She has a tuition deadline on Friday," Seonghwa said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, calculated hum. "Everyone has a price, Hongjoong. I’m just going to find out hers."

He snatched his keys off the dresser, leaving Hongjoong shaking his head in the doorway. His reflection in the mirror was a mask of cold, unyielding desperation. If his father wanted a transactional relationship, Seonghwa was going to give him one. He just needed to secure his asset.

The neon sign of The 24-Hour Grind buzzed with a low, irritating hum that perfectly matched the headache building behind your eyes.

It was 9:00 PM. You had been on your feet since your 8:00 AM lecture, survived a mid-day shift at the library, and now you were balancing a tray of greasy burgers and lukewarm coffee for a booth of rowdy frat boys who thought a whistle was an appropriate way to get your attention.

"Hey, sweetheart," one of them smirked as you set down his plate, his eyes traveling entirely too slow down your apron. "You forgot the extra ranch. And maybe you can give us your number with it?"

You didn't flinch. You didn't smile, either. You simply leaned over the table slightly, your posture entirely relaxed, projecting an aura that was pure, unfiltered trouble.

"The ranch is fifty cents extra," you said, your voice smooth, calm, and terrifyingly sharp. "And my number costs more than your monthly allowance, kid. Eat your food before it gets as cold as your game."

The booth went dead silent, his friends instantly bursting into a chorus of mocking 'ohhhhh's' at his expense. You turned on your heel without waiting for a comeback, your posture rigid with a spine made of absolute steel. You didn't have time for this. You had a past-due tuition notice sitting in your backpack, and exactly forty-two dollars in your checking account.

From a secluded booth in the far corner, hidden in the shadows of the dim lighting, Park Seonghwa watched your every move.

He had a pristine leather folder resting on the tabletop, his long, elegant fingers lightly drumming against the surface. He had heard the rumors about you around campus—the girl who couldn't be bought, the girl who treated the wealthy elite like minor inconveniences, the badass who ran this town on pure, unadulterated hustle.

Seeing you in action, he realized Hongjoong was wrong. You weren't a risk. You were a masterpiece. You were exactly the kind of chaotic, unbreakable force he needed to completely shatter his father’s pristine, suffocating world.

As you grabbed a rag to wipe down the counter, a shadow fell over your station.

"I believe we have some business to discuss," a smooth, deep voice slid over the noise of the diner.

You looked up, locking eyes with Park Seonghwa. He looked entirely out of place amidst the peeling vinyl booths—wearing a coat that probably cost more than your rent for the entire year, his dark hair perfectly styled, an aura of wealthy, detached arrogance radiating off him.

You let out a long, exhausted breath and tossed the rag onto the counter. "Look, rich boy. I already told your little frat friends I'm not on the menu. If you want a coffee, sit down. If you're here to waste my time, the door is behind you."

Seonghwa didn't flinch at your tone. Instead, a slow, dangerously handsome smirk spread across his face. He slid the leather folder across the counter, tapping the top of it.

"I'm not here for coffee," Seonghwa murmured, leaning in just enough that his expensive cologne cut through the smell of grease. "I'm here to pay off your university tuition. In full. By tonight."

You froze, your eyes dropping to the folder. Through the clear plastic sleeve, you could see the exact dollar amount of your outstanding balance, printed out in bold, terrifying red ink.

"What's the catch?" you asked, your voice dropping its edge, replaced by a cold, protective suspicion. You knew guys like him. Nothing was free.

"The catch," Seonghwa said, his eyes locking onto yours with absolute, clinical focus, "is that for the next three months, you belong to me. You will sit at my father's dinner tables, you will wear the dresses I buy you, and you will play the role of the most terrifyingly devoted girlfriend this campus has ever seen." He tilted his head, his smirk widening. "Do we have a deal, sweetheart?"

Your laughter wasn’t the soft, flattered kind Seonghwa was used to hearing—it was a sharp, mocking bark that cut through the diner’s low hum like a switchblade. You leaned over the counter, close enough that the scent of his cologne tangled with the fryer grease clinging to your apron. “Let me get this straight, Park,” you said, voice dripping with venomous amusement. “You’re so insufferable you need to use Daddy’s corporate expense account just to get a girl to sit next to you at dinner?”

His mask cracked—just for a heartbeat. A flicker of something raw flashed behind his eyes before he smoothed it over, but his jaw tightened. Interesting. You’d struck a nerve.

You snatched the pen from your apron pocket before he could recover, flipping the folder open with a snap. The tuition amount glared up at you in bold, accusatory red. You circled it hard enough to leave an indentation in the paper. “Rule one,” you said, tapping the pen against the counter like a gavel. “This is a performance. Outside your family functions, you don’t touch me, you don’t control who I talk to, and you don’t show up at my jobs unless it’s part of the gig.”

Seonghwa watched you, rapt, as if you were a wildfire he couldn’t look away from.

“Rule two,” you continued, “if Jiyeon or your father even look at me sideways, I walk. And I keep every cent.”

His silence stretched a second too long—your jab had landed deeper than expected. Seonghwa's fingers twitched against the leather folder, the only crack in his polished facade. "You misunderstand," he said, voice dripping with practiced indifference. "This isn't about my inability to get a date. It's about my father's inability to accept that I won't marry a spreadsheet with legs." His gaze flicked to the diner's stained ceiling, then back to you with renewed intensity. "And you, sweetheart, look like the kind of chaos that would give him an aneurysm."

You snorted, uncapping the pen with your teeth. The plastic tasted like fryer oil and defiance. "Rule three," you added, scribbling violently next to the circled amount. "You don't call me sweetheart. Ever." The pen tore through the paper slightly. 

Seonghwa's lips parted—then curved into something dangerously close to genuine amusement. He leaned in until his tie brushed the counter's grime. "Fine. But when we're in that dining room," he murmured, "you look at me like I hung the moon. Can a hustler like you fake that, or is a man like me too much to handle?" The challenge in his voice sent an unwelcome spark down your spine. 

With a fluid motion, he produced a black credit card from his inner pocket. The embossed platinum caught the fluorescent light as he tapped it against his phone screen. Your own phone buzzed in your apron seconds later. The university's payment confirmation glowed back at you: *$0.00 BALANCE*. Your throat tightened. Freedom. Shackles. Same thing now.

Seonghwa stood abruptly, straightening his cuffs with a snap. He slid a velvet-lined box across the counter—inside, a phone so thin it looked like a credit card. "My driver will deliver your dress tomorrow. Seven sharp." His shoes echoed on the linoleum as he walked away, pausing only to toss over his shoulder: "Wear your hair down. My father hates ponytails."

The bell above the diner door jingled cheerfully as it swung shut behind him, a grotesque contrast to the suffocating weight that had just settled into your chest.

Through the smudged glass window, you watched him slide into the back of a sleek, midnight-black sedan that had no business idling in this neighborhood. The taillights flared, bleeding red into the rainy asphalt, and then he was gone. Left behind was the lingering scent of sandalwood, a brand-new phone glowing like a tiny piece of an alien spaceship against the sticky formica, and a clean slate you’d spent the last three years destroying your health to earn.

Zero balance. You were free of the debt, but as you stared down at the velvet-lined box, you knew you’d just traded a digital prison for a human one.

"Holy shit," a voice hissed from your left.

You didn't even look up as Minji, your co-worker, practically tackled the counter, her eyes wide enough to pop. "Was that... was that Park Seonghwa? From the TEEZER house? The guy whose family literally owns the hospital downtown?"

"It was a customer," you said flatly, shoving the velvet box into the deep pocket of your apron next to your order pad.

"A customer who just made you look like you were about to commit murder or faint," she shot back, leaning over to catch your eye. "What did he want?"

"To buy a headache," you muttered, grabbing the damp rag and wiping down the spot where his expensive tie had just brushed the counter. You scrubbed hard, trying to erase the ghost of his presence, but the challenge in his voice was still echoing in your ears. Can a hustler like you fake that?

You’d fake it. For that kind of money, you’d make his father think you were ready to die for him.

Meanwhile, the interior of the sedan was dead silent, save for the quiet purr of the engine. Seonghwa sat back against the leather, his eyes fixed on the rain tearing across the window glass. His fingers were still tapping a restless, uneven rhythm against his knee.

He pulled his personal phone from his pocket, the screen immediately lighting up with three more missed calls from Lee Jiyeon. He ignored them, dialing a number he knew by heart instead.

It rang twice before a deep, gravelly voice answered. No greeting. Just the heavy, expectant silence of a man who ruled by fear.

"Father," Seonghwa said, his tone instantly shifting into the smooth, perfectly modulated cadence of a dutiful son. The cold arrogance he’d thrown at you in the diner was gone, replaced by something rigidly controlled. "Tell Jiyeon to cancel the reservations at L'Avenue for Friday."

A sharp exhale came over the line. "And why would I do that? Her father is flying in from Seoul specifically to discuss the merger's press release."

"Because the press release is going to have to change," Seonghwa replied, his gaze flickering back toward the fading neon sign of the diner as the car rounded the corner. A small, dangerous smirk played at the corner of his lips. "I won't be bringing Jiyeon as my date. I'm bringing my girlfriend."

The silence on the other end of the line became deafening. "You don't have a girlfriend, Seonghwa. You have distractions. If this is another one of your pathetic attempts to delay—"

"She's not a delay," Seonghwa interrupted, his voice dropping an octave, carrying a sudden, unyielding steel that even his father hadn't heard before. He thought of the way you had looked at him—the absolute lack of fear in your eyes, the razor-sharp edge of your tongue, the beautiful, chaotic defiance of your posture. You were going to tear their pristine boardroom to pieces, and he couldn't wait to watch. "She's my guest. And I suggest you tell Jiyeon to get used to the view from the sidelines."

He hung up before his father could reply, tossing the phone onto the empty leather seat beside him. He let out a slow breath, his chest loosening for the first time all day.

The game had officially begun.

The knock at your apartment door came at exactly 4:03 PM—precise enough to make your teeth grind. You flung the door open to find a man in a black suit standing rigidly in your shitty hallway, holding a garment bag so sleek it looked photoshopped against the peeling paint. He didn’t speak, just extended it toward you like a ceremonial sword.

“What, no ‘have a nice day’?” you muttered, snatching the bag. The driver blinked once—his only reaction—before turning on his heel and disappearing down the stairwell. You almost laughed. Seonghwa’s people were just as robotic as he was.

The zipper hissed open like it was offended by your cramped studio. Inside, the dress was a deep emerald green, the fabric pooling across your bed like liquid wealth. A handwritten note fluttered out: Seven sharp. Don’t forget the hair. You crumpled it in your fist before grabbing the dress by its straps, holding it up to the dim light. It was backless, slit thigh-high, and probably cost more than your entire semester’s rent.

You almost didn’t put it on out of spite. Almost.

The silk slid over your skin like a second heartbeat. The mirror reflected a stranger—someone sharp and dangerous, all long lines and simmering intensity. You left your hair down as ordered, but dug out your grandmother’s antique silver cuff from the bottom of your jewelry box, snapping it around your wrist like armor. The bold red lipstick was pure defiance.

Outside, the black car arrived at 6:59 PM. The driver didn’t speak. Neither did Seonghwa when you slid into the backseat—at first. He was a silhouette of sharp angles and tailored black, his profile etched against the city lights. Then he turned. His breath caught, just once, before he locked it down.

“Take a picture, Park,” you said, crossing your legs deliberately. The slit fell open, revealing a flash of skin. “It lasts longer.”

His fingers twitched against his knee. “The dress fits,” he said, voice perfectly level. “At least I know my money didn’t go to waste.”

You smirked, tapping your cuff against the window. “Don’t get used to it. This isn’t my color.”

The car pulled into traffic. Seonghwa’s mask slipped back into place as he briefed you, his voice clinical. “Jiyeon will go for your throat. My father will test your spine. Neither of them will believe this is real.”

You snorted. “Because it isn’t.”

“Exactly.” His hand landed on yours without warning—warm, heavy, possessive. Your pulse jumped. His fingers laced through yours, pressing your palm flat against the leather seat. “Which is why we practice now. If you flinch when we walk through those doors, he’ll know.” His thumb stroked your knuckles once, deliberate. “Look at me like you love me.”

You laughed, sharp and humorless. “I don’t even like you.”

“Then you’re a better actress than I thought.” His grip tightened. “Try again.”

The challenge in his eyes was infuriating. You leaned in, close enough that your perfume clashed with his cologne. Your free hand landed on his thigh, fingertips pressing into the wool of his slacks. His breath hitched—just once. “Better?” you purred.

Seonghwa’s jaw flexed. “Too obvious.” His thumb traced your wrist, slow, deliberate. “Subtlety sells the lie.” His gaze flicked to your mouth, lingered, then dragged back up. “You look at me like I’m the only thing in the room.”

Your pulse betrayed you, hammering against his fingers. “You’re not.”

The car slowed. Outside, the restaurant loomed—all marble columns and gold-lit windows. Seonghwa’s hand slid from yours to the nape of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair. His lips brushed your ear. “Then lie better.”

The door opened. Cold air rushed in. Seonghwa stepped out first, his posture shifting seamlessly into arrogant elegance. When he turned back, offering his hand, his expression was a mask of practiced devotion. You took it, letting him pull you close. His palm settled at the small of your back, burning through silk.

“Showtime,” he murmured.

You stepped onto the pavement, the slit of your dress parting just enough to make the valet glance away. Seonghwa’s grip tightened—approval or possessiveness, you couldn’t tell. The hostess bowed, her smile faltering when she recognized him. “Mr. Park. Your party is already seated.”

The lobby smelled like money—crisp linen, aged whiskey, the faintest hint of cigar smoke. Your heels clicked against polished floors. Seonghwa’s thumb traced idle circles against your spine. “Jiyeon wears pink when she’s angry,” he whispered. “Consider yourself warned.”

The private dining room door swung open.

Lee Jiyeon sat perfectly poised in blush silk, her diamond choker glinting under the chandelier. Her smile froze when she saw your intertwined fingers. Across the table, Father Park didn’t look up from his wine glass. “Late,” he said, voice like gravel. “Your mother would be ashamed.”

Seonghwa’s fingers twitched against yours. You squeezed back—once, sharp—before sliding into the chair he pulled out. “Traffic,” you said, smiling sweetly at Jiyeon. “So sorry to keep you waiting.”

Jiyeon’s manicured nails tightened around her champagne flute. “How...unexpected.” Her gaze raked down your dress like she was pricing the stitching. “I didn’t realize Seonghwa had such...eclectic taste.”

You leaned forward, letting the slit in your dress part just enough to make her blink. “He doesn’t.” Your cuff flashed silver as you reached for the bread basket. “But I do.”

Father Park finally looked up. His eyes—sharp, calculating—lingered on your wrist. “That cuff,” he said slowly. “Where did you get it?”

“Stole it,” you deadpanned, tearing into the bread with your teeth. The crust crackled loud enough to make Jiyeon flinch. “From a museum.”

Seonghwa kicked your ankle under the table. You kicked back harder.

The silence that followed was a glorious, suffocating vacuum.

Jiyeon actually stopped breathing, her mouth parting in a tiny, horrified ‘O’ as her eyes darted to Father Park, practically begging him to call security. Underneath the heavy mahogany table, Seonghwa’s shoe remained pinned against yours, his weight pressing down as if he could physically force you into compliance. You didn't budge. You just chewed, holding the old man's gaze with the same unblinking stare you used on the midnight-shift drunks who refused to pay their tabs.

A slow, terrifying tick developed in Father Park’s jaw. For three agonizing seconds, the only sound in the private room was the soft, rhythmic hum of the restaurant’s air conditioning.

Then, the patriarch let out a sound. It wasn't a laugh—it was a dry, raspy bark that sounded like sandpaper on wood.

"Honesty," Father Park murmured, leaning back into his leather chair, his sharp eyes crinkling at the corners with a deeply unsettling amusement. "A rare commodity in this family. Most people spend their entire lives trying to lie to me about where they get their things." He flicked his gaze to Jiyeon, whose blush-pink silk dress suddenly looked very washed out. "And their intentions."

Jiyeon’s cheeks flushed a violent, blotchy red. "Father Park, surely you aren't—"

"Eat your salad, Jiyeon," the old man cut her off smoothly, not even looking at her. He tapped his wine glass, signaling the waiter standing rigidly in the corner. "Fill the lady’s glass. And bring our guest something that isn't bread. She looks like she hasn't eaten a full meal since the semester started."

Checkmate, round one.

You glanced at Seonghwa out of the corner of your eye. His perfect, aristocratic profile was completely rigid, but you could see the faint, frantic pulse point throbbing at the base of his throat. He was stunned. His father didn't praise people; he dismantled them. The fact that your reckless, IDGAF energy had actually bypassed his defenses was a variable Seonghwa hadn't calculated.

As the waiter glided forward to pour the wine, Seonghwa finally shifted his leg, his hand sliding beneath the table to find your knee. His fingers dug into your bare skin through the high slit of your dress—not in a reprimand, but with a sudden, heavy desperation. His palm was burning hot.

"She has an appetite," Seonghwa said, his voice dropping into that smooth, velvety cadence he used when he was playing the devoted boyfriend. He leaned into your space, his shoulder brushing yours, his scent completely clouding your senses. "It's one of the things I find most... captivating about her."

He looked at you then, and for a split second, the sheer intensity in his dark eyes made your breath hitch. It wasn't the fake, rehearsed look from the car. It was sharp, dark, and heavy with a strange kind of hunger.

"Is that so?" Jiyeon sneered, her voice trembling with suppressed rage as she gripped her fork. "And what department did you say you were in? I don't recall seeing your family name on the alumni donor list."

You leaned back, letting Seonghwa’s hand ride up your thigh just an inch higher, the physical friction sending a jolt of pure adrenaline straight to your core. You looked Jiyeon dead in the eye.

"I'm on the 'working forty hours a week to avoid drowning in debt' list," you said, matching her icy tone note for note. "But don't worry. I'm sure your family's spreadsheet covers that."

Beside you, Seonghwa choked on his wine.

Jiyeon's champagne flute trembled against the linen tablecloth as she forced a smile sharper than her diamond choker. "I do hope you appreciate opera, darling. The Seoul Arts Center is hosting La Traviata next weekend—though I suppose balcony seats are rather hard to come by without connections." Her gaze flicked to your silver cuff like she was pricing the scrap metal.

You speared a bite of seared scallop—deliberately using the wrong fork—and shrugged. "Never been. Though I did catch an amazing drag queen performing Bohemian Rhapsody at a dive bar last month." You tilted your head, grinning as Jiyeon's manicure dug into her napkin. "The costumes were probably cheaper than this scallop, but damn, could she hit those high notes."

Father Park's wine glass paused halfway to his lips. A muscle in Seonghwa's jaw twitched as his fingers flexed against your thigh, his thumb tracing slow, burning circles beneath the table.

Jiyeon rallied like a cornered viper. "How...quaint. Though I can't imagine Seonghwa slumming it in some bar." She fluttered her lashes at him. "Remember our private box at the Met last summer? You said the acoustics were—"

"—Overrated," Seonghwa interrupted, his voice dripping with lazy disdain. His hand slid higher up your thigh, fingers pressing into bare skin. "I prefer venues with...personality."

Jiyeon's champagne flute cracked against the table. The waiter rushed forward with a fresh glass, but Father Park waved him off, his gaze locked on you with unsettling focus. "And where else does our guest enjoy spending her time?" he asked, the question a blade wrapped in silk.

You leaned forward, letting the candlelight catch your grandmother's cuff. "Last weekend? I spent eight hours in the library basement fixing citations for a professor who paid me in stale granola bars." You smirked at Jiyeon's horrified blink. "Though I did swing by the museum after—free student tickets on Fridays."

Seonghwa's fingers dug into your skin hard enough to bruise.

Father Park set down his fork with deliberate precision. "Which exhibit?"

"The textile archives." You swirled your wine, watching the legs streak the glass. "Most people skip them for the flashy Impressionists, but there's a 15th-century hanbok in there with stitching so tight, it's survived five wars." You glanced at Jiyeon's designer dress. "Unlike some modern art."

Jiyeon's knife screeched across her plate. "How...quaint. Though I can't imagine Seonghwa wasting time in a museum." Her smile turned venomous. "Unless he was desperate to avoid—"

"—Boring people," Seonghwa interrupted, his thumb stroking your inner thigh. "A fatal flaw of mine."

Father Park's chuckle was a low, dangerous rumble. "You have your mother's taste for...unconventional beauty." His gaze lingered on your grandmother's cuff. "And her spine."

The air in the room shifted. Jiyeon's manicure clicked against crystal as she excused herself, her blush silk dress whispering like a threat. You counted to three before pushing back your chair. "Restroom," you murmured, catching the murderous glance Jiyeon threw over her shoulder.

The bathroom was all marble and orchids, the kind of place where rich women went to cry into gold-plated sinks. Jiyeon was already waiting, her reflection warped in the polished mirrors. "You pathetic little—"

"—Gold-digger?" You leaned against the counter, uncapping your lipstick with deliberate slowness. "Try harder, Jiyeon. Your insults are as stale as your champagne."

Her diamond choker trembled. "Do you really think this charade lasts?" She stepped closer, her whisper venomous. "You're a temporary amusement. Men like Seonghwa don't keep girls like you. They marry girls like me."

The lipstick snapped shut. You tilted your head, meeting her gaze in the mirror. "Then you better start praying," you murmured, swiping red over your bottom lip. "Because right now, he's paying my tuition just to avoid looking at your face."

Jiyeon's breath hitched—once—before she slammed her clutch down hard enough to crack the marble. "You have no idea what you're playing with."

You smirked, tucking the lipstick into your clutch. "Neither do you."

The heavy, gold-trimmed door of the restroom clicked shut behind you, cutting off the sound of Jiyeon’s ragged, furious breathing.

The moment you stepped back into the quiet hallway, the badass posture you’d been holding since seven o’clock slipped just a fraction. Your shoulders dropped. Your heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. You had just completely humiliated one of the wealthiest heiresses in the city, but the rush of adrenaline was fading, leaving behind the stark, cold reality of what you were actually doing. You were a mouse playing in a nest of vipers.

"You're late," a voice slid out of the shadows.

You gasped, your hand flying to the emerald silk at your chest. Seonghwa was leaning against the wood-paneled wall just a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest. The pristine jacket of his suit was unbuttoned now, his tie loosened just a fraction. He looked less like the untouchable heir and more like a predator waiting in the dark.

"I was busy," you snapped, recovering your edge instantly as you walked past him toward the dining room. "Your little spreadsheet has a really foul mouth when she's angry."

Seonghwa didn't move to follow you. Instead, as you brushed past him, his hand shot out, his long fingers wrapping tightly around your wrist—right over your grandmother’s silver cuff. The metal bit into your skin, but his grip wasn't malicious. It was desperate. He pulled you backward, anchoring you against his chest in the dim hallway.

"What did she say to you?" he murmured, his breath hot against the shell of your ear.

"Nothing I couldn't handle," you said, trying to pull away, but his other hand found your waist, his palm burning through the backless slit of your dress. Rule number one was screaming in your head, but the way his chest rumbled against your back made your knees dangerously weak. "Let go, Park. No touching behind closed doors, remember?"

Seonghwa let out a low, breathy laugh that sounded completely devoid of his usual arrogance. "My father just asked the waiter to pack up the rest of the dinner," he whispered, his lips brushing the column of your neck. You shivered, your eyes fluttering shut for a terrifying second. "He said he’s seen enough. We're leaving."

"Did we lose?" you whispered, your fingers curling into the fabric of his suit jacket.

Seonghwa leaned down, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made the rest of the hallway blur into nothingness. "No," he murmured, his thumb tracing a slow line down your jaw. "You won. He told me to keep you because you have more balls than I do."

The car smelled like leather and rain—and him. Seonghwa didn’t slide into his usual spot across the sedan’s expanse. Instead, the moment the door shut behind you, his arm hooked around your waist, hauling you sideways until you were straddling his lap, your emerald silk dress riding up your thighs. His breath hitched, warm against your smudged lipstick. "You completely destroyed her," he murmured, thumb dragging across your bottom lip, staining his skin crimson.

You smirked, pulse thundering where his fingers traced your jaw. "I told you, Park. I don’t bow to spreadsheets."

His grip tightened, pulling you closer until your chests brushed. "No," he agreed, voice rough. "You set them on fire." The car hit a pothole, jolting you against him. His exhale was ragged, his pupils blown wide in the dim light. For a heartbeat, neither of you moved. Then his fingers slid into your hair, tilting your face up. "Tell me to stop," he whispered.

You didn’t.

His mouth crashed into yours—hot, desperate, nothing like the calculated kisses at dinner. This was hunger, pure and unguarded. Your fingers twisted in his ruined tie as he licked into your mouth, tasting wine and victory. The partition was up, the driver oblivious, but it didn’t matter. The world narrowed to his hands gripping your hips, the way he groaned when you rocked against him—

The car slowed. Seonghwa tore away, lips swollen, his usually immaculate hair disheveled. Outside, rain sheeted against the windows of a massive Tudor-style house, its gabled roof cutting into the stormy sky. The Teezer House. You knew it by reputation—Sigma Nu’s lion’s den, where trust fund babies threw parties that made the campus gossip for weeks.

"Stay," he said, thumb wiping smudged lipstick from your chin. His voice was wrecked. "Just tonight."

You should’ve said no. Should’ve reminded him of Rule #4: No sleepovers. But the adrenaline was fading, leaving exhaustion in its wake. And the way he looked at you—like you’d hung the goddamn moon—made your chest ache.

"...Fine. But I’m taking the couch."

Seonghwa smirked, opening the car door. "It’s leather. You’ll hate it."

Raindrops caught in his lashes as he guided you up the stone steps, his palm burning through the silk at your waist. The Teezer House loomed—all dark wood and stained glass, smelling of cedar and spilled whiskey. A burst of laughter echoed from somewhere inside, followed by the thump of bass. Seonghwa ignored it, steering you down a shadowed hallway.

His room wasn’t what you expected. No Greek letters tacked to the wall, no neon beer signs. Just a massive four-poster bed, a sleek desk littered with finance textbooks, and—weirdly—a vintage record player spinning something soft and instrumental.

"You live like a retired professor," you muttered, toeing off your heels.

Seonghwa shrugged off his suit jacket, draping it over a chair. "My father’s decorator has opinions." He hesitated, then tossed you a folded T-shirt from his dresser. It smelled like his cologne. "Bathroom’s through there if you want to change."

The fabric slid over your skin like a whisper. When you emerged, Seonghwa was perched on the edge of the bed, rolling up his sleeves. Moonlight caught the silver in his rings as he reached for you—then stopped himself, fingers curling into his palm.

"You should take the bed," he said, voice rough. "I’ll—"

"Don’t be an idiot." You snatched a pillow from the mountain of them, tossing it onto the leather couch with more force than necessary. "We both know that thing costs more than my tuition. I’m not kicking you out of—"

His hand closed around your wrist. Not hard. Not demanding. Just... there. Warm. "Then share it," he said, so quiet you almost missed it.

The mattress dipped when he lay down, leaving a careful foot of space between you. You stared at the ceiling, acutely aware of every shift of fabric, every uneven breath. Outside, rain lashed the stained-glass windows, painting blue fractals across his profile.

"You were..." Seonghwa swallowed. "At dinner. When you talked about the hanbok stitching. You lit up." His fingers brushed yours—testing, retreating. "I didn’t know you studied textile conservation."

The admission startled you. He’d paid for your entire academic record, yet he remembered this detail like it mattered. "Minor," you muttered. "Just a hobby."

A lie. You’d spent three summers interning at the conservation lab, breathing in the scent of aged silk and parchment until it lived in your pores.

Seonghwa turned his head. Moonlight caught the silver chain around his neck—the one he always wore under his shirts. "Show me."

"What?"

"The hanbok stitches. You said they survived wars." His voice dropped. "Prove it."

You exhaled sharply through your nose. "You want a lecture on textile preservation at midnight?"

His fingers brushed yours again—lingering this time. "I want to know what makes your eyes light up when you're not pretending."

The rain drummed harder against the windows. You rolled onto your side, facing him. His dark eyes tracked the movement, pupils swallowing the silvered light. "Fine," you muttered. "But only because you're paying my tuition."

Seonghwa's lips twitched. You launched into an explanation—15th-century warp threads, indigo dye extraction methods, how the underlayer stitches formed geometric patterns invisible to the naked eye. Halfway through, you realized his breathing had slowed. His fingers were still tangled with yours.

"You're not even listening," you accused.

“I’m listening,” Seonghwa murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that brushed against your skin in the dark.

He didn’t blink. His dark eyes were fixed on your face, tracking the animated curve of your lips, the sudden spark in your expression that had nothing to do with defiance and everything to do with passion. Under the heavy duvet, his thumb began to stroke the side of your hand—slow, rhythmic, and devastatingly gentle.

“Warp threads,” he repeated softly, proving him right. “Indigo dye. Hidden geometric patterns.” He shifted closer, the distance between you evaporating until the heat of his chest was radiating against yours. “I’m listening to every word. I just... I’ve never seen anyone care about something that doesn’t have a price tag attached to it.”

Your throat went dry. The cynical, street-smart armor you wore every day felt incredibly heavy, and for the first time, you could feel it cracking. “Everything has a price tag, Park,” you whispered, though the edge was entirely gone from your voice. “Some things are just bought with time instead of black cards.”

Seonghwa’s gaze dropped to your mouth, lingering there for a long, agonizing second before dragging back up to meet your eyes. “Then you’re wealthier than anyone I’ve ever met,” he breathed.

He didn’t try to kiss you again. Instead, he simply closed the remaining inch of space, burying his face in the crook of your neck, his forehead resting against your collarbone. His arm wound around your waist, pulling you flush against him, his large hand splaying flat against your lower back. It wasn't the possessive, dominant grip from the sedan. It was the desperate, exhausting surrender of a man who had been holding his breath for twenty-three years and had finally found oxygen.

You froze, your pulse hammering against his forehead. Rule number one. Rule number four. Every boundary you had painstakingly drawn in that grease-stained diner was dissolving into the expensive silk sheets. Slow, steady, your hand lifted, your fingers hovering over the soft dark hair at the nape of his neck before finally sinking into it.

Outside, the storm raged, but inside the four-poster bed of the Teezer House, the silence was absolute. You fell asleep to the steady, rhythmic beat of Park Seonghwa’s heart beneath your palm, completely oblivious to the fact that dawn was about to bring the wrecking ball.

The smell of rich, dark espresso and sizzling butter was what finally woke you.

Sunlight was streaming through the stained-glass windows, painting fractures of gold and amber across the bed. The space beside you was empty, the sheets cold, but the oversized T-shirt you were wearing still carried the faint, intoxicating scent of sandalwood.

You sat up, rubbing your eyes, the events of the previous night rushing back all at once. You swallowed hard, a sudden wave of panic hitting your chest. You needed to get out of here. You needed to find your clothes, put your armor back on, and get to campus before you forgot who you actually were.

Stepping out into the hallway, your bare feet made no sound against the polished hardwood. You followed the scent of coffee toward the grand, open-concept kitchen.

You didn't expect to find an audience.

"I'm telling you, he's losing his mind," a voice laughed from around the corner. It was loud, chaotic, and entirely too energetic for 9:00 AM. Wooyoung. "He spent thirty minutes adjusting the espresso grind size. Thirty minutes. Who does that?"

"Someone who has a guest," a deeper, much calmer voice replied. Hongjoong.

You rounded the corner, freezing in the archway. Wooyoung was sitting on the marble kitchen island, swinging his legs, a bowl of cereal in his lap. Hongjoong was leaning against the counter, a mug in his hand. And there, standing in front of a high-end espresso machine, was Seonghwa.

He was wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung grey sweatpants. The silver chain around his neck caught the morning sun, dangling against the sharp, defined planes of his chest and the rigid lines of his abs. He looked devastatingly handsome, entirely unbothered, and completely domestic.

The moment your bare feet clicked against the kitchen tile, all three pairs of eyes snapped to you.

Wooyoung choked. A stray piece of cereal literally flew out of his mouth as he gagged, his eyes widening to the size of saucers as he took in the sight of you—wearing Seonghwa's oversized shirt, your hair a messy, sleep-tousled halo around your shoulders.

Hongjoong didn't choke, but his eyebrows shot straight up into his hairline. A slow, deeply knowing smirk spread across the captain's face. He looked at Seonghwa, then back to you, silently acknowledging that the legendary, untouchable campus kingpin had just met his match.

Seonghwa didn't flinch. He turned smoothly, holding a pristine porcelain cup filled with perfect latte art. His eyes raked down your legs, a dark, possessive warmth flaring in his gaze before he masked it.

"You're awake," Seonghwa said, his voice a deep, morning purr that made your stomach do a violent flip. He walked past his gaping friends, completely ignoring them, and slid the cup into your hands. "Black, right? No sugar?"

"Yeah," you muttered, your face burning as Wooyoung finally recovered, letting out a dramatic, high-pitched cackle.

"Oh, so this is the contract?" Wooyoung teased, leaning forward on the island. "The one who thinks we're all minor inconveniences? Good morning, sister-in-law. Nice shirt. Looks better on you anyway."

"Shut up, Wooyoung," Seonghwa said flatly, but there was no real venom in his voice. He kept his body positioned between you and them, a subtle, protective barrier. His hand briefly brushed the small of your back—a lingering, hidden touch. "Go change. I'll drive you to campus."

The engine of Seonghwa's Mercedes purred to a stop outside your apartment building—a crumbling brick structure with a flickering neon sign that had read "VAC NCY" for as long as you'd lived there. You reached for the door handle, but his hand closed over your wrist. "Wait," he said, already unbuckling his seatbelt. "I'm coming up."

"You're not," you scoffed, but he was already rounding the hood, his designer shoes crunching over broken pavement. The lobby smelled of mildew and old takeout, the elevator perpetually "out of order." Seonghwa didn't comment as you took the stairs two at a time, your key already poised between your knuckles—a habit from too many late-night returns.

Your studio was exactly as you'd left it: textbooks splayed across the fold-out desk, a single burner stove with a pot of half-eaten ramen, the ceiling leak in the corner dripping steadily into a dollar-store bucket. Seonghwa stood frozen in the doorway, his sharp eyes cataloging every detail—the patched radiator, the thrift-store armchair with duct-taped seams, the three alarm clocks lined up on your nightstand because you couldn't afford to oversleep.

You shoved your notebook into your bag with too much force. "Satisfied? Now you know where the scholarship money goes."

His fingers caught your chin, tilting your face up. There was no pity in his gaze—just a simmering, quiet fury. "You don't have to go back to the diner tonight," he said, thumb brushing the dark circles under your eye. "Let me take care of it. Just for this week."

You scoffed, but his hand slid down to your wrist, pressing against your racing pulse. "Not charity," he murmured. "A renegotiation. Addendum to the contract—you get sleep, I get..." His gaze dropped to your mouth. "Cooperation."

The textile lab was silent except for the hum of the HVAC system. Midnight oil was nothing new to you—spending hours under the magnifying lamp, carefully restoring a 19th-century silk sleeve with micro-stitches. What was new: the soft click of the door, the scent of lemongrass and chili wafting through the sterile air.

Seonghwa slid onto the stool beside you, his hoodie sleeves pushed up to reveal the delicate silver watch that cost more than your rent. He set the takeout container in your peripheral vision without speaking. You didn't look up from your work. "You're blocking my light."

He shifted obediently. "Show me," he said, nodding at the fragile fabric stretched across the conservation frame.

You hesitated, then guided his hands over yours, adjusting his grip on the tweezers. "Like this. You'll tear the warp if you—" His fingers trembled under yours. You glanced up—and froze.

He wasn't looking at the fabric. His dark eyes traced the furrow between your brows, the way your bottom lip caught between your teeth when you concentrated. The intimacy of it burned hotter than the magnifying lamp between you.

"Seonghwa."

He kissed you. Not like the performative press of lips at the fundraiser. Not like the desperate, angry clash in the car. This was slow—a question against your mouth, his hands cradling your face like you were the fragile artifact. When he pulled back, his breath was uneven. "I don't think I can go back," he admitted, voice raw. "To before."

Your throat tightened. The contract was supposed to be bulletproof. But here, in the dim lab with Thai food cooling on the desk and his thumb brushing your cheekbone, the lines had dissolved completely.

For the next four days, the world outside the Teezer House didn’t exist.

The contract had become a ghost, an unspoken joke neither of you referenced as you essentially moved into his room. The guys in the house learned to stop knocking. Even Wooyoung stopped making his loud, cackling jokes in the kitchen after he walked into the living room on Wednesday afternoon and found Seonghwa sitting on the floor, his head resting against your knee as you read aloud from a textile history journal, his long fingers mindfully tracing the silver cuff on your wrist.

By Thursday night, the domesticity felt terrifyingly real.

A fresh storm was battering the stained glass, casting deep indigo shadows across the four-poster bed. You were tangled together beneath the heavy duvet, the vintage record player humming a low, jazzy instrumental that filled the spaces between the thunder claps. Seonghwa’s chest was warm against your back, his strong arm wrapped securely around your waist, pulling you so close there wasn’t a single pocket of air between your bodies.

He was kissing his way up your spine, his lips soft, warm, and painstakingly slow. Every press of his mouth against your bare skin felt like a confession, completely stripped of the cold, arrogant heir you’d met in the diner.

"Seonghwa," you breathed, your fingers tightening in the silk sheets as his lips found the sensitive spot at the crook of your neck. "We're going to break the bed."

He let out a low, vibration of a laugh against your skin, his grip on your waist tightening just enough to pin you down. "Let it break," he murmured, his voice thick with sleep and an intense, heavy devotion. He rolled you onto your back, hovering over you, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he looked down at you. The silver chain around his neck dangled, brushing against your collarbone. "I'll buy another one tomorrow."

"Rich boy," you whispered, reaching up to cup his jaw. Your thumb traced the sharp line of his bone, and instead of flinching or pulling away, he leaned into your palm, his eyes fluttering shut.

"I used to think that was all I had," Seonghwa whispered into the dark, his forehead coming down to rest against yours. His breath hitched—just once—as his fingers tangled with yours, pressing your hands into the mattress. "The money. The name. I thought everything in my life had to be a transaction because that’s the only way people knew how to love me. But you..." He opened his eyes, and the sheer, raw vulnerability in his gaze made your chest ache. "You look at me like I'm just a man. And I don't think I can ever go back to the way things were before you. I don't want the empire if you're not in it."

You didn't answer with words. You pulled him down by his neck, kissing him with a fierce, desperate intensity that felt like a dam breaking. You loved him. The realization slammed into your ribs like a physical blow, terrifying and beautiful all at once. For that one night, wrapped in his arms, you believed the hustle was finally over.

The wrecking ball arrived at 6:00 AM on Friday.

The mattress dipped as Seonghwa shifted, sitting on the edge of the bed. The morning light was gray and clinical, cutting through the room. He was already dressed in his crisp, tailored suit, the unyielding armor of Park Seonghwa fully back in place. But when he looked back at you, tangled in his sheets, his expression softened into that tender, helpless gaze from the night before.

He leaned across the bed, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead. "I have to go to the estate," he whispered, his thumb stroking your cheekbone. "My father called an emergency board meeting about the merger documents. I'll be back by midnight. Wait for me."

"Don't let them bore you to death," you muttered sleepily.

He smirked, a flash of his usual playfulness returning. "Impossible. I have a reason to come back now."

But midnight came and went. The instrumental on the record player clicked off, leaving the room entirely silent.

By Saturday afternoon, the silence had turned into a suffocating weight. You texted the velvet-boxed phone—no response. You called—straight to voicemail. By Sunday night, a sick, cold knot of dread had settled deep into your stomach. You went back to your apartment, unable to sit in his empty room any longer, staring at the ceiling leak as the minutes ticked by. He had vanished into the golden cage of his family empire, and the door had slammed shut behind him.

On Monday morning, the floor completely dropped out.

You walked onto campus, your body aching from a lack of sleep, your mind spinning with worst-case scenarios. You headed straight to the library for your shift, desperate for a distraction. But the moment you walked through the doors, your manager met you with a pale face and a tight, sympathetic expression, holding a pink slip of paper.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, looking genuinely sick. "The university administration handed down a directive an hour ago. Budget cuts across the student employment sector. Specifically from the Park Foundation. We have to terminate your contract immediately."

Your heart stopped. "What?" you whispered.

Before she could answer, your personal phone buzzed violently in your pocket. It was an automated alert from the university registrar. With trembling fingers, you pulled it out.

NOTICE OF REGISTRATION HOLD: ACADEMIC YEAR 2026 Your account balance of $12,500.00 is strictly PAST DUE. The previously processed corporate transfer has been reversed due to 'unauthorized account activity.' You have 24 hours to clear the balance or your current enrollment will be permanently revoked.

The room tilted. You stared at the red text on the screen, a cold, venomous understanding washing over you.

It hadn't been a glitch. It hadn't been a mistake. Jiyeon and his father hadn't just discovered the fake contract—they had weaponized it. They had tracked every single detail of your life through Seonghwa's transaction records and systematically dismantled your survival. They were crushing you like a bug under a designer heel, showing you exactly how powerless a hustler was against old money.

And Seonghwa had been silent for three days.

Furious, terrified, and fueled by a raw, burning betrayal, you turned on your heel and sprinted out of the library. You didn't care who saw you. You didn't care about the rules anymore. You marched across the campus quad, your breath ragged, heading straight for the only place you knew he might be.

You stormed through the iron gates of the Teezer House, bypassing the front door and walking straight around to the private stone courtyard in the back.

You stopped dead in your tracks.

Seonghwa was standing by the fountain. But he wasn't alone. Lee Jiyeon was standing right beside him, looking radiant and untouchable in a flawless white designer dress, her manicured hand hooked tightly, possessively through the crook of his arm.

Seonghwa’s father stood a few paces away, talking quietly on a sleek phone, his presence casting a suffocating shadow over the courtyard.

The sound of your heavy breathing made Seonghwa snap his head around. For a fraction of a second, when his dark eyes locked onto yours, a flash of pure, agonizing horror ripped across his face. He took a single, instinctive step toward you, his lips parting as if he wanted to scream your name.

But Father Park slowly lowered his phone, his sharp, calculating eyes flicking from you to his son, a silent, deadly warning hanging in the air. One wrong move, and I destroy her permanently.

You saw the exact moment Seonghwa’s soul died.

The soft, vulnerable boy who had held you in the dark vanished. A cold, frozen wasteland washed over his features, his jaw tightening into a rigid, unbreakable mask of wealthy arrogance. He deliberately relaxed his posture, letting Jiyeon lean closer into his side, his eyes turning into two pools of dead, unfeeling black as he looked right through you.

"What are you doing here?" Seonghwa said. His voice didn't just sound cold—it sounded like glass snapping under a boot.

You took a step forward, your hands clenching into fists, your voice trembling with a mixture of rage and heartbreak. "The tuition check, Seonghwa. My job. What the hell did you do?"

Seonghwa let out a short, lazy chuckle, the sound entirely devoid of warmth. He reached up with his free hand, casually adjusting the cuff of his suit shirt—the exact same clinical motion he’d used the day you met.

"Did you really think that little performance was going to last forever?" he asked, tilting his head with a cruel, patronizing smirk. Beside him, Jiyeon let out a smug, quiet snicker. "My father saw right through the lie the moment we sat down at dinner. You played your part well enough to get your little bills paid for a week, but the game is over. I'm finalizing the merger with Jiyeon's family this afternoon."

The words felt like a physical blade ripping through your chest. You couldn't breathe. "You're lying," you whispered, searching his dead eyes for a single crack, a single trace of the man who had whispered that he loved you into your skin just three nights ago.

There was nothing.

"You're a temporary distraction, sweetheart," Seonghwa slid the word out like venom, his gaze dragging down your faded jeans and old sneakers with practiced disgust. "A street-smart girl with a sharp mouth. It was amusing for a few days, but a Park doesn't marry the help." He flicked his eyes past your shoulder, his voice dropping into a flat, dismissive command. "Wooyoung. Get her off the property. She's trespassing."

From the shadows of the courtyard porch, Wooyoung stepped out. His usual smirk was completely gone, his face pale and heavy with a dark, furious reluctance. He looked at Seonghwa like he wanted to kill him, but he walked over to you anyway, his hand gently touching your shoulder.

"Come on," Wooyoung muttered quietly, his voice cracked with a rare, genuine pity. "Let's go."

You didn't cry. Your badass pride—the only thing you had left—kept your chin up. You tore your shoulder away from Wooyoung's grip, taking one last, long look at Park Seonghwa. You looked at the silver chain around his neck, the one hidden beneath his tie, and you realized the absolute luxury he lived in was nothing but a golden graveyard.

"Keep your blood money, Park," you said, your voice steady, razor-sharp, and completely devastating. "You're right. You can't buy a girl like me anyway."

You turned on your heel and walked out, leaving the lion's den behind you, completely blind to the fact that the moment your back was turned, Seonghwa’s hand gripped the edge of the stone fountain so hard his knuckles bled, his chest heaving as he suffocated in his own ruin.

The first thing you noticed when you slammed your apartment door shut was the sound. That damn ceiling bucket—still dripping, still counting down the seconds like a metronome for your unraveling life. You threw your backpack onto the kitchen counter with enough force to send a stack of overdue bills fluttering to the floor. Fuck dignity. Fuck composure. You were done playing by anyone's rules but your own.

Your hands didn't shake as you yanked open the dresser drawer where you kept your student files. No tears. Just the cold, clinical detachment of a soldier packing up camp before the enemy artillery hit. Your fingers brushed against something hard in the bottom of your backpack as you reached for your ID. Not the cheap plastic card—no, this was the velvet-lined weight of betrayal itself. The goddamn phone.

You almost hurled it across the room. Almost. But the screen lit up like a flare in the dark, casting blue shadows across your peeling wallpaper. One message. Unknown number. Your thumb hovered—then stabbed the notification like it owed you money.

*DON'T WITHDRAW. CHECK YOUR PORTAL. HE'S LYING.*

The words burned your retinas. You fumbled for your laptop, nearly cracking the screen in your haste. The university login page loaded at agonizing speed. When the balance flashed up—$0.00—your breath left your body in one sharp exhale. Not corporate funds. Not the Park Foundation. The transaction ID was a string of numbers you recognized from nights spent half-listening to Seonghwa mutter about offshore accounts, his lips tracing your shoulder blade as he complained about his father's controls. His personal trust. The one locked until his wedding day.

You slammed the laptop shut. The velvet box hit the wall with a satisfying thud. 

Outside your window, campus security lights flickered on. Somewhere across town, Seonghwa was probably sitting through another torturous dinner with Jiyeon’s hand clamped over his wrist like a branded cuff. You imagined him—back straight, eyes dead—while his father toasted the merger. The mental image should have satisfied you. It didn’t. 

You yanked open your closet, fingers closing around the one item you’d sworn never to touch again: the silver cuff. The metal was cold against your palm. Your grandmother’s voice echoed in your skull: "You don’t bury your weapons when the war’s not over." 

The Teezer House loomed under amber porch lights. You bypassed the front door entirely, heading straight for the basement studio where Hongjoong composed his merciless beats. The bass shook the doorframe. You kicked it open without knocking.

Hongjoong didn’t look up from his mixing board. "Took you long enough," he said, slamming a track into silence. His eyes flicked to the cuff in your hand. "You here to cash that in or throw it at someone’s head?"

"Both," you said, your voice a flat line that cut right through the residual hum of the studio speakers. You marched over to his desk and slammed the silver cuff down onto the mahogany console, right next to his thousand-dollar mixing board. "Seonghwa thinks he’s the only one who knows how to play dirty because he has a trust fund. But he’s currently playing the martyr at his daddy's estate, and I don't let people fight my wars for me."

Hongjoong leaned back in his leather chair, laced his fingers together behind his head, and looked up at you. The smug, knowing smirk that usually lived on his face was entirely missing. In its place was a heavy, calculated curiosity. He looked at the antique silver, then up at the raw, unyielding fire in your eyes.

"He emptied the offshore account," Hongjoong stated, it wasn't a question. "Paid the twelve-grand directly to the bursar from a private terminal in his father’s study while the old man was asleep. If his dad tracks the IP, Seonghwa gets legally disinherited by morning. He knew that. He did it anyway."

"I didn't ask him to save me," you spat, crossing your arms tightly over your chest. "And I sure as hell didn't ask him to call me a 'temporary distraction' in front of that walking pink spreadsheet."

"He had a wiretap on his phone, sweetheart," Hongjoong said quietly, the sudden drop in his tone making your anger hitch. "His father had people outside your apartment. If Seonghwa didn't make you look like a discarded toy right then and there, his dad wasn't just going to pull your tuition—he was going to have the university board blacklist you from every academic institution in the country. He was protecting your hustle."

The air left your lungs in a sharp, painful rush. You stared at Hongjoong, the cold realization settling into your stomach like lead. Seonghwa hadn't broken the contract because he was bored. He had broken his own heart to keep you from being collateral damage.

"So what's the play?" you demanded, leaning over his desk, your face inches from his. "Because I'm not sitting in my studio apartment listening to a ceiling leak while he signs his life away to Lee Jiyeon."

Hongjoong’s lips slowly curved into a dark, dangerous smile—the exact look he wore when he was about to ruin a rival house's entire reputation. He pulled a sleek, encrypted flash drive from his pocket and tapped it against the desk.

"Lee Jiyeon's family empire isn't a fortress; it's a house of cards," Hongjoong murmured, his eyes flashing. "Her dad’s shipping company has been laundering money through dummy textile corporations in Europe for three years. Seonghwa’s been digging, but he can't get the internal authentication codes without triggering an alarm on his father's server." He slid the flash drive toward you. "But you... you have a student credential that gives you unrestricted remote access to the university's textile conservation archives. The exact archives where Jiyeon's family secretly hosted their 'cultural donation' appraisals last month."

You looked at the flash drive. A badass, lethal smile slowly spread across your face, matching his note for note. You uncapped your lipstick with your teeth, swiping a fresh layer of defiance over your lips.

"Tell Wooyoung to get his car ready," you whispered, snatching the drive. "If Seonghwa is going to burn his empire down, tell him I brought the matches."

The basement smelled like stale energy drinks and vengeance. Hongjoong’s fingers flew across the keyboard, his screens reflecting in his glasses like some cyberpunk prophet of chaos. You leaned over his shoulder, watching as the university’s archival portal flickered to life, your student credentials granting access to the digital vault of textile conservation records.

“There,” you muttered, stabbing a finger at the screen. “The ‘cultural donation’ logs from last month—those appraisal records are bullshit. Jiyeon’s family didn’t donate a damn thing. They just needed a paper trail to cover the money laundering.”

Hongjoong’s smirk was razor-sharp. “And here I thought you were just a pretty face with a lipstick arsenal.” He pulled up the metadata, isolating the authentication codes embedded in the files—codes that matched the dummy corporations Seonghwa had been tracking. The evidence was so blatant it was almost insulting.

You snatched the flash drive from his desk, plugging it in with a satisfying click. “Send it to the old man’s inbox. Right in the middle of his little gala.”

Hongjoong’s laugh was dark as he queued the file. “Timed delivery. Five minutes from now—just when they’re about to toast the merger.”

The gala would be in full swing by now—crystal chandeliers, orchestral pretension, Seonghwa suffocating in a tuxedo while Jiyeon clung to him like a gilded noose. You imagined Father Park’s phone vibrating discreetly in his pocket, the way his expression would freeze mid-sip when he saw the evidence. The way Jiyeon wouldn’t even understand why the room had gone silent until it was too late.

“Done.” Hongjoong spun his chair toward you, his fingers steepled. “Now what?”

You stood, tucking the flash drive into your back pocket like a loaded weapon. “Now we watch.”

The Park Estate ballroom glittered like a gilded tomb. Seonghwa stood statue-still at the head table, his champagne flute untouched. Jiyeon’s fingers dug into his arm, her smile venomous beneath the chandelier light. Father Park raised his glass, his voice carrying across the hushed room. “To the future of our families—”

A soft chime cut through his toast.

Father Park’s phone screen illuminated in his breast pocket. He frowned, retrieving it with the practiced grace of a man who never let anything disrupt his theatrics. Then he froze. His thumb hovered over the file labeled JY Holdings—Fraudulent Appraisal Records.

Jiyeon giggled, oblivious. “Father Park, surely business can wait—”

“Silence.” The word cracked like a whip.

Seonghwa’s breath hitched as his father’s gaze sliced across the room—not to Jiyeon, but to him. The old man’s lips curled into something between a snarl and a smile. He turned the screen toward Jiyeon’s father. “Explain this.”

The room held its breath as Jiyeon’s father paled, his fingers trembling around his champagne flute. The glass slipped, shattering on the marble floor. A server flinched. Seonghwa didn’t move. He watched, pulse hammering, as his father leaned in and murmured something that made Jiyeon’s father physically recoil.

Jiyeon’s manicured hand tightened on Seonghwa’s arm. “What’s happening?”

Seonghwa didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on his father’s phone—on the unmistakable university archive watermark in the corner of the screen. His chest tightened. He knew that watermark. Knew the hand that had accessed those files.

Father Park pocketed his phone with deliberate slowness. Then he did something Seonghwa had never seen in twenty-three years: he laughed. A dry, rasping sound that made the entire ballroom stiffen. “Lee,” he said, still chuckling, “your daughter’s family is a liability wrapped in a couture dress.” He flicked his fingers toward Jiyeon like she was a speck of dust. “The merger is terminated.”

Jiyeon’s shriek shattered the stunned silence. “You can’t—”

“I just did.” Father Park’s voice cut through hers like a blade. He turned to Seonghwa, his gaze sharpening. “That girl of yours—she pulled these records?” 

Seonghwa’s throat went dry. He nodded once.

Father Park exhaled, shaking his head. Then he smirked. “She just saved our family ten billion won by playing dirtier than me.” He leaned in, lowering his voice so only Seonghwa could hear. “Go get her before someone else does.”

Jiyeon was still screaming when Seonghwa wrenched his arm free. He didn’t look back. 

The velvet-boxed phone sat on your desk, a silent testament to the wreckage you’d just caused. You stared at the dripping ceiling bucket, the steady plip, plip, plip sounding like a countdown for the fallout. You had successfully detonated a bomb in the middle of the Park family empire, and now the silence in your cramped studio apartment was suffocating. You paced the linoleum floor, your knuckles white, waiting for the world to end. Waiting to see if your gamble had ruined you completely.

And then, the door didn't just receive a knock—it violently rattled off its hinges.

The sound was desperate, a frantic pounding that made the old wood groan. Your body went rigid. You didn't reach for a weapon; you didn't need one. You strode across the room and yanked the door open, ready to face whatever fury Father Park had sent your way.

Instead, you froze.

Park Seonghwa stood in your dingy hallway, a breathtaking wreck. He was a stark, brutal contrast to the peeling paint and flickering fluorescent lights of your building. He was still wearing his gala tuxedo—a garment that probably cost more than everything you owned—but it was entirely ruined. The expensive jacket was unbuttoned, his silk bow tie torn open and hanging loose around his neck. His hair was completely soaked from the pouring rain outside, dark strands plastered to his forehead, and his chest heaved as if he had run the entire way to your building. His knuckles were bruised and bleeding slightly, a testament to how hard he had gripped the steering wheel of his car just to reach you.

For a heartbeat, neither of you breathed. He just stared at you, his dark eyes wide, frantic, and entirely undone, as if he were checking to make sure you hadn't evaporated into thin air.

Before you could utter a single razor-sharp defense, Seonghwa stepped across your threshold, reached back, and slammed the door shut behind him. The click of the lock had barely registered before he collapsed.

He didn’t try to pull you into an arrogant embrace. He didn’t try to smooth things over with a transactional smile. With a heavy, devastating finality, Park Seonghwa dropped straight to his knees on your cheap, cold linoleum floor.

Your breath hitched. You stepped back instinctively, but his long, ring-adorned fingers shot forward, wrapping around your thighs with a terrifying, loose desperation. He buried his face straight into your stomach, his broad shoulders instantly starting to violently shake. He was weeping. It wasn't the quiet, dignified crying of a wealthy heir; it was the raw, ugly, gut-wrenching sobriety of a man who had just escaped an execution.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, his voice a broken, ragged whisper that tore through the quiet of your room. His hands gripped your denim jeans tighter, pulling you flush against him as he hid his face. “I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

You stood frozen, your hands hovering over his soaked hair, the badass armor you had painstakingly built up over the last three days suddenly feeling too heavy to hold. “Seonghwa—”

“I thought playing the villain would keep him away from you,” he interrupted, his voice cracking as he looked up.

When you met his gaze, the sheer, unadulterated angst behind his eyes made your chest ache. His face was stained with a mixture of rainwater and genuine tears. The cold, unyielding mask from the courtyard was entirely gone, replaced by a vulnerability so deep it was almost terrifying to look at.

“My father... he had people outside your door,” Seonghwa whispered, his fingers trembling against your skin. “He was going to blacklist you. He was going to ensure you could never step foot on a university campus again. I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t care about the inheritance. But I couldn’t let them break your spirit. I couldn’t let them destroy your hustle because of me. So I lied. I said the cruelest things I could think of because I knew you’d walk away. I knew you’d be safe from him if you hated me.”

You reached down, your fingers finally sinking into his wet, dark hair. You gripped his jaw, your thumb wiping away a stray tear mixed with rain, forcing him to stand up. He rose unsteadily, his hands instantly coming up to cradle your face, his palms burning hot against your cheeks.

“I spent my entire life surrounded by gold, thinking everything in this world had a price tag,” Seonghwa breathed, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made the room tilt. He leaned in until his forehead rested against yours, his breath uneven and smelling faintly of the expensive champagne he hadn't drunk. “But being in that ballroom tonight... looking at Jiyeon, looking at my father... I was suffocating. I realized it then. All of it is worthless. The name, the empire, the luxury—it’s nothing but a golden graveyard. Your love is the only true luxury I’ve ever had in my miserable life.”

A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips, though his eyes remained fiercely devoted. “And then my father’s phone chimed. I saw your watermark on those files. You didn't run, sweetheart. You stayed and you fought. You played dirtier than all of them.” He slid his hands down to your neck, his thumbs tracing your pulse point, which was hammering wildly against his skin. “The merger is dead. Jiyeon is ruined. And my father told me to come get you before someone else does because you’re the only person who’s ever managed to out-hustle him.”

Seonghwa’s gaze dropped to your mouth, his thumb lightly brushing your bottom lip, smudging the residual red lipstick you wore like war paint.

“If I have to burn the entire Park empire to the ground to keep you,” he whispered, his voice dropping into a deep, velvety promise that sent a shiver straight down your spine, “I’ll let you light the goddamn match.”

The first kiss was a collision—not the practiced, staged performance of the gala, but something desperate and ravenous. Seonghwa’s mouth crashed against yours with the force of a man who had been drowning for years and finally breached the surface. You tasted rain on his lips, the salt of his tears, the faint metallic tang of blood from where he’d bitten his own tongue holding back your name all this time. His hands—those elegant, ring-adorned hands that signed million-won contracts without flinching—trembled as they gripped your waist, lifting you onto the fold-out desk with a single, ruthless motion. Textbooks and overdue bills scattered across the floor, forgotten. His tuxedo jacket hit the ground with a wet slap, the silk lining ruined by the storm.

For a breathless moment, all you could feel was the heat of his palms branding your skin through the thin fabric of your shirt, the way his fingers dug into your hips like he was afraid you’d vanish if he loosened his grip even slightly. Then his mouth was at your throat, teeth scraping over your pulse point as he muttered a litany of broken apologies and ragged praise. “I’m sorry—god, I’m sorry—you’re so fucking perfect—”

And then, just as suddenly as it began, he slowed.

Seonghwa pulled back, his chest heaving, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made your breath catch. Without a word, he slid his hands under your thighs, lifting you effortlessly off the desk and carrying you the three stumbling steps to your narrow bed. He laid you down like you were made of something precious, his fingers trailing over your skin with a reverence that bordered on worship. The contrast was dizzying—the cold silver of his rings against your flushed skin, the rough calluses on his fingertips from years of gripping pens and steering wheels and the edges of his own control.

He kissed every part of you like it was a confession. Your jaw, where you clenched it tight during exams. Your collarbone, where the strap of your work apron had left a permanent tan line. The dark circles under your eyes that he traced with his thumb before pressing his lips there, whispering, “Beautiful.” His mouth moved lower, down the slope of your breast, over the quickening flutter of your stomach, until you were arching off the mattress with a gasp.

“Seonghwa—”

“Let me,” he murmured, his voice rough. “Let me give you this.” His hands slid under your hips, lifting you to his mouth with a groan that vibrated through your skin. His tongue was relentless, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your thighs with just enough bite to make you whimper. You tangled your hands in his hair, tugging hard, but he didn’t stop—not until your thighs were shaking and your voice had cracked around his name.

When he finally pulled away, his lips were slick, his breathing ragged. He stripped off his ruined dress shirt with impatient hands, revealing the lean muscles of his torso, the faint scars from a life lived under scrutiny. You reached for him, your fingers tracing the lines of his body like you were memorizing him. He shuddered under your touch, his eyes closing briefly before he caught your wrist, pressing a kiss to your palm.

“Look at me,” he whispered, guiding your legs around his waist. “I want to see you.”

The first slow thrust stole the breath from your lungs. Seonghwa’s head dropped to your shoulder, his groan muffled against your skin as he buried himself to the hilt. He held still for a moment, trembling, his fingers lacing through yours and pinning them to the mattress—not to restrain you, but to anchor himself. When he finally moved, it was with a deliberate, aching slowness, his hips rolling against yours in a rhythm that had you gasping. Every drag of his body against yours was a promise, every whispered praise a vow.

Outside, the storm still raged, but inside your cramped apartment, the world narrowed to the space between your bodies. The dim light from your desk lamp cast shadows across Seonghwa’s face, highlighting the sharp angle of his jaw, the way his eyelashes fluttered when you tightened around him. He cursed under his breath, his grip tightening on your hands as he leaned down to capture your mouth again.

“You feel—” He broke off with a groan when you arched beneath him, your nails scraping down his back. “—like heaven. Fuck, you’re perfect.”

The friction built slowly, torturously, until every nerve in your body was alight. Seonghwa’s movements grew more erratic, his control fraying at the edges. His lips found your pulse point, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin there as he murmured your name like a prayer. When you finally fell apart, his arms locked around you, holding you close as he followed you over the edge, his voice breaking against your neck.

Afterward, he didn’t pull away. He stayed buried inside you, his forehead pressed to yours, his breath still uneven. His thumb traced your cheekbone, wiping away the sweat there before he kissed you softly, almost chastely.

“Mine,” he murmured against your lips, the word more a statement than a question.

You didn’t answer with words. You couldn’t. Instead, you simply tightened your arms around his bare neck, pulling him down until his heavy chest was resting completely against yours, the steady, thudding rhythm of his heartbeat echoing the frantic pace of your own.

The storm outside finally began to pass, the violent thunder tapering off into a soft, rhythmic patter against the glass. Inside your studio, the suffocating weight that had hung over you for days evaporated completely. Seonghwa shifted slightly, rolling onto his side but refusing to break the contact between your bodies. He pulled the cheap, faded duvet up over your shoulders, tucking you securely against his side as if the rest of the world might try to steal you away the second he let go.

His long fingers, still adorned with the expensive silver rings that had grazed your skin moments ago, traced idle, soothing circles along your bare arm. He stopped when his thumb hit your wrist, his touch lingering on your grandmother’s antique silver cuff.

“My father wants to meet with you,” Seonghwa murmured into the quiet room, his voice a low, post-coital rumble that vibrated through your chest.

You stiffened slightly, your badass instincts immediately flaring back to life. “If he thinks I’m going to sit across from him and apologize—”

“No,” Seonghwa interrupted softly, a low, genuinely amused chuckle vibrating in his throat. He leaned over, pressing a tender kiss to the crown of your head. “He doesn’t want an apology. He wants a negotiation. On your terms. He’s officially stepping down from the university board, and he’s handing the primary management of the domestic firm over to me. But he made it very clear that he won't finalize the paperwork unless you're standing in the room to witness it. He told me he’s never seen anyone dismantle a ten-billion-won merger with a student credential and a laptop.”

You let out a dry, quiet laugh, your fingers wrapping around the silver chain at his neck—the one that had dangled against your skin while he worshipped you. “I told you, Park. I don’t bow to spreadsheets. I rewrite them.”

“I know,” he whispered, his eyes dark and fiercely devoted as he looked down at you. He caught your hand, lifting it to his lips to press a soft kiss against your knuckles. “And you’ll never have to look at a past-due notice again. I’m yours. Everything I have, everything I am—it belongs to you.”

Three weeks later, the air inside The Iron Lotus was thick with the scent of expensive liquor, heavy smoke, and the deep, vibrating thrum of the bass. The exclusive, high-end campus club was packed to the brim with the university’s wealthy elite, but tonight, the hierarchy had completely shifted.

Up in the central VIP booth, you sat like royalty.

You weren't wearing the emerald dress anymore; tonight, you were in your own clothes, a sharp, badass outfit that screamed confidence, but the sheer luxury surrounding you was undeniable. Seonghwa didn't sit across from you. He sat right beside you, completely unbothered by his pristine reputation, his long legs tangled with yours. His expensive tailored suit jacket was unbuttoned, and as he reached over to pour your drink himself—completely ignoring the VIP hostess waiting on him—the gold strobes caught the light on his wrist.

Tangled directly into his expensive silver wrist chain was your grandmother's antique silver cuff, worn proudly like a charm of absolute ownership.

The Teezer boys were crowded around the table, the atmosphere loud and celebratory. Hongjoong raised his glass toward you from across the booth, a rare, highly respectful smirk on his face. He knew exactly what it took to win a war against the world, and he appreciated the way you’d handled the matches.

Seonghwa picked up his glass, his other arm securely winding around your waist to pull you directly into his lap. He didn't care who was watching. He didn't care about the whispers passing through the crowd below. He looked down at you, his dark eyes entirely whipped, radiating a heavy, breathless adoration that money could never buy.

"To the real boss," Seonghwa said smoothly, his deep voice carrying over the music as he raised his glass to the table. The boys cheered, clinking their glasses together. Seonghwa leaned down, pressing a lingering, possessive kiss to your temple, whispering into your ear, 

"My ultimate luxury."

You smiled, clinking your glass against his, completely content. The hustle was finally over. You had won.

The bass dropped heavily, the crimson and amber strobe lights slicing through the thick smoke of the club. As you and Seonghwa laughed, completely lost in each other’s space, the cinematic energy of the room naturally shifted away from the VIP booth. The camera panned down the velvet-lined stairs, moving past the dancing crowd, and landed squarely on the sleek, polished marble of the main bar.

Leaning against the counter was Wooyoung.

His pristine white shirt had the top two buttons undone, his dark hair slightly messy as he watched the VIP booth from a distance. A smug, deeply satisfied smirk played on his lips. He took a slow sip of his whiskey, genuinely happy to see his best friend finally breathing, finally free of the golden cage.

Wooyoung set his glass back down on the marble, his smirk widening as he prepared to turn back to the crowd.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over his space.

A girl stepped directly into his personal perimeter, completely ignoring the unspoken rule of giving the campus playboy his distance. She was significantly shorter than him, but she didn't look intimidated. Not even close. She wore an aura that screamed pure, unfiltered trouble, her posture rigid with an unbroken, badass confidence.

Without hesitation, she stepped so close her boots nearly brushed his, effectively cornering Wooyoung against the edge of the bar counter.

Wooyoung’s smug smirk instantly faltered. His posture froze, his glass hovering half an inch above the marble. He slowly lowered his head, his dark, piercing eyes locking onto hers, taking in the absolute defiance radiating off her small frame. She looked up at him, her chin tilted high, her gaze challenging him without uttering a single syllable.

The air between them turned electric, the heavy thumping of the club’s bass fading into the background as Wooyoung's eyes narrowed, a dangerous, deeply intrigued fire sparking in his gaze.

The hand-off was complete.

Cut to black.

navigation. – all works.

© KOZTION 2026 | Please don’t nibble on my work—no reposting, translating, or stealing!

DISCLAIMER | These posts are just little stories from my imagination! They are not a true representation of the members in any way. Please treat these fictions as a cozy escape and don't take them to heart!

If you want to be tagged please fill out the form.

SYNOPSIS ; Wooyoung’s system is flawless: temporary nights, forgotten room numbers, and absolutely no strings attached. You drew a line in the sand with a strict after-hours contract to keep yourself safe. But fourteen days of agonizing silence proves your walls aren't high enough for a boy who knows exactly when you’re lying. The contract is ash. The boundaries are wrecked. And the campus playboy is about to tear down his entire kingdom just to bow at your feet.

PAIRING(S) ; Frat!Jung Wooyoung x Fem!Reader

WARNING(S) ; 18+ only, explicit sexual content/smut, heavy angst, mutual pining, friends with benefits / messy situationship, temporary separation/hollow silence, possessiveness & jealousy, marking/bruising, rough/frenetic intimacy shifting to intense praise/worship, aftercare, and absolute devotion.

WC ; 10k-ish

Part 6/8 of THE REVERENCE SERIES

Inspired by Everyday by Ariana Grande and a tiktok I saw but I can’t find it anymore </3

The basement of the TEEZER house always smelled like old iron, frozen winter air, and the bitter, metallic tang of unspent aggression. It was barely six in the morning, the campus outside buried under a suffocating, pre-dawn fog that bled through the high, reinforced glass windows of the foundation.

Down here, the fluorescent bulbs hummed a low, erratic note, flickering against concrete walls covered in chalk dust and the black-and-crimson crest of the fraternity.

Choi Jongho didn’t care about the cold. He didn’t care about the hour.

The heavy bag swung backward, chains groaning against the ceiling joists, before it returned with the momentum of a falling boulder. Jongho caught it flat-palmed, his knuckles raw and white beneath his hand wraps. His chest heaved under his damp grey tank top, steam rising off his shoulders in the freezing room. His focus was terrifying—a straight, unbroken line of mechanical discipline that defined everything he was. He didn’t look at his phone. He didn’t check notifications. He didn’t leave room in his chest for anything that couldn't be quantified by a score or a weight.

Then the heavy wooden door at the top of the basement stairs groaned open.

"Jesus, Choi. It’s six AM on a Saturday. You’re going to give yourself a stroke before graduation."

JUNG WOOYOUNG stumbled down the steps, the heavy thud of his unlaced sneakers echoing through the hollow space. He looked exactly like the aftermath of a Friday night rager at the house next door. His dark hair was a messy, silver-streaked birds-nest, his oversized black designer hoodie smelled faintly of vanilla perfume and expensive gin, and his jawline still bore the faded, telltale smudge of red lipstick just beneath his ear.

Wooyoung didn't look tired; he looked replete. He looked like a man who spent his life moving from one warm bed to another without ever remembering the color of the sheets.

Jongho didn’t break his rhythm. He stepped into a smooth pivot, his left hook cracking against the leather of the bag with a sound like a small explosion. "Some of us actually have a season to prepare for, Woo. Go back upstairs and sleep it off."

"Can’t," Wooyoung hummed, collapsing onto a worn leather bench with a dramatic sigh, his head tilting back against the cold concrete wall. He pulled his phone out, the bright blue light reflecting off his smug, cat-like eyes as he scrolled through a deluge of unread notifications. A faint smirk tugged at the corner of his lips—the classic, effortless grin of a boy who knew exactly how much damage he was doing to the campus ecosystem. "Room’s occupied. Left a freshman from the alpha phi house in there. She was crying about how I didn't stay to watch her get her shoes on. Had to make a clean break."

"You’re disgusting," Jongho muttered dryly. He grabbed a white towel from a nearby rack, wiping the sweat from the back of his neck, his dark eyes fixing Wooyoung with a look of absolute, unbothered disdain. "Don't you ever get tired of running the same play over and over again? It’s sloppy. You're leaving blood all over the floor, and Hongjoong’s already breathing down everyone's necks about the new house rules."

Wooyoung laughed—a sharp, melodic sound that didn't belong in a room this grim. He threw his arms over the back of the bench, completely unbothered by the judgment. To Wooyoung, hearts were just trophies you collected on a Friday night and forgot about by Saturday afternoon. Love was a distraction for people who didn't know how to play the game. He'd watched San turn himself into a ghost over a girl; he’d watched Mingi choke on his own pride. Wooyoung was smarter than that. He kept his feet light, his texts at 2 AM, and his exits clean.

"It’s not a play if it works every single time, Choi," Wooyoung countered, tilting his phone screen toward Jongho. A dozen different names filled the preview boxes. "They know the rules when they step through the front door. A drink, a night, and a clean slate by morning. Nobody’s holding a gun to their heads. I give them exactly what they want, and then I walk away."

Jongho walked over to the weight rack, the heavy iron plates clinking together with a cold, definitive finality as he loaded another forty-five pounds onto the barbell. He didn't look amused. He looked at Wooyoung the way a coach looks at a talented player who refuses to run the drills—with an underlying thread of grim certainty that a heavy hit was coming.

"You think you're bulletproof because you haven't been tackled yet," Jongho said, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravelly weight that made even the older guys in the house listen. He bent down, gripping the cold steel of the bar, his knuckles locking into place. He tilted his chin up, his dark, piercing gaze locking right onto Wooyoung’s smug expression.

"Keep laughing, Woo. One of these days, a girl is gonna flip your whole world upside down. She’s gonna look at that little smirk of yours and not give a single shit about who you are. And I’m going to sit right on this bench and watch your legs break when you don't know how to handle it."

Wooyoung’s smirk widened, though a tiny, почти imperceptible twitch struck the corner of his eye. He stood up, shoving his hands deep into his hoodie pockets, stretching his shoulders with an easy, fluid grace. "Never gonna happen, little brother. I don't get tackled. I’m the one who sets the line."

"Yeah," Jongho muttered, his eyes dropping back to the iron before him. "That’s exactly what San said."

With a massive, explosive heave, Jongho lifted the bar off the rack, the absolute silence of his focus returning as he drove the weight upward. Wooyoung stood there for a second longer, the low hum of the fluorescent lights suddenly feeling a little colder against his neck. He rolled his shoulders, turning on his heel to head up the stairs, shaking off the weight of Jongho’s words like dust.

He was Jung Wooyoung. The golden boy of the TEEZER house. He didn't bow, he didn't stay, and he certainly didn't fall.

But as the heavy basement door clicked shut behind him, the bass from the speakers upstairs began to rumble through the floorboards, prepping the house for the next rager. The weekend was here. And out in the campus fog, a girl he hadn't even met yet was already walking toward the front gates—entirely unprepared to become his breaking point.

The air in the main artery of the TEEZER house was thick enough to choke on. It tasted like blue raspberry vodka, sweat, and cheap aerosol spray, all condensed into a sticky, suffocating humidity that vibrated to the beat of a bassline shaking the floorboards beneath your boots.

You weren't a Greek row girl. You were the girl who watched the madness from the safety of the second floor of the library, watching the red cups scatter across the quad like plastic shrapnel every Saturday morning. But tonight, your roommate had been relentless. She’d practically dragged you out of your desk chair by your hair, declaring that if you spent one more weekend analyzing structural blueprints instead of ruining your liver, she was going to sublet your room.

And now, three solo cups of a lethal, unidentifiable punch later, the structural integrity of your own brain was completely compromised.

"You're actually doing it!" your roommate screamed over the roar of the crowd, her phone screen glowing bright as she held it up, a TikTok draft open and recording. "Do the trend! Just pick a random dude and claim him!"

You laughed, the sound loud and entirely uncharacteristic, bubbling up past lips that felt slightly numb from the alcohol. The world was spinning in a pleasantly warm, blurred orbit. The liquid courage was sloshing heavily through your veins, melting away every single drop of your usual social anxiety until you felt utterly bulletproof.

"Watch me," you slurred, a devious, unbothered grin taking over your face.

You stumbled forward, your steps slightly uneven as you navigated the sea of sweaty shoulders and shouting college kids. Your eyes scanned the chaotic kitchen doorway, looking for an easy target—someone you could mess with for five seconds before disappearing back into the crowd.

And then, your gaze snagged.

He was leaning against the heavy marble island, a half-empty glass of amber liquid held loosely between long, scarred fingers. Jung Wooyoung. Even through a haze of cheap liquor, you knew exactly who he was. Everyone did. He was the house’s golden-boy playboy, wearing a slouchy black designer hoodie that hung loosely off one sharp shoulder, his silver-streaked hair falling perfectly over eyes that looked entirely too dark, too confident, and far too dangerous. He was laughing at something Yunho was saying, his head tilted back, showing off the clean, lethal line of his jaw.

He looked completely untouchable. An absolute red flag.

Perfect, your drunk brain decided with an aggressive nod.

Without giving yourself a single second to sober up or let the panic set in, you lunged across the remaining distance. Your boot caught on the edge of a rogue rug, and you practically crashed into his personal perimeter, your hand reaching out instinctively to catch his forearm to steady yourself.

Wooyoung didn't even flinch. His grip on his glass tightened by a millimeter, his laugh cutting off instantly as he felt the sudden weight against his arm.

You didn't wait for him to speak. You grabbed your roommate's phone out of her hand, flipping the camera to face the two of you. You leaned your head back, your shoulder pressing flush against his chest, and smiled widely into the lens, the bright flash capturing the chaotic flush on your cheeks.

"Guys!" you shouted over the deafening bass, your voice dripping with slurred, happy confidence as you pointed a finger right at the boy beside you. "This is my boyfriend for the night!"

A few feet away, standing near the refrigerator with a bottle of water in his hand, Choi Jongho paused mid-sip. His dark eyes flicked over to the scene, his brow furrowing as he witnessed a completely random, visibly intoxicated girl aggressively claim the most uncatchable guy in the house.

Wooyoung froze. For the first time in probably three semesters, his smug, effortless playboy smirk completely faltered.

Slowly, his head lowered. His dark, cat-like eyes locked onto your face, taking in the absolute, liquid-fueled defiance radiating off your features. He looked at your hand still clutching his forearm, then up at the phone screen, and finally back down into your eyes. The air between you instantly turned electric, the roar of the party fading into a muffled hum as his eyes narrowed, a dangerous, deeply intrigued fire sparking in the depths of his gaze.

Wooyoung’s smirk returned, sharper this time, edged with something wilder than amusement—challenge. He leaned down until his breath ghosted over your ear, the scent of whiskey and mint wrapping around you like a dare. "For the night?" he purred, voice dripping with the kind of confidence that came from knowing exactly how to play this game. His fingers traced the curve of your wrist where you still held his arm, slow and deliberate, like he was mapping the pulse jumping beneath your skin.

You didn’t blink. Liquid courage burned hotter in your veins, and you tilted your head back until your lips were a breath from his jaw. "Forever?" you shot back, the word a reckless, half-laughing taunt, and watched his pupils blow wide.

The air between you snapped.

Wooyoung moved fast—one hand cupping the back of your neck, the other snatching the phone from your grip and tossing it blindly toward your gaping roommate. His mouth crashed into yours before the device even left his fingers, all teeth and heat and zero hesitation. The kitchen noise faded into a muffled roar as his tongue slid against yours, tasting like sin and expensive liquor. You grabbed fistfuls of his hoodie, pulling him closer, and he growled against your mouth, his grip tightening possessively.

Three feet away, Jongho took a long, unimpressed sip of his water. His gaze flicked to the pair of you—Wooyoung’s back bowed over you, your fingers tangled in his hair like you owned him—and rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t stick. He’d seen this scene a hundred times, but never with Wooyoung’s hands shaking where they gripped you. Never with the way Wooyoung broke the kiss just to stare at you, his chest heaving like he’d just sprinted a mile.

“Upstairs,” Wooyoung demanded, voice rough. It wasn’t a question.

You grinned, drunk and dizzy and victorious. “Make me.”

His pupils dilated. In one motion, he hooked an arm under your knees and lifted you clean off the ground. The crowd whooped as he carried you toward the stairs, your laughter muffled against his neck where you bit down just to feel him shudder. Behind you, Jongho exhaled through his nose, watching Wooyoung’s retreating back with the grim satisfaction of a man watching a train wreck in slow motion. He pulled out his phone, thumb hovering over Hongjoong’s contact—then thought better of it. Some lessons had to be learned the hard way.

The hallway upstairs was dim, the bass from below vibrating through the floorboards. Wooyoung shouldered open the first unlocked door—his, judging by the mess of clothes and the faint scent of his cologne—and kicked it shut behind you. He dropped you onto the bed, then crowded over you, one knee between yours, his hands caging your head.

“Say it again,” he ordered, voice low.

You arched beneath him, fingers tracing the waistband of his jeans. “Forever.”

He swore violently, crashing his mouth onto yours. His hands slid under your shirt, rough and impatient, mapping the dip of your waist like he was memorizing it. The alcohol burned hotter in your veins—or maybe that was him, the way his teeth scraped your pulse point, the possessive grip he had on your thigh.

Downstairs, the party raged on. Jongho remained at the kitchen counter, swirling his water bottle. He didn’t need to look at the clock to know Wooyoung wouldn’t be coming back down tonight. 

The prophecy had begun.

The first thing that brought Jung Wooyoung back to consciousness was the silence.

It was a heavy, cold weight that didn’t belong in his room. Usually, Saturday mornings after a rager involved the soft, predictable sounds of a girl shifting under his sheets, the quiet rustle of someone looking for their phone, or the hesitant, hopeful breath of someone waiting to see if he’d open his eyes and give them a reason to stay. He was used to the gravity of someone else's lingering presence—a weight he effortlessly shook off the second he slid out of bed to brush his teeth.

He rolled over, his arm sweeping across the mattress to pull the warm, flushed body from last night back against his chest.

His hand hit cold, empty linen.

Wooyoung’s eyelids snapped open. The dull, throbbing ache of a whiskey hangover flared behind his temples, but it was instantly drowned out by a spike of raw, unadulterated confusion. He sat up, the heavy duvet pooling around his low waist, his dark eyes instantly scanning the grey, sunrise-shadowed corners of his bedroom.

The room was completely empty.

There was no phone left on his nightstand. No stray jewelry on his dresser. The oversized black hoodie he’d let you tear off his shoulders last night was crumpled in a heap near the door, but the girl who had spent the last six hours tangled in his limbs, gasping forever against his throat, was entirely gone.

He swung his legs out of bed, his bare feet hitting the freezing hardwood floor. His chest was laced with faint red nail scratches—a vivid, stinging map of how desperately you’d held onto him when the bass was rattling the walls—but the bed was made up like a museum exhibit on one side. Cold. Abandoned.

"What the fuck," Wooyoung muttered, his voice rough and gravelly from sleep.

He didn't check his notifications because he knew, with a sudden, sinking certainty in his gut, that there wouldn't be a 5:00 AM text from you. You hadn't slipped out to get water. You hadn't gone to the bathroom. You had vanished.

A dark, ugly prickle of agitation scratched at his pride. Jung Wooyoung didn't get ghosted. He was the one who left the alpha phi girls crying on his rug; he was the one who made the clean breaks. Girls didn't just wake up from a night in his bed and decide they had somewhere better to be before the sun was even over the stadium lights.

Slipping into a fresh pair of grey sweatpants and dragging his knuckles through his silver-streaked hair, he stormed out of his room. He practically threw himself down the stairs, his chest tight, half-expecting to find you sitting on the couch downstairs, playing some kind of sophisticated, frustrating game to get his attention.

Instead, he found the kitchen exactly how you left it.

The smell of stale liquor and cold air hung thick over the empty island. The red cups from the night before were scattered like plastic corpses across the floor. And sitting right at the marble counter, methodically packing a massive canvas gear bag, was Jongho.

Jongho didn't look up when the heavy thud of Wooyoung's bare feet hit the linoleum. He just zipped the bag closed, the sharp, metallic clack of the zipper sounding like a gunshot in the hollow house.

"If you're looking for your video partner, she’s gone," Jongho delivered flatly, finally raising his dark, unbothered eyes to take in the sheer, uncharacteristic panic rolling off Wooyoung's shoulders.

Wooyoung paused by the refrigerator, his fingers gripping the edge of the counter until his knuckles turned white. He tried to force his signature, lazy smirk onto his face, but it felt entirely too tight, too hollow. "Yeah? When did she go down to the kitchen?"

"About twenty minutes ago," Jongho said, picking up his shaker bottle and taking a slow, deliberate swig of water. He leaned back against the counter, crossing his broad arms over his athletic jersey, his gaze dripping with the exact, ruthless satisfaction of a prophet watching his first prediction strike oil. "Didn't look back once. Picked up her bag, refused a ride, and walked straight out into the fog. I told you, Woo. Some girls don't give a single shit about the jersey."

Wooyoung’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle jumped beneath his ear. The memory of your lips—all heat and liquor and reckless, half-laughing defiance—flashed behind his eyes, making his blood run hot and heavy through his veins.

"She was just drunk," Wooyoung gritted out, his voice dropping into a dark, defensive register as he reached for a clean glass, his ego screaming for a distraction. "A joke for a video. She’ll text."

Jongho let out a short, cold sound from the back of his throat—a brutal, mocking chuckle that cut straight through Wooyoung’s remaining armor. He hoisted his heavy duffel bag over his shoulder, walking toward the back door that led to the practice fields.

As his hand hit the brass handle, Jongho stopped, looking back at his older brother over his shoulder. His expression was completely devoid of sympathy.

"She didn't look like she was joking when she left you with a cold bed, Jung," Jongho muttered dryly. "Have fun tracking that one down. It looks like your perfect score just took a hit."

The back door clicked shut behind him, leaving Wooyoung alone in the freezing, ruined kitchen. He stared at the empty space where you had stood the night before, your hand gripping his forearm, your voice daring him to take you forever.

His phone sat dead in his hand. No texts. No notifications.

For the first time in his life, the king of the TEEZER house was completely, devastatingly unanchored—and he hadn't even learned your name yet.

Monday morning dawned bright and suffocatingly normal—the kind of sharp, cloudless day that made Jung Wooyoung want to punch the sky. His fingers drummed an erratic rhythm against his textbook, his gaze flicking to every passing girl with your approximate height, your hair color, the way your shoulders had felt under his hands. His knee bounced beneath the desk, the restless energy of a predator locked in a cage. The professor droned on about microeconomics; Wooyoung heard static.

Three rows ahead, a girl turned her head slightly—dark hair, familiar slope of her neck—and his pulse spiked before he registered the wrong shade of brown. He exhaled through his nose, gripping his pen hard enough to crack the plastic.

This was pathetic.

He’d never chased. He’d never needed to.

The bell rang. Wooyoung was out of his seat before the echo died, shoving through the lecture hall doors like they’d personally offended him. His phone burned in his pocket—still silent, still useless. He’d spent all Sunday combing through tagged party photos, drunk-texting Yunho to check the security footage (which, humiliatingly, showed you walking out at 5:03 AM, head high, not a single glance back).

The quad was flooded with midday sunlight, students sprawled on the grass like discarded jackets. Wooyoung scanned the crowd with military precision—and then he saw you.

There. Under the oak tree by the humanities building. Cross-legged in a cream sweater, highlighters spread around you like some kind of academic halo. You looked soft. Innocent. Like you hadn’t wrecked him three nights ago with your teeth and that fucking word.

He was moving before he thought, cutting through groups of freshmen who scattered like startled birds. You didn’t look up until his shadow fell across your notes. Your pen froze mid-equation.

"...Hi?" you tried, blinking up at him with a polite, distant smile—like he was a stranger asking for directions. Like you hadn’t gasped his name into his collarbone.

Wooyoung’s jaw tightened. "You left."

The words came out rougher than he intended, edged with something raw that made your fingers twitch around your highlighter. You glanced around—nobody watching, nobody listening—then tilted your chin up. "Yeah. Didn’t realize I needed permission."

The bite in your voice was new. Sober-you had spines. 

Wooyoung leaned down, bracing a hand on the tree trunk beside your head, caging you in. "Most girls say goodbye," he murmured, watching your pulse jump. "Most girls text."

Your laugh was sharp, incredulous. "Most girls aren’t me." You uncrossed your legs, gathering your books with a calm precision that drove him insane. "It was fun. Thanks for the content."

Content. Like he was a fucking prop.

Wooyoung didn’t move. His hand remained flat against the rough oak bark, his knuckles white, his entire frame practically vibrating with an explosive mix of disbelief and infuriated attraction. He was used to girls looking at him like he was the prize, like he was the sun they were trying to catch a tan from. You were looking at him like he was a minor inconvenience on your way to an engineering lab.

"Content," he repeated, the word tasting like venom on his tongue. He dropped his chin, his silver-streaked hair falling over his eyes as he stepped even deeper into your space, his boots nearly pinning the edge of your canvas tote bag. "You think I’m a joke? You think what happened upstairs was just for a fucking video?"

"I think it was exactly what it was supposed to be," you said, your voice remarkably steady despite the chaotic hammering of your heart against your ribs. You could feel the heat radiating off him, smell the familiar, expensive cologne that had stained your own skin until you’d scrubbed yourself raw in the shower on Sunday morning. You stood up, forcing him to take a half-step back, though he refused to let you out from under his shadow. "It was a Friday night at the TEEZER house, Wooyoung. You’re the guy everyone warns everyone else about. I had a few drinks, I made a mistake, and now I’m correcting it."

"A mistake?" His cat-like eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. "You didn't look like you were regretting it when you were biting my neck."

A furious blush threatened to creep up your throat, but you forced it down, locking your jaw. You knew how this house operated. You’d seen San walk past your dorm with a hollow look in his eyes; you’d heard the rumors about Mingi's messy wreckage. If you let Jung Wooyoung see even a fraction of the impact he had on you, he would dismantle you. You had to draw the line deep, hard, and fast.

"I was drunk," you stated flatly, adjusting the heavy strap of your bag over your shoulder. "But if you're really that bruised about it... we can make a deal."

Wooyoung let out a short, incredulous breath, his hands dropping to his hips. "A deal. You're trying to negotiate with me?"

"You want to do it again. Don't lie, I can see it in your face," you hit back, taking a page out of the very book of confidence he’d used on you on Friday. "And honestly? The sex was good. I’m stressed, finals are coming up, and I wouldn't mind a distraction. But if we do this, we do it on my terms."

Wooyoung’s head tilted, a dark, deeply intrigued fascination suddenly cutting through his irritation. The playboy in him couldn't help but respond to the absolute audacity of what you were proposing. "Your terms? Enlighten me."

"No strings. No staying over. No morning-after lingering," you said, counting the rules off on your fingers with a clinical precision that made his chest tight. "You don't talk to me on campus. You don't wave to me in the quad. When I text you a time, you show up, we handle our business, and you leave before the sun comes up. If anyone asks, we don't know each other. We are absolutely nothing."

You took a step past him, your shoulder brushing his chest as you broke out of his cage. You paused, looking back at him over your shoulder, your gaze cool and unwavering.

"Take it or leave it, Jung. But if you break the rules once, the contract is dead."

You walked away, your sneakers crunching against the gravel of the quad, leaving him standing under the shadow of the oak tree.

Wooyoung stared at your retreating back, his chest heaving as the absolute absurdity of the situation washed over him. A no-strings, casual arrangement was exactly what he’d been running for three years. It was his signature play. It was his entire brand.

But as he watched the cream fabric of your sweater disappear into the humanities building, his phone finally vibrated in his palm with a single, un-saved text notification containing a room number and a time for tonight, his knuckles twitched.

He didn't feel victorious. He felt like he’d just handed a loaded gun to a girl who didn't even care enough to aim it at his heart.

The first time Wooyoung left his hoodie behind—black, expensive, still smelling like his cologne—he did it deliberately. He draped it over your desk chair with practiced carelessness, watching from beneath half-lowered lashes as you scooped it up without hesitation and tossed it into the hallway before locking your dorm door behind him. The sharp click of the deadbolt sounded like a gunshot in the silent hallway. His jaw tightened.

Three nights later, he tried lingering—stretching out the post-coital haze by tracing idle patterns down your spine. You rolled away, sat up, and handed him his pants. "Don't make me say it again," you murmured, your voice soft but edged with steel. The streetlights through your blinds painted tiger stripes across your bare shoulders as you stood to rinse off in the shower, leaving him alone in the rumpled sheets with his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

Week two found him testing the campus rule. He "accidentally" bumped into you outside the chemistry building, his grin all lazy charm as he reached out to steady you. "Whoa, careful—" Your spine went rigid. You sidestepped his touch like it burned, muttered a clipped thanks, and vanished into the lecture hall without looking back. Yunho, leaning against a bike rack nearby, wolf-whistled. "Damn. She really doesn’t give a shit, does she?" Wooyoung’s smile turned lethal.

Midnight of the eleventh day, Wooyoung broke the biggest rule.

It was raining—the kind of cold, relentless downpour that turned sidewalks into rivers—and you’d texted him a dorm room number with no further context. When he arrived dripping onto your threshold, you didn’t comment on his soaked shirt or the way his hair clung to his forehead. You just backed into the room, let him kick the door shut with his boot, and tangled your fingers in his belt loops before he could speak.

After, when his lungs were still heaving and his pulse still hammered against your tongue, you rolled off him and reached for your phone. "It’s 1:30," you said, like a timer had gone off. "You should go."

Thunder cracked overhead. Wooyoung, for the first time in his life, didn’t move. "It’s a monsoon out there," he tried, aiming for casual as he propped himself up on one elbow. You paused mid-text, your thumb hovering over the screen. The blue light painted your collarbones in stark relief—the same collarbones he’d just bitten. 

"And?" 

And nothing. That was the problem. 

He watched you for three more breaths—the way your lashes cast shadows when you blinked, the faint tremor in your fingers as you tucked your hair behind your ear—before swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He dressed in silence, the weight of the unspoken stay pressing against his ribs like a second heartbeat.

The air in the varsity athletic field house was different than the TEEZER house. It didn't smell like stale liquor or desperate midnights; it smelled like heavy rubber matting, wintergreen liniment, and the cold, unyielding pressure of performance.

You liked it here. It was a space dictated by logic, injuries, and recovery—things you could map out on a clipboard. As a sports medicine intern, your job was to keep your head down, hand out ice packs, and ensure the university's prize athletes didn't snap their hamstrings before the winter qualifiers.

"Hold the heel steady," a voice commanded, low and gravelly.

You didn't look up from the tape in your hands. "I am holding it steady, Choi. If you keep twitching your calf, the anchor strip is going to buckle."

Choi Jongho sat flat on the high training table, his massive, heavily muscled thighs extending over the edge, wrapped in a compression sleeve. His dark eyes watched your fingers move with efficient, clinical precision across his ankle. There was no charm here. No games. Jongho treated you with the exact same stoic, compartmentalized respect you gave him. You were the girl who had ghosted his best friend at 5 AM, but to Jongho, you were also the only intern who didn't let the TEEZER letters on his gym bag distract them from a proper medial wrap.

"You're late today," Jongho remarked, his voice cutting through the hum of the ice machines.

"Rain delayed the campus shuttle," you lied smoothly, snapping the tape with a sharp crack.

"Right." Jongho didn't press, but one dark eyebrow twitched upward. He knew what happened on rainy nights. He lived in the room across the hall from the boy who had spent all morning staring blankly at a textbook, reeking of frustration.

Before you could smooth down the final strip of adhesive, the heavy glass doors of the training room swung open with enough force to rattle the aluminum frames.

Jung Wooyoung stepped over the threshold.

He didn't belong in the athletic wing at two in the afternoon. He was wearing his signature slouchy black sweats, his hands buried deep in his pockets, his silver-streaked hair damp from the lingering mist outside. He looked entirely too large, too sharp, and far too loud for the quiet sanctuary of the clinic. His gaze swept the room with predatory intent—until it locked onto your hands resting on Jongho's bare ankle.

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

"Jung," Jongho acknowledged, his posture tightening slightly on the table, his eyes instantly tracking the dark, volatile energy rolling off Wooyoung's shoulders. "Practice doesn't start for an hour. Get out of the training space."

Wooyoung didn't even look at him. His cat-like eyes were fixed entirely on you. He walked forward, his sneakers squeaking aggressively against the linoleum, stopping so close to the training table that his thigh brushed against your shoulder.

"You didn't answer my text," Wooyoung murmured. His voice wasn't lazy anymore. It was rough, stripped of the playful playboy cadence, laced with a heavy, possessive edge that sent a violent shiver straight down your spine.

You kept your face a mask of absolute, icy professionalism, though your knuckles went white against your shears. "I’m on the clock, Jung. If you don't have a medical referral, you need to wait outside."

"On the clock," he repeated, a dark, dangerous laugh bubbling in his chest. He stepped directly into your personal perimeter, completely ignoring the rule of distance you'd enforced on campus. He reached down, his long, scarred fingers wrapping tightly around your wrist—not hard enough to hurt, but with enough heavy, burning pressure to make you drop the tape. "You have time to touch him, but you don't have time to look at your phone?"

"Let go of her, Woo," Jongho said. The younger boy's voice wasn't an warning; it was a command. He sat up straighter, his chest expanding, his dark eyes boring into Wooyoung’s profile with absolute, unbothered authority. "You're acting sloppy. She's working."

Wooyoung’s grip on your wrist tightened by a fraction. He finally flicked his gaze to Jongho, his jaw clenching so hard the muscle leaped beneath his ear. The sight of you treating someone else with normal, casual respect—even if it was his own fraternity brother—had snapped the last thread of his control. He was tired of being a ghost at 1:30 AM. He was tired of being nothing.

"Mind your fucking business, Choi," Wooyoung gritted out, his eyes snapping back down to yours, his pupils blown completely black. "We're leaving. Now."

You tilted your chin up, looking directly into the fire of his gaze, your voice dropping into that steel-edged register he dreaded.

"Rule number four, Wooyoung," you whispered, the words meant only for him. "No scenes on campus. If you don't let go of my wrist in three seconds, the contract is dead forever."

Wooyoung’s grip loosened like you’d burned him. His fingers twitched once—a delayed, involuntary reaction—before his hand dropped limply to his side. The air between you crackled with something volatile, something neither of you dared name. His chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven bursts, his lips parted around unspoken words that tasted like surrender. For a heartbeat, he just stared at you, his dark eyes wide with something dangerously close to betrayal. Then, without a word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the training room, the door slamming behind him with enough force to rattle the glass.

You exhaled slowly, your fingers trembling around the discarded tape.

Jongho watched you for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then, with deliberate calm, he reached down and plucked the shears from your stiff grip. "He’s completely undone," he said, his voice low, matter-of-fact. He snapped the tape cleanly with a sharp crack. "You didn’t just break his record. You’re breaking him." His dark eyes flicked up to yours, weighing, assessing. "Just make sure you don’t get caught in the blast radius when he finally snaps."

Your throat tightened. You opened your mouth—to protest, to deflect—but Jongho was already sliding off the table, his ankle expertly wrapped, his gaze already shifting to the next task. The conversation was over.

The gym doors swung shut behind Wooyoung with a hollow, metallic clang—too quiet for the storm he left in his wake. Jongho exhaled through his nose, fingers flexing around the shears he’d confiscated from your grip. "He’s gonna pace his room for three hours," he mused, almost to himself. "Then he’ll start throwing shit." 

You swallowed hard, staring at the abandoned roll of tape. The ghost of Wooyoung’s grip still burned around your wrist. "I didn’t—" 

"You did." Jongho’s voice wasn’t cruel. It was clinical, like diagnosing a torn ligament. He tossed the shears onto the tray with a clatter. "You flipped his axis. Now watch your back." He grabbed his gym bag and strode out without another glance, leaving you alone with the echo of his warning humming in your bones.

Rain lashed against the TEEZER house windows at midnight, turning the glass into a warped, liquid mirror. You shouldn’t have been there. You knew you shouldn’t have been there. But your stupid, traitorous feet had carried you across campus anyway, slipping through the side door Hongjoong always left unlocked for his late-night coffee runs.

The kitchen was pitch-black, save for the rhythmic, emerald blink of the microwave clock and the occasional flash of lightning that sliced through the shadows, painting the stainless steel appliances in sharp, skeletal silver. It was freezing downstairs. The ghost of the weekend’s rager had long since been scrubbed away, leaving behind the clinical, sharp smell of pine cleaner and industrial-grade bleach.

You leaned your back against the cool marble of the island, your damp sneakers leaving small, dark prints on the tile. Your heart was a frantic, trapped thing behind your ribs, hammering so loudly you were certain it would wake Hongjoong three floors up.

Why were you here? You had the power. You had the contract. You had him exactly where you wanted him—subjugated to a set of rules that kept your heart perfectly safe from the demolition crew that lived in this house. But the look in Wooyoung’s eyes when he’d dropped his hand in the training room—that raw, jagged slice of genuine betrayal—had festered in your mind all evening. It had made your blueprints look like static. It had made your bedroom feel too small.

A floorboard groaned above you. Not the heavy, sluggish step of a drunk frat boy, but the light, fluid, dangerous tread of a hunter who knew exactly who was standing in his dark.

You didn't turn around. You didn't need to. The air in the room thickened instantly, the atmospheric pressure dropping until your lungs felt constricted. The scent of whiskey, rain, and that lethal vanilla-and-mint cologne wrapped around your shoulders before his shadow even touched you.

"Rule number five," a voice purred out of the dark.

It was a rough, gravelly rasp, stripped entirely of the playful, cat-like melody he used to charm the campus. Wooyoung stepped into the faint green glow of the microwave clock. He hadn't changed since the afternoon; his black hoodie was still damp at the shoulders, his silver-streaked hair clinging to the line of his forehead in messy, dark spikes.

He didn't crowd you this time. He stopped three feet away, his hands buried deep in his pockets, his jaw clenched so tightly that the sharp angle of his bone looked like it could cut glass.

"No unannounced visits to the house," Wooyoung whispered, his dark eyes boring into yours with a volatile, heavy fire. "If you break the rules once, the contract is dead forever. Isn't that what you told me under the oak tree?"

You swallowed the lump of glass in your throat, forcing your chin up, forcing the cold composure back into your features. "I came to tell you the contract is dead. You made a scene in front of Jongho. You broke rule four."

Wooyoung let out a sound—not a laugh, but a sharp, bitter exhalation that rattled in his chest. He took a single step forward, the distance between you vanishing in a heartbeat. He didn't touch your wrist this time. He didn't need to. The sheer weight of his presence pinned you against the marble island just as effectively.

"Jongho?" he echoed, his voice dropping into a dangerous, velvet register that made your knees ache. "You think I give a single shit about Jongho? You think I care about the rules anymore?"

He leaned down, his face inches from yours, his hot breath ghosting over your lips. In the sudden flare of lightning outside, his pupils were blown entirely black, consuming the amber of his irises.

"I tried," Wooyoung gritted out, his knuckles flexing inside his pockets. "I let you toss my hoodie into the hall. I let you treat me like a twenty-minute timer. I let you sidestep me in the quad while Yunho fucking laughed at me. I played your little game because I thought it was the only way I'd get to keep my hands on you."

He stepped closer, his chest brushing against the damp fabric of your sweater, his voice cracking around the sheer, unadulterated desperation he’d been harboring for weeks.

"But watching you touch him? Watching you look at another guy with that quiet, normal respect while you treat me like a dirty secret you have to rinse off in the shower?" He shook his head, a wild, untamed grin pulling at his lips—the look of a man who had finally watched his own walls crumble and didn't care about the wreckage. "No. The contract is dead, sweetheart. But we aren't done. Not even close."

"You're just—" Your breath hitched, fingers digging into the marble behind you. The words tasted like sawdust, like betrayal, but you forced them out anyway. "You're just a placeholder for the night, Wooyoung. That's all this was ever supposed to be."

The silence that followed was volcanic.

Wooyoung didn't move. Didn't blink. The microwave clock blinked 3:17 AM in toxic green, casting his sharp features in a ghastly glow. Then—laughter. A low, broken sound that scraped up his throat like shattered glass. "Placeholder," he repeated, voice dripping with venom. His hand shot out, caging yours against the counter, his fingers trembling where they brushed your skin. "You think I don't know you're lying? Your voice cracks on the last syllable every time you lie to me. You think I haven't memorized that too?"

Lightning flashed. In the sudden white burst, you saw it—the raw, unfiltered hunger in his eyes, the way his chest heaved like he'd been running for miles. Your pulse stuttered. This wasn't the playboy who charmed his way into dorm rooms. This was something feral, something unhinged.

"You want to know what I am?" Wooyoung crowded closer, his knee slotting between yours, his free hand gripping your chin. "I'm the guy who remembers you take your coffee with two sugars, even though you told me you liked it black. I'm the guy who sits through Introduction to Astrophysics in the back row every Tuesday because you bite your lip when you're concentrating." His thumb swiped over your bottom lip, rough, desperate. "Placeholder," he spat. "You built this whole fucking maze to keep me out, and I still found you. So don't lie to me now."

The microwave beeped—a single, shrill note—and you flinched. His grip tightened. Not enough to hurt. 

"You're scared," he murmured, lips grazing your temple. "Scared that if you let me in, I'll wreck you like I wreck everything else." His laugh was dark, hollow. "Too late, sweetheart. You already wrecked me."

Your breath hitched. The confession hung between you like a live wire. Somewhere upstairs, a door slammed. Hongjoong's voice echoed down the stairwell, groggy and irritated. Neither of you moved.

Wooyoung's fingers flexed against your jaw. "Say it," he demanded, voice cracking. "Say you don't feel this. Say you walked here tonight to end it, and I'll walk out that door and never look back."

Lightning flashed again. This time, you saw the fracture in his mask—the way his pupils dilated, the way his throat worked around the lie he was forcing you to tell. The microwave clock blinked 3:19 AM.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, punctuated only by the heavy, rhythmic drumming of rain against the glass. The green 3:19 AM illuminated the small bead of sweat tracing down the side of Wooyoung's neck, the fierce, trembling desperate strength in the hand holding your jaw.

"I don't feel it," you whispered.

The lie left your lips smooth, cold, and utterly dead. You didn't let your voice crack this time. You locked your vocal cords, anchoring your gaze to the center of his chest rather than looking into the blown-black abyss of his eyes. You couldn't look. If you looked, you would break, and if you broke, Jung Wooyoung would occupy every single corner of your life until there was nothing left of the girl who knew how to survive alone.

Wooyoung’s hand froze against your face.

For three agonized, agonizing seconds, he didn't breathe. The feral, unhinged fire in his eyes didn't fade; it violently imploded, leaving behind a cold, hollow vacuum that looked far worse than his rage. His fingers dropped away from your skin, slow and limp, as if the very touch had suddenly turned to ash.

"Okay," he said.

His voice didn't crack either. It was flat. Empty. The signature melody of the campus king was entirely gone, replaced by the hollow rattle of a boy who had just thrown his entire heart onto the table only to watch it get pushed onto the floor. He stepped back, the crushing, magnetic heat of his body vanishing from your perimeter so fast the sudden draft of the kitchen made you shiver.

Upstairs, Hongjoong’s heavy footsteps rounded the landing, his voice dropping down the stairs with sharp irritation. "Woo? You down there messing with the ice machine again?"

Wooyoung didn't answer his captain. He didn't look at you again. He just shoved his hands back deep into his damp pockets, turned his back to the island, and walked straight out the back door into the freezing, relentless midnight storm. The heavy oak frame didn't slam; it clicked shut with a terrifying, absolute finality.

You stood alone in the dark kitchen, the green light of the clock ticking over to 3:20 AM. The ghost of his thumb still burned against your bottom lip, but the house around you had never felt more like a tomb.

Monday morning arrived without the sun, draped instead in a thick, uniform coat of grey fog that made the entire university look like an old charcoal sketch.

You didn't go to the quad. You didn't sit under the oak tree by the humanities building. You locked yourself in the absolute back corner of the science library’s basement, surrounded by dusty, outdated journals on structural load limits and reinforced concrete. Your phone sat face down on the wooden desk, a heavy, silent brick of anxiety.

You hadn't blocked his number. That would require acknowledging the friction. Instead, you had simply deleted the thread, erasing the late-night room numbers and the clipped, precise times that had dictated the last three weeks of your life. You had returned to the routine. You were the architect. You were the good girl who didn't let red flags pull her axis out of alignment.

But your fingers wouldn't stop shaking against your pencil.

"You look like you're about to faint," a voice muttered from across the table.

You jerked your head up, your eyes wide and defensive as you met the flat, unimpressed gaze of Jeong Yunho. He was leaning back in one of the library's creaking wooden chairs, a leather-bound notebook open in his lap, a gold pen spinning effortlessly between his long fingers. He looked entirely too clean, too sharp, his classic TEEZER leather jacket draped over the back of his chair like a warning sign.

You swallowed hard, pulling your sweater sleeves down over your knuckles. "I'm just studying, Jeong."

"Right." Yunho let out a low, smooth hum, his sharp eyes tracking the dark circles beneath your lower lashes, the defensive, rigid line of your shoulders. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, his smile small, knowing, and entirely devoid of his usual playful banter. "Because people usually look like they're mourning a dead relative when they're calculating structural load weights."

"I don't know what you're talking about," you whispered, turning the page of your textbook with unnecessary force.

"Woo didn't show up for the house meeting yesterday," Yunho delivered casually, his eyes never leaving your face. "First time in two years. Hongjoong nearly threw a chair through the wall. San went up to his room to drag him out, but the door was locked from the inside. The only thing coming out of there was the sound of the rain against his glass."

Yunho tapped his gold pen against the table, the rhythmic click, click, click sounding horribly similar to the microwave clock from last night.

"I don't care," you gritted out, your jaw clenching so hard it ached.

"Yeah, you do," Yunho countered softly, his voice dropping into that dark, perceptive register that made him the most dangerous player in the house. He stood up, slinging his leather jacket over his shoulder, looking down at you with a heavy, unbothered pity. "But that's the thing about this house, sweetheart. We're all built for demolition. You thought you were drawing a boundary line, but you just left a guy who doesn't know how to swim alone in the deep end. Let's see how long you can stay on the dry land before the water rises to your neck."

He walked away, his heavy boots echoing through the hollow basement stacks, leaving you alone in the silence.

You looked down at your phone. It remained completely dark. No texts. No notifications. The void had officially opened beneath your feet—and for the first time since the Friday night you’d held up a camera and laughed, you realized you were the one falling.

The silence between you stretched like a noose—tightening with every passing day, every stolen glance across the quad where Wooyoung’s gaze slid right through you like you were made of smoke. Two weeks. Fourteen days of hollow routine where the absence of his texts carved a trench in your chest deeper than any presence ever could.

You saw him everywhere. In the way Jongho’s jaw clenched when Wooyoung walked into the gym with dead eyes, no longer sparring but demolishing the heavy bag like it owed him blood. In the way Yunho stopped smirking, watching Wooyoung’s back with something too close to concern as he ghosted through parties without touching a single drink, a single girl. The TEEZER house held its breath, waiting for the explosion—but Wooyoung had become a black hole, collapsing inward with terrifying silence.

Rain slapped against your apartment window on the fifteenth night, the sound like fingers tapping a code you refused to decipher. Your sketchbook lay open on the bed, blueprints half-finished, lines wavering where your hand had trembled. You stared at the door like it might combust—because the truth was a live wire in your throat: you’d built walls to keep him out, but all you’d done was cage yourself inside with the ghost of him.

The knock came at 1:17 AM. Not the playful, rhythmic rapping of the boy who’d once charmed his way into your bed, but three sharp, desperate strikes that shook the frame. You knew. You knew. Your bare feet hit the floor before your brain could veto the motion, the cold wood biting into your soles as you wrenched the door open—

And there he was.

Jung Wooyoung looked like a storm given skin. His silver-streaked hair was soaked black, plastered to his forehead; his white tee clung transparent to the sharp ridges of his collarbones. No smirk. No pretense. Just raw, unfiltered want etched into the dark hollows beneath his eyes. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, chest heaving, rainwater dripping from his clenched fists onto your welcome mat, as if those three knocks had drained the last of his oxygen.

"You’re breaking rule six," you whispered. Your voice barely carried over the downpour. No contact outside designated hours.

Wooyoung exhaled a broken laugh. "Fuck the rules." His voice was sandpaper and whiskey, stripped of its usual melody. "Fuck the contract. Fuck everything except this—" His hand shot out, fingers brushing your wrist so lightly it burned. "Tell me to leave. Say you don’t feel it. Lie to me again."

Lightning flashed. In the stark white burst, you saw the tremor in his fingers, the way his throat worked around unsaid words. The microwave clock in your kitchen read 1:18 AM. The silence between you was a living thing, thick with every unspoken I remember and I missed you and you wrecked me.

You didn’t lie.

Instead, your fingers curled into the collar of his soaked, transparent tee, pulling him over the threshold with a force that surprised you both. The heavy oak door slammed shut behind him, the deadbolt clicking home like a final decree, cutting off the campus, the TEEZER house, and the fourteen days of agonizing static.

Wooyoung didn’t wait. A low, jagged sound tore from his throat as his hands found your face, his long, damp fingers framing your jaw with a possessive, crushing intensity. He tasted like cold rain and bitter whiskey, his mouth devouring yours with an unhinged hunger that completely dismantled your remaining walls. He wasn't playing a game anymore; his teeth scraped your bottom lip, marking you in the dark while his boots pinned your bare feet to the floorboards.

When he tore his shirt off, his skin was freezing against yours, but the heat rolling off his chest was a furnace. He lifted you clean off the floor, your thighs locking around his low waist, and carried you to the bed, entirely uncaring of the sketchbooks and highlighters that clattered to the floor beneath his boots.

He pinned you to the mattress, the heavy weight of his body pressing you deep into the sheets. His hands were everywhere—bruising and unyielding as they gripped your hips, anchoring you to him as if he were terrified that a single inch of distance would cause you to evaporate back into a ghost.

"Look at me," he gritted out, his breath hot and ragged against your lips. He didn't wait for your response, his mouth sliding down the column of your throat, biting a harsh, dark mark right over your pulse point. "Tell me I'm not dreaming this. Tell me you aren't going to turn the timer on."

"I'm not," you gasped, your fingers digging into the defined, trembling muscles of his back. "Wooyoung, please—"

The raw desperation in your voice snapped the last string of his control. He stripped your clothes away with frantic, rough urgency, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle pulsed beneath his ear. But the moment your skin was entirely bare beneath him, the frantic, territorial storm in his eyes shifted. The playboy completely died.

Slowly, deliberately, Wooyoung sank to his knees at the edge of the mattress.

The physical transition was absolute. The untouchable king of the TEEZER house was suddenly lower than you, his silver-streaked hair damp against his forehead as he looked up at your form in the dim, liquid light of the window. His long fingers trembled as they reached out, tracing the curve of your waist, the slope of your hip, with a shattering, silent reverence.

"You're beautiful," he whispered, his voice gravelly and stripped of all pretense. "So fucking beautiful it hurts."

He leaned forward, his lips pressing a slow, heavy kiss to the inside of your ankle, then your calf, tracking a path of pure devotion up the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. Every touch was an apology; every press of his mouth was a confession of how empty his kingdom had been without you. He gripped your thighs, his knuckles white, holding you open like a sacred text he was re-learning from scratch. Your back arched off the mattress as his tongue found you, a low sob tearing from your chest at the sheer, overwhelming weight of his focus. He didn't look up, his hands tightening on your skin, drinking in your frantic gasps until you were completely unanchored.

When he finally crawled back up over your body, his eyes were blown entirely black, consuming the amber of his irises. He locked his fingers with yours, pinning your hands flat against the mattress on either side of your head, caging you in with a heavy, possessive dominance that made your pulse stutter.

"No more games," he murmured, his chest heaving as he aligned himself against you. "Say it. Say you're keeping me."

"Stay," you choked out, your hips lifting instinctively against his weight. "Please, just stay."

He drove into you with a deep, heavy thrust that stole the oxygen straight from your lungs. It wasn't the fast, clinical hookup of your arrangement; it was a mutual demolition. Every roll of his hips was slow, agonizingly deep, and laced with a possessive friction that made your vision blur. Wooyoung buried his face in the crook of your neck, his bared teeth grazing your collarbone as he muttered rough, broken praise into your skin.

"Mine," he growled, the word a dark vibration against your throat. "You ruined me, sweetheart. You're the only thing that matters."

The pacing quickened, the heat between your bodies turning the chilly apartment into a furnace. Your fingers broke free from his grip, tearing down his spine, pulling him down until there wasn't a single breath of air between you. As the physical climax rushed toward him, his smooth composure shattered entirely. His forehead dropped against your shoulder, his fingers digging into your hips to lock you against his pace, his breath coming in sharp, desperate bursts.

"Forever," Wooyoung choked out, his voice cracking around the word as his body went rigid. He didn't use it as a taunt like the first night. It was a plea, a binding vow dragged from the absolute bottom of his chest as he poured himself into you. "Forever. Please."

"Forever," you cried out, your own walls fracturing completely as the wave crashed over you, your body tightening around his, anchoring him deep within the only foundation that had ever mattered.

The storm outside began to clear, the rhythmic slap of rain fading into a soft, quiet mist against the window pane. Inside, the heavy, volatile static of the room had settled into a profound, exhausted quiet.

Wooyoung didn't move to find his pants. He didn't check his phone.

Instead, he carefully shifted his weight, sliding out of you with a low, satisfied hum before immediately pulling your limp body against his bare chest. He was still damp with a mixture of sweat and rain, but his skin was burning hot. He dragged the heavy duvet up over your shoulders, tucking it tightly around your neck with a clinical, protective precision that felt entirely foreign for a boy from the TEEZER house.

"Don't move," he whispered, his lips pressing a soft kiss to your damp temple.

He slid out of bed, his bare feet hitting the hardwood floor without a sound. In the pale, early morning light, you watched him walk into your small bathroom. The sound of running water echoed through the quiet space, followed by the soft rustle of a towel. When he returned, he was holding a warm, damp washcloth in his hand, his expression completely devoid of his usual smug arrogance. He sat on the edge of the mattress, his dark eyes fixed on you with an unbothered, tender focus.

Carefully, reverently, Wooyoung reached beneath the duvet. He began to wipe away the traces of the night from your thighs, his touch incredibly gentle, entirely separate from the rough, possessive grip of an hour prior. He didn't speak. He just smoothed his palm over the dark, red marks his fingers had left on your hips, his thumb rubbing absent, soothing circles against the bruising skin.

When he finished, he tossed the cloth onto the desk chair—right over your finished blueprints—and slid back under the covers.

He pulled you flush against him, his long legs tangling with yours, his strong arms wrapping around your waist to lock you against his heartbeat. He tucked your head right beneath his chin, his chest expanding with a long, deep sigh of absolute relief.

"The sun's coming up," you murmured softly, your eyes heavy as you stared at the faint amber light starting to bleed through the blinds.

Wooyoung’s grip tightened, his fingers pressing into your lower back, anchoring you to his chest with a final, unyielding certainty.

"Let it," he whispered into your hair, his voice heavy with sleep but completely steady. "We're staying right here."

navigation. – all works.

© KOZTION 2026 | Please don’t nibble on my work—no reposting, translating, or stealing!

DISCLAIMER | These posts are just little stories from my imagination! They are not a true representation of the members in any way. Please treat these fictions as a cozy escape and don't take them to heart!

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SYNOPSIS ; You’re a hyper-independent student pulling back-to-back shifts just to keep your head above water. He’s Park Seonghwa—the untouchable, clinical heir to a multi-billion-won empire, suffocating inside a golden cage. When his family’s corporate meddling forces you into a high-stakes, transactional fake-dating contract, you think you’ve negotiated the ultimate hustle. Rule one: it’s just a performance. Rule two: no touching. But between quiet, reverent midnights in the dimly lit campus lab and the suffocating pressure of his world, the lines of the contract don't just blur—they catch fire. Old money plays dirty, but they underestimated a girl who has nothing left to lose.

PAIRING(S) ; Frat!Park Seonghwa x F!Reader

WARNING(S) ; !! MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!, explicit content/smut, heavy angst, emotional manipulation (by family members), financial sabotage, classism, temporary heartbreak/breakup (but a very happy ending), light violence (bruised knuckles/shattered glass), alcohol consumption, praise/worship, unprotected sex, and mutual desperation.

WC ; 14k

Part 5/8 of THE REVERENCE SERIES

Inspired by everytime by Ariana Grande

The front door of the frat house didn’t just close; it practically shuddered on its hinges, the echo reverberating through the crown molding of the foyer like a physical blow.

Upstairs, PARK SEONGHWA didn’t blink. He stood by the grand arched window of his room, buttoning the cuffs of a crisp, tailored shirt with practiced, clinical precision. Down the hall, he could hear the faint, exhausted murmur of Hongjoong’s voice—the infamous campus kingpin, the man who had literally written a rulebook to keep his heart under lock and key, now completely dismantled. Defeated. Whipped.

Hongjoong had broken his own rules for a girl. And the terrifying part? Looking at the quiet, breathless peace settled over the hallway, Seonghwa knew Hongjoong didn't regret a single second of the ruin.

Seonghwa’s phone vibrated violently against the mahogany dresser, shattering the silence.

[1] New Message: Lee Jiyeon Your father said you haven't confirmed the venue for Friday. Don't be childish, Seonghwa. We have a timeline to keep.

Right on cue.

He stared at the screen, a muscle feathering in his jaw. For months, he had played the dutiful heir, dodging his father’s corporate matchmaking and Jiyeon’s passive-aggressive ownership over a life he hadn't even chosen. But Hongjoong’s sudden surrender had lit a fuse. The clock had officially run out. He needed a shield, a distraction, a weapon to throw into his father’s meticulously planned boardrooms—and he needed it before Friday.

A sharp knock at his open door cut through his thoughts. Hongjoong was leaning against the frame, looking exhausted but clearer than he had in months.

"You're still brooding," Hongjoong observed, his voice quiet. He didn't need to ask to know what was on Seonghwa's phone. The whole house knew about the impending Park empire merger. "You need to figure something out, man. Fast. Before your old man locks you in a contract you can't claw your way out of."

"I'm working on it," Seonghwa replied smoothly, adjusting his collar.

Hongjoong let out a dry, humorless laugh. "Right. With who? Because the last time we talked about this, you mentioned that girl from the campus diner. The one working three jobs who looked at you like you were dirt beneath her shoes when you tried to tip her a hundred bucks." Hongjoong crossed his arms, a knowing smirk playing on his lips. "You've been tracing her schedule for a week, Seonghwa. The guys think you're losing your mind. She’s a hustler. She doesn't have time for your family drama."

"She has a tuition deadline on Friday," Seonghwa said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, calculated hum. "Everyone has a price, Hongjoong. I’m just going to find out hers."

He snatched his keys off the dresser, leaving Hongjoong shaking his head in the doorway. His reflection in the mirror was a mask of cold, unyielding desperation. If his father wanted a transactional relationship, Seonghwa was going to give him one. He just needed to secure his asset.

The neon sign of The 24-Hour Grind buzzed with a low, irritating hum that perfectly matched the headache building behind your eyes.

It was 9:00 PM. You had been on your feet since your 8:00 AM lecture, survived a mid-day shift at the library, and now you were balancing a tray of greasy burgers and lukewarm coffee for a booth of rowdy frat boys who thought a whistle was an appropriate way to get your attention.

"Hey, sweetheart," one of them smirked as you set down his plate, his eyes traveling entirely too slow down your apron. "You forgot the extra ranch. And maybe you can give us your number with it?"

You didn't flinch. You didn't smile, either. You simply leaned over the table slightly, your posture entirely relaxed, projecting an aura that was pure, unfiltered trouble.

"The ranch is fifty cents extra," you said, your voice smooth, calm, and terrifyingly sharp. "And my number costs more than your monthly allowance, kid. Eat your food before it gets as cold as your game."

The booth went dead silent, his friends instantly bursting into a chorus of mocking 'ohhhhh's' at his expense. You turned on your heel without waiting for a comeback, your posture rigid with a spine made of absolute steel. You didn't have time for this. You had a past-due tuition notice sitting in your backpack, and exactly forty-two dollars in your checking account.

From a secluded booth in the far corner, hidden in the shadows of the dim lighting, Park Seonghwa watched your every move.

He had a pristine leather folder resting on the tabletop, his long, elegant fingers lightly drumming against the surface. He had heard the rumors about you around campus—the girl who couldn't be bought, the girl who treated the wealthy elite like minor inconveniences, the badass who ran this town on pure, unadulterated hustle.

Seeing you in action, he realized Hongjoong was wrong. You weren't a risk. You were a masterpiece. You were exactly the kind of chaotic, unbreakable force he needed to completely shatter his father’s pristine, suffocating world.

As you grabbed a rag to wipe down the counter, a shadow fell over your station.

"I believe we have some business to discuss," a smooth, deep voice slid over the noise of the diner.

You looked up, locking eyes with Park Seonghwa. He looked entirely out of place amidst the peeling vinyl booths—wearing a coat that probably cost more than your rent for the entire year, his dark hair perfectly styled, an aura of wealthy, detached arrogance radiating off him.

You let out a long, exhausted breath and tossed the rag onto the counter. "Look, rich boy. I already told your little frat friends I'm not on the menu. If you want a coffee, sit down. If you're here to waste my time, the door is behind you."

Seonghwa didn't flinch at your tone. Instead, a slow, dangerously handsome smirk spread across his face. He slid the leather folder across the counter, tapping the top of it.

"I'm not here for coffee," Seonghwa murmured, leaning in just enough that his expensive cologne cut through the smell of grease. "I'm here to pay off your university tuition. In full. By tonight."

You froze, your eyes dropping to the folder. Through the clear plastic sleeve, you could see the exact dollar amount of your outstanding balance, printed out in bold, terrifying red ink.

"What's the catch?" you asked, your voice dropping its edge, replaced by a cold, protective suspicion. You knew guys like him. Nothing was free.

"The catch," Seonghwa said, his eyes locking onto yours with absolute, clinical focus, "is that for the next three months, you belong to me. You will sit at my father's dinner tables, you will wear the dresses I buy you, and you will play the role of the most terrifyingly devoted girlfriend this campus has ever seen." He tilted his head, his smirk widening. "Do we have a deal, sweetheart?"

Your laughter wasn’t the soft, flattered kind Seonghwa was used to hearing—it was a sharp, mocking bark that cut through the diner’s low hum like a switchblade. You leaned over the counter, close enough that the scent of his cologne tangled with the fryer grease clinging to your apron. “Let me get this straight, Park,” you said, voice dripping with venomous amusement. “You’re so insufferable you need to use Daddy’s corporate expense account just to get a girl to sit next to you at dinner?”

His mask cracked—just for a heartbeat. A flicker of something raw flashed behind his eyes before he smoothed it over, but his jaw tightened. Interesting. You’d struck a nerve.

You snatched the pen from your apron pocket before he could recover, flipping the folder open with a snap. The tuition amount glared up at you in bold, accusatory red. You circled it hard enough to leave an indentation in the paper. “Rule one,” you said, tapping the pen against the counter like a gavel. “This is a performance. Outside your family functions, you don’t touch me, you don’t control who I talk to, and you don’t show up at my jobs unless it’s part of the gig.”

Seonghwa watched you, rapt, as if you were a wildfire he couldn’t look away from.

“Rule two,” you continued, “if Jiyeon or your father even look at me sideways, I walk. And I keep every cent.”

His silence stretched a second too long—your jab had landed deeper than expected. Seonghwa's fingers twitched against the leather folder, the only crack in his polished facade. "You misunderstand," he said, voice dripping with practiced indifference. "This isn't about my inability to get a date. It's about my father's inability to accept that I won't marry a spreadsheet with legs." His gaze flicked to the diner's stained ceiling, then back to you with renewed intensity. "And you, sweetheart, look like the kind of chaos that would give him an aneurysm."

You snorted, uncapping the pen with your teeth. The plastic tasted like fryer oil and defiance. "Rule three," you added, scribbling violently next to the circled amount. "You don't call me sweetheart. Ever." The pen tore through the paper slightly. 

Seonghwa's lips parted—then curved into something dangerously close to genuine amusement. He leaned in until his tie brushed the counter's grime. "Fine. But when we're in that dining room," he murmured, "you look at me like I hung the moon. Can a hustler like you fake that, or is a man like me too much to handle?" The challenge in his voice sent an unwelcome spark down your spine. 

With a fluid motion, he produced a black credit card from his inner pocket. The embossed platinum caught the fluorescent light as he tapped it against his phone screen. Your own phone buzzed in your apron seconds later. The university's payment confirmation glowed back at you: *$0.00 BALANCE*. Your throat tightened. Freedom. Shackles. Same thing now.

Seonghwa stood abruptly, straightening his cuffs with a snap. He slid a velvet-lined box across the counter—inside, a phone so thin it looked like a credit card. "My driver will deliver your dress tomorrow. Seven sharp." His shoes echoed on the linoleum as he walked away, pausing only to toss over his shoulder: "Wear your hair down. My father hates ponytails."

The bell above the diner door jingled cheerfully as it swung shut behind him, a grotesque contrast to the suffocating weight that had just settled into your chest.

Through the smudged glass window, you watched him slide into the back of a sleek, midnight-black sedan that had no business idling in this neighborhood. The taillights flared, bleeding red into the rainy asphalt, and then he was gone. Left behind was the lingering scent of sandalwood, a brand-new phone glowing like a tiny piece of an alien spaceship against the sticky formica, and a clean slate you’d spent the last three years destroying your health to earn.

Zero balance. You were free of the debt, but as you stared down at the velvet-lined box, you knew you’d just traded a digital prison for a human one.

"Holy shit," a voice hissed from your left.

You didn't even look up as Minji, your co-worker, practically tackled the counter, her eyes wide enough to pop. "Was that... was that Park Seonghwa? From the TEEZER house? The guy whose family literally owns the hospital downtown?"

"It was a customer," you said flatly, shoving the velvet box into the deep pocket of your apron next to your order pad.

"A customer who just made you look like you were about to commit murder or faint," she shot back, leaning over to catch your eye. "What did he want?"

"To buy a headache," you muttered, grabbing the damp rag and wiping down the spot where his expensive tie had just brushed the counter. You scrubbed hard, trying to erase the ghost of his presence, but the challenge in his voice was still echoing in your ears. Can a hustler like you fake that?

You’d fake it. For that kind of money, you’d make his father think you were ready to die for him.

Meanwhile, the interior of the sedan was dead silent, save for the quiet purr of the engine. Seonghwa sat back against the leather, his eyes fixed on the rain tearing across the window glass. His fingers were still tapping a restless, uneven rhythm against his knee.

He pulled his personal phone from his pocket, the screen immediately lighting up with three more missed calls from Lee Jiyeon. He ignored them, dialing a number he knew by heart instead.

It rang twice before a deep, gravelly voice answered. No greeting. Just the heavy, expectant silence of a man who ruled by fear.

"Father," Seonghwa said, his tone instantly shifting into the smooth, perfectly modulated cadence of a dutiful son. The cold arrogance he’d thrown at you in the diner was gone, replaced by something rigidly controlled. "Tell Jiyeon to cancel the reservations at L'Avenue for Friday."

A sharp exhale came over the line. "And why would I do that? Her father is flying in from Seoul specifically to discuss the merger's press release."

"Because the press release is going to have to change," Seonghwa replied, his gaze flickering back toward the fading neon sign of the diner as the car rounded the corner. A small, dangerous smirk played at the corner of his lips. "I won't be bringing Jiyeon as my date. I'm bringing my girlfriend."

The silence on the other end of the line became deafening. "You don't have a girlfriend, Seonghwa. You have distractions. If this is another one of your pathetic attempts to delay—"

"She's not a delay," Seonghwa interrupted, his voice dropping an octave, carrying a sudden, unyielding steel that even his father hadn't heard before. He thought of the way you had looked at him—the absolute lack of fear in your eyes, the razor-sharp edge of your tongue, the beautiful, chaotic defiance of your posture. You were going to tear their pristine boardroom to pieces, and he couldn't wait to watch. "She's my guest. And I suggest you tell Jiyeon to get used to the view from the sidelines."

He hung up before his father could reply, tossing the phone onto the empty leather seat beside him. He let out a slow breath, his chest loosening for the first time all day.

The game had officially begun.

The knock at your apartment door came at exactly 4:03 PM—precise enough to make your teeth grind. You flung the door open to find a man in a black suit standing rigidly in your shitty hallway, holding a garment bag so sleek it looked photoshopped against the peeling paint. He didn’t speak, just extended it toward you like a ceremonial sword.

“What, no ‘have a nice day’?” you muttered, snatching the bag. The driver blinked once—his only reaction—before turning on his heel and disappearing down the stairwell. You almost laughed. Seonghwa’s people were just as robotic as he was.

The zipper hissed open like it was offended by your cramped studio. Inside, the dress was a deep emerald green, the fabric pooling across your bed like liquid wealth. A handwritten note fluttered out: Seven sharp. Don’t forget the hair. You crumpled it in your fist before grabbing the dress by its straps, holding it up to the dim light. It was backless, slit thigh-high, and probably cost more than your entire semester’s rent.

You almost didn’t put it on out of spite. Almost.

The silk slid over your skin like a second heartbeat. The mirror reflected a stranger—someone sharp and dangerous, all long lines and simmering intensity. You left your hair down as ordered, but dug out your grandmother’s antique silver cuff from the bottom of your jewelry box, snapping it around your wrist like armor. The bold red lipstick was pure defiance.

Outside, the black car arrived at 6:59 PM. The driver didn’t speak. Neither did Seonghwa when you slid into the backseat—at first. He was a silhouette of sharp angles and tailored black, his profile etched against the city lights. Then he turned. His breath caught, just once, before he locked it down.

“Take a picture, Park,” you said, crossing your legs deliberately. The slit fell open, revealing a flash of skin. “It lasts longer.”

His fingers twitched against his knee. “The dress fits,” he said, voice perfectly level. “At least I know my money didn’t go to waste.”

You smirked, tapping your cuff against the window. “Don’t get used to it. This isn’t my color.”

The car pulled into traffic. Seonghwa’s mask slipped back into place as he briefed you, his voice clinical. “Jiyeon will go for your throat. My father will test your spine. Neither of them will believe this is real.”

You snorted. “Because it isn’t.”

“Exactly.” His hand landed on yours without warning—warm, heavy, possessive. Your pulse jumped. His fingers laced through yours, pressing your palm flat against the leather seat. “Which is why we practice now. If you flinch when we walk through those doors, he’ll know.” His thumb stroked your knuckles once, deliberate. “Look at me like you love me.”

You laughed, sharp and humorless. “I don’t even like you.”

“Then you’re a better actress than I thought.” His grip tightened. “Try again.”

The challenge in his eyes was infuriating. You leaned in, close enough that your perfume clashed with his cologne. Your free hand landed on his thigh, fingertips pressing into the wool of his slacks. His breath hitched—just once. “Better?” you purred.

Seonghwa’s jaw flexed. “Too obvious.” His thumb traced your wrist, slow, deliberate. “Subtlety sells the lie.” His gaze flicked to your mouth, lingered, then dragged back up. “You look at me like I’m the only thing in the room.”

Your pulse betrayed you, hammering against his fingers. “You’re not.”

The car slowed. Outside, the restaurant loomed—all marble columns and gold-lit windows. Seonghwa’s hand slid from yours to the nape of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair. His lips brushed your ear. “Then lie better.”

The door opened. Cold air rushed in. Seonghwa stepped out first, his posture shifting seamlessly into arrogant elegance. When he turned back, offering his hand, his expression was a mask of practiced devotion. You took it, letting him pull you close. His palm settled at the small of your back, burning through silk.

“Showtime,” he murmured.

You stepped onto the pavement, the slit of your dress parting just enough to make the valet glance away. Seonghwa’s grip tightened—approval or possessiveness, you couldn’t tell. The hostess bowed, her smile faltering when she recognized him. “Mr. Park. Your party is already seated.”

The lobby smelled like money—crisp linen, aged whiskey, the faintest hint of cigar smoke. Your heels clicked against polished floors. Seonghwa’s thumb traced idle circles against your spine. “Jiyeon wears pink when she’s angry,” he whispered. “Consider yourself warned.”

The private dining room door swung open.

Lee Jiyeon sat perfectly poised in blush silk, her diamond choker glinting under the chandelier. Her smile froze when she saw your intertwined fingers. Across the table, Father Park didn’t look up from his wine glass. “Late,” he said, voice like gravel. “Your mother would be ashamed.”

Seonghwa’s fingers twitched against yours. You squeezed back—once, sharp—before sliding into the chair he pulled out. “Traffic,” you said, smiling sweetly at Jiyeon. “So sorry to keep you waiting.”

Jiyeon’s manicured nails tightened around her champagne flute. “How...unexpected.” Her gaze raked down your dress like she was pricing the stitching. “I didn’t realize Seonghwa had such...eclectic taste.”

You leaned forward, letting the slit in your dress part just enough to make her blink. “He doesn’t.” Your cuff flashed silver as you reached for the bread basket. “But I do.”

Father Park finally looked up. His eyes—sharp, calculating—lingered on your wrist. “That cuff,” he said slowly. “Where did you get it?”

“Stole it,” you deadpanned, tearing into the bread with your teeth. The crust crackled loud enough to make Jiyeon flinch. “From a museum.”

Seonghwa kicked your ankle under the table. You kicked back harder.

The silence that followed was a glorious, suffocating vacuum.

Jiyeon actually stopped breathing, her mouth parting in a tiny, horrified ‘O’ as her eyes darted to Father Park, practically begging him to call security. Underneath the heavy mahogany table, Seonghwa’s shoe remained pinned against yours, his weight pressing down as if he could physically force you into compliance. You didn't budge. You just chewed, holding the old man's gaze with the same unblinking stare you used on the midnight-shift drunks who refused to pay their tabs.

A slow, terrifying tick developed in Father Park’s jaw. For three agonizing seconds, the only sound in the private room was the soft, rhythmic hum of the restaurant’s air conditioning.

Then, the patriarch let out a sound. It wasn't a laugh—it was a dry, raspy bark that sounded like sandpaper on wood.

"Honesty," Father Park murmured, leaning back into his leather chair, his sharp eyes crinkling at the corners with a deeply unsettling amusement. "A rare commodity in this family. Most people spend their entire lives trying to lie to me about where they get their things." He flicked his gaze to Jiyeon, whose blush-pink silk dress suddenly looked very washed out. "And their intentions."

Jiyeon’s cheeks flushed a violent, blotchy red. "Father Park, surely you aren't—"

"Eat your salad, Jiyeon," the old man cut her off smoothly, not even looking at her. He tapped his wine glass, signaling the waiter standing rigidly in the corner. "Fill the lady’s glass. And bring our guest something that isn't bread. She looks like she hasn't eaten a full meal since the semester started."

Checkmate, round one.

You glanced at Seonghwa out of the corner of your eye. His perfect, aristocratic profile was completely rigid, but you could see the faint, frantic pulse point throbbing at the base of his throat. He was stunned. His father didn't praise people; he dismantled them. The fact that your reckless, IDGAF energy had actually bypassed his defenses was a variable Seonghwa hadn't calculated.

As the waiter glided forward to pour the wine, Seonghwa finally shifted his leg, his hand sliding beneath the table to find your knee. His fingers dug into your bare skin through the high slit of your dress—not in a reprimand, but with a sudden, heavy desperation. His palm was burning hot.

"She has an appetite," Seonghwa said, his voice dropping into that smooth, velvety cadence he used when he was playing the devoted boyfriend. He leaned into your space, his shoulder brushing yours, his scent completely clouding your senses. "It's one of the things I find most... captivating about her."

He looked at you then, and for a split second, the sheer intensity in his dark eyes made your breath hitch. It wasn't the fake, rehearsed look from the car. It was sharp, dark, and heavy with a strange kind of hunger.

"Is that so?" Jiyeon sneered, her voice trembling with suppressed rage as she gripped her fork. "And what department did you say you were in? I don't recall seeing your family name on the alumni donor list."

You leaned back, letting Seonghwa’s hand ride up your thigh just an inch higher, the physical friction sending a jolt of pure adrenaline straight to your core. You looked Jiyeon dead in the eye.

"I'm on the 'working forty hours a week to avoid drowning in debt' list," you said, matching her icy tone note for note. "But don't worry. I'm sure your family's spreadsheet covers that."

Beside you, Seonghwa choked on his wine.

Jiyeon's champagne flute trembled against the linen tablecloth as she forced a smile sharper than her diamond choker. "I do hope you appreciate opera, darling. The Seoul Arts Center is hosting La Traviata next weekend—though I suppose balcony seats are rather hard to come by without connections." Her gaze flicked to your silver cuff like she was pricing the scrap metal.

You speared a bite of seared scallop—deliberately using the wrong fork—and shrugged. "Never been. Though I did catch an amazing drag queen performing Bohemian Rhapsody at a dive bar last month." You tilted your head, grinning as Jiyeon's manicure dug into her napkin. "The costumes were probably cheaper than this scallop, but damn, could she hit those high notes."

Father Park's wine glass paused halfway to his lips. A muscle in Seonghwa's jaw twitched as his fingers flexed against your thigh, his thumb tracing slow, burning circles beneath the table.

Jiyeon rallied like a cornered viper. "How...quaint. Though I can't imagine Seonghwa slumming it in some bar." She fluttered her lashes at him. "Remember our private box at the Met last summer? You said the acoustics were—"

"—Overrated," Seonghwa interrupted, his voice dripping with lazy disdain. His hand slid higher up your thigh, fingers pressing into bare skin. "I prefer venues with...personality."

Jiyeon's champagne flute cracked against the table. The waiter rushed forward with a fresh glass, but Father Park waved him off, his gaze locked on you with unsettling focus. "And where else does our guest enjoy spending her time?" he asked, the question a blade wrapped in silk.

You leaned forward, letting the candlelight catch your grandmother's cuff. "Last weekend? I spent eight hours in the library basement fixing citations for a professor who paid me in stale granola bars." You smirked at Jiyeon's horrified blink. "Though I did swing by the museum after—free student tickets on Fridays."

Seonghwa's fingers dug into your skin hard enough to bruise.

Father Park set down his fork with deliberate precision. "Which exhibit?"

"The textile archives." You swirled your wine, watching the legs streak the glass. "Most people skip them for the flashy Impressionists, but there's a 15th-century hanbok in there with stitching so tight, it's survived five wars." You glanced at Jiyeon's designer dress. "Unlike some modern art."

Jiyeon's knife screeched across her plate. "How...quaint. Though I can't imagine Seonghwa wasting time in a museum." Her smile turned venomous. "Unless he was desperate to avoid—"

"—Boring people," Seonghwa interrupted, his thumb stroking your inner thigh. "A fatal flaw of mine."

Father Park's chuckle was a low, dangerous rumble. "You have your mother's taste for...unconventional beauty." His gaze lingered on your grandmother's cuff. "And her spine."

The air in the room shifted. Jiyeon's manicure clicked against crystal as she excused herself, her blush silk dress whispering like a threat. You counted to three before pushing back your chair. "Restroom," you murmured, catching the murderous glance Jiyeon threw over her shoulder.

The bathroom was all marble and orchids, the kind of place where rich women went to cry into gold-plated sinks. Jiyeon was already waiting, her reflection warped in the polished mirrors. "You pathetic little—"

"—Gold-digger?" You leaned against the counter, uncapping your lipstick with deliberate slowness. "Try harder, Jiyeon. Your insults are as stale as your champagne."

Her diamond choker trembled. "Do you really think this charade lasts?" She stepped closer, her whisper venomous. "You're a temporary amusement. Men like Seonghwa don't keep girls like you. They marry girls like me."

The lipstick snapped shut. You tilted your head, meeting her gaze in the mirror. "Then you better start praying," you murmured, swiping red over your bottom lip. "Because right now, he's paying my tuition just to avoid looking at your face."

Jiyeon's breath hitched—once—before she slammed her clutch down hard enough to crack the marble. "You have no idea what you're playing with."

You smirked, tucking the lipstick into your clutch. "Neither do you."

The heavy, gold-trimmed door of the restroom clicked shut behind you, cutting off the sound of Jiyeon’s ragged, furious breathing.

The moment you stepped back into the quiet hallway, the badass posture you’d been holding since seven o’clock slipped just a fraction. Your shoulders dropped. Your heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. You had just completely humiliated one of the wealthiest heiresses in the city, but the rush of adrenaline was fading, leaving behind the stark, cold reality of what you were actually doing. You were a mouse playing in a nest of vipers.

"You're late," a voice slid out of the shadows.

You gasped, your hand flying to the emerald silk at your chest. Seonghwa was leaning against the wood-paneled wall just a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest. The pristine jacket of his suit was unbuttoned now, his tie loosened just a fraction. He looked less like the untouchable heir and more like a predator waiting in the dark.

"I was busy," you snapped, recovering your edge instantly as you walked past him toward the dining room. "Your little spreadsheet has a really foul mouth when she's angry."

Seonghwa didn't move to follow you. Instead, as you brushed past him, his hand shot out, his long fingers wrapping tightly around your wrist—right over your grandmother’s silver cuff. The metal bit into your skin, but his grip wasn't malicious. It was desperate. He pulled you backward, anchoring you against his chest in the dim hallway.

"What did she say to you?" he murmured, his breath hot against the shell of your ear.

"Nothing I couldn't handle," you said, trying to pull away, but his other hand found your waist, his palm burning through the backless slit of your dress. Rule number one was screaming in your head, but the way his chest rumbled against your back made your knees dangerously weak. "Let go, Park. No touching behind closed doors, remember?"

Seonghwa let out a low, breathy laugh that sounded completely devoid of his usual arrogance. "My father just asked the waiter to pack up the rest of the dinner," he whispered, his lips brushing the column of your neck. You shivered, your eyes fluttering shut for a terrifying second. "He said he’s seen enough. We're leaving."

"Did we lose?" you whispered, your fingers curling into the fabric of his suit jacket.

Seonghwa leaned down, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made the rest of the hallway blur into nothingness. "No," he murmured, his thumb tracing a slow line down your jaw. "You won. He told me to keep you because you have more balls than I do."

The car smelled like leather and rain—and him. Seonghwa didn’t slide into his usual spot across the sedan’s expanse. Instead, the moment the door shut behind you, his arm hooked around your waist, hauling you sideways until you were straddling his lap, your emerald silk dress riding up your thighs. His breath hitched, warm against your smudged lipstick. "You completely destroyed her," he murmured, thumb dragging across your bottom lip, staining his skin crimson.

You smirked, pulse thundering where his fingers traced your jaw. "I told you, Park. I don’t bow to spreadsheets."

His grip tightened, pulling you closer until your chests brushed. "No," he agreed, voice rough. "You set them on fire." The car hit a pothole, jolting you against him. His exhale was ragged, his pupils blown wide in the dim light. For a heartbeat, neither of you moved. Then his fingers slid into your hair, tilting your face up. "Tell me to stop," he whispered.

You didn’t.

His mouth crashed into yours—hot, desperate, nothing like the calculated kisses at dinner. This was hunger, pure and unguarded. Your fingers twisted in his ruined tie as he licked into your mouth, tasting wine and victory. The partition was up, the driver oblivious, but it didn’t matter. The world narrowed to his hands gripping your hips, the way he groaned when you rocked against him—

The car slowed. Seonghwa tore away, lips swollen, his usually immaculate hair disheveled. Outside, rain sheeted against the windows of a massive Tudor-style house, its gabled roof cutting into the stormy sky. The Teezer House. You knew it by reputation—Sigma Nu’s lion’s den, where trust fund babies threw parties that made the campus gossip for weeks.

"Stay," he said, thumb wiping smudged lipstick from your chin. His voice was wrecked. "Just tonight."

You should’ve said no. Should’ve reminded him of Rule #4: No sleepovers. But the adrenaline was fading, leaving exhaustion in its wake. And the way he looked at you—like you’d hung the goddamn moon—made your chest ache.

"...Fine. But I’m taking the couch."

Seonghwa smirked, opening the car door. "It’s leather. You’ll hate it."

Raindrops caught in his lashes as he guided you up the stone steps, his palm burning through the silk at your waist. The Teezer House loomed—all dark wood and stained glass, smelling of cedar and spilled whiskey. A burst of laughter echoed from somewhere inside, followed by the thump of bass. Seonghwa ignored it, steering you down a shadowed hallway.

His room wasn’t what you expected. No Greek letters tacked to the wall, no neon beer signs. Just a massive four-poster bed, a sleek desk littered with finance textbooks, and—weirdly—a vintage record player spinning something soft and instrumental.

"You live like a retired professor," you muttered, toeing off your heels.

Seonghwa shrugged off his suit jacket, draping it over a chair. "My father’s decorator has opinions." He hesitated, then tossed you a folded T-shirt from his dresser. It smelled like his cologne. "Bathroom’s through there if you want to change."

The fabric slid over your skin like a whisper. When you emerged, Seonghwa was perched on the edge of the bed, rolling up his sleeves. Moonlight caught the silver in his rings as he reached for you—then stopped himself, fingers curling into his palm.

"You should take the bed," he said, voice rough. "I’ll—"

"Don’t be an idiot." You snatched a pillow from the mountain of them, tossing it onto the leather couch with more force than necessary. "We both know that thing costs more than my tuition. I’m not kicking you out of—"

His hand closed around your wrist. Not hard. Not demanding. Just... there. Warm. "Then share it," he said, so quiet you almost missed it.

The mattress dipped when he lay down, leaving a careful foot of space between you. You stared at the ceiling, acutely aware of every shift of fabric, every uneven breath. Outside, rain lashed the stained-glass windows, painting blue fractals across his profile.

"You were..." Seonghwa swallowed. "At dinner. When you talked about the hanbok stitching. You lit up." His fingers brushed yours—testing, retreating. "I didn’t know you studied textile conservation."

The admission startled you. He’d paid for your entire academic record, yet he remembered this detail like it mattered. "Minor," you muttered. "Just a hobby."

A lie. You’d spent three summers interning at the conservation lab, breathing in the scent of aged silk and parchment until it lived in your pores.

Seonghwa turned his head. Moonlight caught the silver chain around his neck—the one he always wore under his shirts. "Show me."

"What?"

"The hanbok stitches. You said they survived wars." His voice dropped. "Prove it."

You exhaled sharply through your nose. "You want a lecture on textile preservation at midnight?"

His fingers brushed yours again—lingering this time. "I want to know what makes your eyes light up when you're not pretending."

The rain drummed harder against the windows. You rolled onto your side, facing him. His dark eyes tracked the movement, pupils swallowing the silvered light. "Fine," you muttered. "But only because you're paying my tuition."

Seonghwa's lips twitched. You launched into an explanation—15th-century warp threads, indigo dye extraction methods, how the underlayer stitches formed geometric patterns invisible to the naked eye. Halfway through, you realized his breathing had slowed. His fingers were still tangled with yours.

"You're not even listening," you accused.

“I’m listening,” Seonghwa murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that brushed against your skin in the dark.

He didn’t blink. His dark eyes were fixed on your face, tracking the animated curve of your lips, the sudden spark in your expression that had nothing to do with defiance and everything to do with passion. Under the heavy duvet, his thumb began to stroke the side of your hand—slow, rhythmic, and devastatingly gentle.

“Warp threads,” he repeated softly, proving him right. “Indigo dye. Hidden geometric patterns.” He shifted closer, the distance between you evaporating until the heat of his chest was radiating against yours. “I’m listening to every word. I just... I’ve never seen anyone care about something that doesn’t have a price tag attached to it.”

Your throat went dry. The cynical, street-smart armor you wore every day felt incredibly heavy, and for the first time, you could feel it cracking. “Everything has a price tag, Park,” you whispered, though the edge was entirely gone from your voice. “Some things are just bought with time instead of black cards.”

Seonghwa’s gaze dropped to your mouth, lingering there for a long, agonizing second before dragging back up to meet your eyes. “Then you’re wealthier than anyone I’ve ever met,” he breathed.

He didn’t try to kiss you again. Instead, he simply closed the remaining inch of space, burying his face in the crook of your neck, his forehead resting against your collarbone. His arm wound around your waist, pulling you flush against him, his large hand splaying flat against your lower back. It wasn't the possessive, dominant grip from the sedan. It was the desperate, exhausting surrender of a man who had been holding his breath for twenty-three years and had finally found oxygen.

You froze, your pulse hammering against his forehead. Rule number one. Rule number four. Every boundary you had painstakingly drawn in that grease-stained diner was dissolving into the expensive silk sheets. Slow, steady, your hand lifted, your fingers hovering over the soft dark hair at the nape of his neck before finally sinking into it.

Outside, the storm raged, but inside the four-poster bed of the Teezer House, the silence was absolute. You fell asleep to the steady, rhythmic beat of Park Seonghwa’s heart beneath your palm, completely oblivious to the fact that dawn was about to bring the wrecking ball.

The smell of rich, dark espresso and sizzling butter was what finally woke you.

Sunlight was streaming through the stained-glass windows, painting fractures of gold and amber across the bed. The space beside you was empty, the sheets cold, but the oversized T-shirt you were wearing still carried the faint, intoxicating scent of sandalwood.

You sat up, rubbing your eyes, the events of the previous night rushing back all at once. You swallowed hard, a sudden wave of panic hitting your chest. You needed to get out of here. You needed to find your clothes, put your armor back on, and get to campus before you forgot who you actually were.

Stepping out into the hallway, your bare feet made no sound against the polished hardwood. You followed the scent of coffee toward the grand, open-concept kitchen.

You didn't expect to find an audience.

"I'm telling you, he's losing his mind," a voice laughed from around the corner. It was loud, chaotic, and entirely too energetic for 9:00 AM. Wooyoung. "He spent thirty minutes adjusting the espresso grind size. Thirty minutes. Who does that?"

"Someone who has a guest," a deeper, much calmer voice replied. Hongjoong.

You rounded the corner, freezing in the archway. Wooyoung was sitting on the marble kitchen island, swinging his legs, a bowl of cereal in his lap. Hongjoong was leaning against the counter, a mug in his hand. And there, standing in front of a high-end espresso machine, was Seonghwa.

He was wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung grey sweatpants. The silver chain around his neck caught the morning sun, dangling against the sharp, defined planes of his chest and the rigid lines of his abs. He looked devastatingly handsome, entirely unbothered, and completely domestic.

The moment your bare feet clicked against the kitchen tile, all three pairs of eyes snapped to you.

Wooyoung choked. A stray piece of cereal literally flew out of his mouth as he gagged, his eyes widening to the size of saucers as he took in the sight of you—wearing Seonghwa's oversized shirt, your hair a messy, sleep-tousled halo around your shoulders.

Hongjoong didn't choke, but his eyebrows shot straight up into his hairline. A slow, deeply knowing smirk spread across the captain's face. He looked at Seonghwa, then back to you, silently acknowledging that the legendary, untouchable campus kingpin had just met his match.

Seonghwa didn't flinch. He turned smoothly, holding a pristine porcelain cup filled with perfect latte art. His eyes raked down your legs, a dark, possessive warmth flaring in his gaze before he masked it.

"You're awake," Seonghwa said, his voice a deep, morning purr that made your stomach do a violent flip. He walked past his gaping friends, completely ignoring them, and slid the cup into your hands. "Black, right? No sugar?"

"Yeah," you muttered, your face burning as Wooyoung finally recovered, letting out a dramatic, high-pitched cackle.

"Oh, so this is the contract?" Wooyoung teased, leaning forward on the island. "The one who thinks we're all minor inconveniences? Good morning, sister-in-law. Nice shirt. Looks better on you anyway."

"Shut up, Wooyoung," Seonghwa said flatly, but there was no real venom in his voice. He kept his body positioned between you and them, a subtle, protective barrier. His hand briefly brushed the small of your back—a lingering, hidden touch. "Go change. I'll drive you to campus."

The engine of Seonghwa's Mercedes purred to a stop outside your apartment building—a crumbling brick structure with a flickering neon sign that had read "VAC NCY" for as long as you'd lived there. You reached for the door handle, but his hand closed over your wrist. "Wait," he said, already unbuckling his seatbelt. "I'm coming up."

"You're not," you scoffed, but he was already rounding the hood, his designer shoes crunching over broken pavement. The lobby smelled of mildew and old takeout, the elevator perpetually "out of order." Seonghwa didn't comment as you took the stairs two at a time, your key already poised between your knuckles—a habit from too many late-night returns.

Your studio was exactly as you'd left it: textbooks splayed across the fold-out desk, a single burner stove with a pot of half-eaten ramen, the ceiling leak in the corner dripping steadily into a dollar-store bucket. Seonghwa stood frozen in the doorway, his sharp eyes cataloging every detail—the patched radiator, the thrift-store armchair with duct-taped seams, the three alarm clocks lined up on your nightstand because you couldn't afford to oversleep.

You shoved your notebook into your bag with too much force. "Satisfied? Now you know where the scholarship money goes."

His fingers caught your chin, tilting your face up. There was no pity in his gaze—just a simmering, quiet fury. "You don't have to go back to the diner tonight," he said, thumb brushing the dark circles under your eye. "Let me take care of it. Just for this week."

You scoffed, but his hand slid down to your wrist, pressing against your racing pulse. "Not charity," he murmured. "A renegotiation. Addendum to the contract—you get sleep, I get..." His gaze dropped to your mouth. "Cooperation."

The textile lab was silent except for the hum of the HVAC system. Midnight oil was nothing new to you—spending hours under the magnifying lamp, carefully restoring a 19th-century silk sleeve with micro-stitches. What was new: the soft click of the door, the scent of lemongrass and chili wafting through the sterile air.

Seonghwa slid onto the stool beside you, his hoodie sleeves pushed up to reveal the delicate silver watch that cost more than your rent. He set the takeout container in your peripheral vision without speaking. You didn't look up from your work. "You're blocking my light."

He shifted obediently. "Show me," he said, nodding at the fragile fabric stretched across the conservation frame.

You hesitated, then guided his hands over yours, adjusting his grip on the tweezers. "Like this. You'll tear the warp if you—" His fingers trembled under yours. You glanced up—and froze.

He wasn't looking at the fabric. His dark eyes traced the furrow between your brows, the way your bottom lip caught between your teeth when you concentrated. The intimacy of it burned hotter than the magnifying lamp between you.

"Seonghwa."

He kissed you. Not like the performative press of lips at the fundraiser. Not like the desperate, angry clash in the car. This was slow—a question against your mouth, his hands cradling your face like you were the fragile artifact. When he pulled back, his breath was uneven. "I don't think I can go back," he admitted, voice raw. "To before."

Your throat tightened. The contract was supposed to be bulletproof. But here, in the dim lab with Thai food cooling on the desk and his thumb brushing your cheekbone, the lines had dissolved completely.

For the next four days, the world outside the Teezer House didn’t exist.

The contract had become a ghost, an unspoken joke neither of you referenced as you essentially moved into his room. The guys in the house learned to stop knocking. Even Wooyoung stopped making his loud, cackling jokes in the kitchen after he walked into the living room on Wednesday afternoon and found Seonghwa sitting on the floor, his head resting against your knee as you read aloud from a textile history journal, his long fingers mindfully tracing the silver cuff on your wrist.

By Thursday night, the domesticity felt terrifyingly real.

A fresh storm was battering the stained glass, casting deep indigo shadows across the four-poster bed. You were tangled together beneath the heavy duvet, the vintage record player humming a low, jazzy instrumental that filled the spaces between the thunder claps. Seonghwa’s chest was warm against your back, his strong arm wrapped securely around your waist, pulling you so close there wasn’t a single pocket of air between your bodies.

He was kissing his way up your spine, his lips soft, warm, and painstakingly slow. Every press of his mouth against your bare skin felt like a confession, completely stripped of the cold, arrogant heir you’d met in the diner.

"Seonghwa," you breathed, your fingers tightening in the silk sheets as his lips found the sensitive spot at the crook of your neck. "We're going to break the bed."

He let out a low, vibration of a laugh against your skin, his grip on your waist tightening just enough to pin you down. "Let it break," he murmured, his voice thick with sleep and an intense, heavy devotion. He rolled you onto your back, hovering over you, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he looked down at you. The silver chain around his neck dangled, brushing against your collarbone. "I'll buy another one tomorrow."

"Rich boy," you whispered, reaching up to cup his jaw. Your thumb traced the sharp line of his bone, and instead of flinching or pulling away, he leaned into your palm, his eyes fluttering shut.

"I used to think that was all I had," Seonghwa whispered into the dark, his forehead coming down to rest against yours. His breath hitched—just once—as his fingers tangled with yours, pressing your hands into the mattress. "The money. The name. I thought everything in my life had to be a transaction because that’s the only way people knew how to love me. But you..." He opened his eyes, and the sheer, raw vulnerability in his gaze made your chest ache. "You look at me like I'm just a man. And I don't think I can ever go back to the way things were before you. I don't want the empire if you're not in it."

You didn't answer with words. You pulled him down by his neck, kissing him with a fierce, desperate intensity that felt like a dam breaking. You loved him. The realization slammed into your ribs like a physical blow, terrifying and beautiful all at once. For that one night, wrapped in his arms, you believed the hustle was finally over.

The wrecking ball arrived at 6:00 AM on Friday.

The mattress dipped as Seonghwa shifted, sitting on the edge of the bed. The morning light was gray and clinical, cutting through the room. He was already dressed in his crisp, tailored suit, the unyielding armor of Park Seonghwa fully back in place. But when he looked back at you, tangled in his sheets, his expression softened into that tender, helpless gaze from the night before.

He leaned across the bed, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead. "I have to go to the estate," he whispered, his thumb stroking your cheekbone. "My father called an emergency board meeting about the merger documents. I'll be back by midnight. Wait for me."

"Don't let them bore you to death," you muttered sleepily.

He smirked, a flash of his usual playfulness returning. "Impossible. I have a reason to come back now."

But midnight came and went. The instrumental on the record player clicked off, leaving the room entirely silent.

By Saturday afternoon, the silence had turned into a suffocating weight. You texted the velvet-boxed phone—no response. You called—straight to voicemail. By Sunday night, a sick, cold knot of dread had settled deep into your stomach. You went back to your apartment, unable to sit in his empty room any longer, staring at the ceiling leak as the minutes ticked by. He had vanished into the golden cage of his family empire, and the door had slammed shut behind him.

On Monday morning, the floor completely dropped out.

You walked onto campus, your body aching from a lack of sleep, your mind spinning with worst-case scenarios. You headed straight to the library for your shift, desperate for a distraction. But the moment you walked through the doors, your manager met you with a pale face and a tight, sympathetic expression, holding a pink slip of paper.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, looking genuinely sick. "The university administration handed down a directive an hour ago. Budget cuts across the student employment sector. Specifically from the Park Foundation. We have to terminate your contract immediately."

Your heart stopped. "What?" you whispered.

Before she could answer, your personal phone buzzed violently in your pocket. It was an automated alert from the university registrar. With trembling fingers, you pulled it out.

NOTICE OF REGISTRATION HOLD: ACADEMIC YEAR 2026 Your account balance of $12,500.00 is strictly PAST DUE. The previously processed corporate transfer has been reversed due to 'unauthorized account activity.' You have 24 hours to clear the balance or your current enrollment will be permanently revoked.

The room tilted. You stared at the red text on the screen, a cold, venomous understanding washing over you.

It hadn't been a glitch. It hadn't been a mistake. Jiyeon and his father hadn't just discovered the fake contract—they had weaponized it. They had tracked every single detail of your life through Seonghwa's transaction records and systematically dismantled your survival. They were crushing you like a bug under a designer heel, showing you exactly how powerless a hustler was against old money.

And Seonghwa had been silent for three days.

Furious, terrified, and fueled by a raw, burning betrayal, you turned on your heel and sprinted out of the library. You didn't care who saw you. You didn't care about the rules anymore. You marched across the campus quad, your breath ragged, heading straight for the only place you knew he might be.

You stormed through the iron gates of the Teezer House, bypassing the front door and walking straight around to the private stone courtyard in the back.

You stopped dead in your tracks.

Seonghwa was standing by the fountain. But he wasn't alone. Lee Jiyeon was standing right beside him, looking radiant and untouchable in a flawless white designer dress, her manicured hand hooked tightly, possessively through the crook of his arm.

Seonghwa’s father stood a few paces away, talking quietly on a sleek phone, his presence casting a suffocating shadow over the courtyard.

The sound of your heavy breathing made Seonghwa snap his head around. For a fraction of a second, when his dark eyes locked onto yours, a flash of pure, agonizing horror ripped across his face. He took a single, instinctive step toward you, his lips parting as if he wanted to scream your name.

But Father Park slowly lowered his phone, his sharp, calculating eyes flicking from you to his son, a silent, deadly warning hanging in the air. One wrong move, and I destroy her permanently.

You saw the exact moment Seonghwa’s soul died.

The soft, vulnerable boy who had held you in the dark vanished. A cold, frozen wasteland washed over his features, his jaw tightening into a rigid, unbreakable mask of wealthy arrogance. He deliberately relaxed his posture, letting Jiyeon lean closer into his side, his eyes turning into two pools of dead, unfeeling black as he looked right through you.

"What are you doing here?" Seonghwa said. His voice didn't just sound cold—it sounded like glass snapping under a boot.

You took a step forward, your hands clenching into fists, your voice trembling with a mixture of rage and heartbreak. "The tuition check, Seonghwa. My job. What the hell did you do?"

Seonghwa let out a short, lazy chuckle, the sound entirely devoid of warmth. He reached up with his free hand, casually adjusting the cuff of his suit shirt—the exact same clinical motion he’d used the day you met.

"Did you really think that little performance was going to last forever?" he asked, tilting his head with a cruel, patronizing smirk. Beside him, Jiyeon let out a smug, quiet snicker. "My father saw right through the lie the moment we sat down at dinner. You played your part well enough to get your little bills paid for a week, but the game is over. I'm finalizing the merger with Jiyeon's family this afternoon."

The words felt like a physical blade ripping through your chest. You couldn't breathe. "You're lying," you whispered, searching his dead eyes for a single crack, a single trace of the man who had whispered that he loved you into your skin just three nights ago.

There was nothing.

"You're a temporary distraction, sweetheart," Seonghwa slid the word out like venom, his gaze dragging down your faded jeans and old sneakers with practiced disgust. "A street-smart girl with a sharp mouth. It was amusing for a few days, but a Park doesn't marry the help." He flicked his eyes past your shoulder, his voice dropping into a flat, dismissive command. "Wooyoung. Get her off the property. She's trespassing."

From the shadows of the courtyard porch, Wooyoung stepped out. His usual smirk was completely gone, his face pale and heavy with a dark, furious reluctance. He looked at Seonghwa like he wanted to kill him, but he walked over to you anyway, his hand gently touching your shoulder.

"Come on," Wooyoung muttered quietly, his voice cracked with a rare, genuine pity. "Let's go."

You didn't cry. Your badass pride—the only thing you had left—kept your chin up. You tore your shoulder away from Wooyoung's grip, taking one last, long look at Park Seonghwa. You looked at the silver chain around his neck, the one hidden beneath his tie, and you realized the absolute luxury he lived in was nothing but a golden graveyard.

"Keep your blood money, Park," you said, your voice steady, razor-sharp, and completely devastating. "You're right. You can't buy a girl like me anyway."

You turned on your heel and walked out, leaving the lion's den behind you, completely blind to the fact that the moment your back was turned, Seonghwa’s hand gripped the edge of the stone fountain so hard his knuckles bled, his chest heaving as he suffocated in his own ruin.

The first thing you noticed when you slammed your apartment door shut was the sound. That damn ceiling bucket—still dripping, still counting down the seconds like a metronome for your unraveling life. You threw your backpack onto the kitchen counter with enough force to send a stack of overdue bills fluttering to the floor. Fuck dignity. Fuck composure. You were done playing by anyone's rules but your own.

Your hands didn't shake as you yanked open the dresser drawer where you kept your student files. No tears. Just the cold, clinical detachment of a soldier packing up camp before the enemy artillery hit. Your fingers brushed against something hard in the bottom of your backpack as you reached for your ID. Not the cheap plastic card—no, this was the velvet-lined weight of betrayal itself. The goddamn phone.

You almost hurled it across the room. Almost. But the screen lit up like a flare in the dark, casting blue shadows across your peeling wallpaper. One message. Unknown number. Your thumb hovered—then stabbed the notification like it owed you money.

*DON'T WITHDRAW. CHECK YOUR PORTAL. HE'S LYING.*

The words burned your retinas. You fumbled for your laptop, nearly cracking the screen in your haste. The university login page loaded at agonizing speed. When the balance flashed up—$0.00—your breath left your body in one sharp exhale. Not corporate funds. Not the Park Foundation. The transaction ID was a string of numbers you recognized from nights spent half-listening to Seonghwa mutter about offshore accounts, his lips tracing your shoulder blade as he complained about his father's controls. His personal trust. The one locked until his wedding day.

You slammed the laptop shut. The velvet box hit the wall with a satisfying thud. 

Outside your window, campus security lights flickered on. Somewhere across town, Seonghwa was probably sitting through another torturous dinner with Jiyeon’s hand clamped over his wrist like a branded cuff. You imagined him—back straight, eyes dead—while his father toasted the merger. The mental image should have satisfied you. It didn’t. 

You yanked open your closet, fingers closing around the one item you’d sworn never to touch again: the silver cuff. The metal was cold against your palm. Your grandmother’s voice echoed in your skull: "You don’t bury your weapons when the war’s not over." 

The Teezer House loomed under amber porch lights. You bypassed the front door entirely, heading straight for the basement studio where Hongjoong composed his merciless beats. The bass shook the doorframe. You kicked it open without knocking.

Hongjoong didn’t look up from his mixing board. "Took you long enough," he said, slamming a track into silence. His eyes flicked to the cuff in your hand. "You here to cash that in or throw it at someone’s head?"

"Both," you said, your voice a flat line that cut right through the residual hum of the studio speakers. You marched over to his desk and slammed the silver cuff down onto the mahogany console, right next to his thousand-dollar mixing board. "Seonghwa thinks he’s the only one who knows how to play dirty because he has a trust fund. But he’s currently playing the martyr at his daddy's estate, and I don't let people fight my wars for me."

Hongjoong leaned back in his leather chair, laced his fingers together behind his head, and looked up at you. The smug, knowing smirk that usually lived on his face was entirely missing. In its place was a heavy, calculated curiosity. He looked at the antique silver, then up at the raw, unyielding fire in your eyes.

"He emptied the offshore account," Hongjoong stated, it wasn't a question. "Paid the twelve-grand directly to the bursar from a private terminal in his father’s study while the old man was asleep. If his dad tracks the IP, Seonghwa gets legally disinherited by morning. He knew that. He did it anyway."

"I didn't ask him to save me," you spat, crossing your arms tightly over your chest. "And I sure as hell didn't ask him to call me a 'temporary distraction' in front of that walking pink spreadsheet."

"He had a wiretap on his phone, sweetheart," Hongjoong said quietly, the sudden drop in his tone making your anger hitch. "His father had people outside your apartment. If Seonghwa didn't make you look like a discarded toy right then and there, his dad wasn't just going to pull your tuition—he was going to have the university board blacklist you from every academic institution in the country. He was protecting your hustle."

The air left your lungs in a sharp, painful rush. You stared at Hongjoong, the cold realization settling into your stomach like lead. Seonghwa hadn't broken the contract because he was bored. He had broken his own heart to keep you from being collateral damage.

"So what's the play?" you demanded, leaning over his desk, your face inches from his. "Because I'm not sitting in my studio apartment listening to a ceiling leak while he signs his life away to Lee Jiyeon."

Hongjoong’s lips slowly curved into a dark, dangerous smile—the exact look he wore when he was about to ruin a rival house's entire reputation. He pulled a sleek, encrypted flash drive from his pocket and tapped it against the desk.

"Lee Jiyeon's family empire isn't a fortress; it's a house of cards," Hongjoong murmured, his eyes flashing. "Her dad’s shipping company has been laundering money through dummy textile corporations in Europe for three years. Seonghwa’s been digging, but he can't get the internal authentication codes without triggering an alarm on his father's server." He slid the flash drive toward you. "But you... you have a student credential that gives you unrestricted remote access to the university's textile conservation archives. The exact archives where Jiyeon's family secretly hosted their 'cultural donation' appraisals last month."

You looked at the flash drive. A badass, lethal smile slowly spread across your face, matching his note for note. You uncapped your lipstick with your teeth, swiping a fresh layer of defiance over your lips.

"Tell Wooyoung to get his car ready," you whispered, snatching the drive. "If Seonghwa is going to burn his empire down, tell him I brought the matches."

The basement smelled like stale energy drinks and vengeance. Hongjoong’s fingers flew across the keyboard, his screens reflecting in his glasses like some cyberpunk prophet of chaos. You leaned over his shoulder, watching as the university’s archival portal flickered to life, your student credentials granting access to the digital vault of textile conservation records.

“There,” you muttered, stabbing a finger at the screen. “The ‘cultural donation’ logs from last month—those appraisal records are bullshit. Jiyeon’s family didn’t donate a damn thing. They just needed a paper trail to cover the money laundering.”

Hongjoong’s smirk was razor-sharp. “And here I thought you were just a pretty face with a lipstick arsenal.” He pulled up the metadata, isolating the authentication codes embedded in the files—codes that matched the dummy corporations Seonghwa had been tracking. The evidence was so blatant it was almost insulting.

You snatched the flash drive from his desk, plugging it in with a satisfying click. “Send it to the old man’s inbox. Right in the middle of his little gala.”

Hongjoong’s laugh was dark as he queued the file. “Timed delivery. Five minutes from now—just when they’re about to toast the merger.”

The gala would be in full swing by now—crystal chandeliers, orchestral pretension, Seonghwa suffocating in a tuxedo while Jiyeon clung to him like a gilded noose. You imagined Father Park’s phone vibrating discreetly in his pocket, the way his expression would freeze mid-sip when he saw the evidence. The way Jiyeon wouldn’t even understand why the room had gone silent until it was too late.

“Done.” Hongjoong spun his chair toward you, his fingers steepled. “Now what?”

You stood, tucking the flash drive into your back pocket like a loaded weapon. “Now we watch.”

The Park Estate ballroom glittered like a gilded tomb. Seonghwa stood statue-still at the head table, his champagne flute untouched. Jiyeon’s fingers dug into his arm, her smile venomous beneath the chandelier light. Father Park raised his glass, his voice carrying across the hushed room. “To the future of our families—”

A soft chime cut through his toast.

Father Park’s phone screen illuminated in his breast pocket. He frowned, retrieving it with the practiced grace of a man who never let anything disrupt his theatrics. Then he froze. His thumb hovered over the file labeled JY Holdings—Fraudulent Appraisal Records.

Jiyeon giggled, oblivious. “Father Park, surely business can wait—”

“Silence.” The word cracked like a whip.

Seonghwa’s breath hitched as his father’s gaze sliced across the room—not to Jiyeon, but to him. The old man’s lips curled into something between a snarl and a smile. He turned the screen toward Jiyeon’s father. “Explain this.”

The room held its breath as Jiyeon’s father paled, his fingers trembling around his champagne flute. The glass slipped, shattering on the marble floor. A server flinched. Seonghwa didn’t move. He watched, pulse hammering, as his father leaned in and murmured something that made Jiyeon’s father physically recoil.

Jiyeon’s manicured hand tightened on Seonghwa’s arm. “What’s happening?”

Seonghwa didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on his father’s phone—on the unmistakable university archive watermark in the corner of the screen. His chest tightened. He knew that watermark. Knew the hand that had accessed those files.

Father Park pocketed his phone with deliberate slowness. Then he did something Seonghwa had never seen in twenty-three years: he laughed. A dry, rasping sound that made the entire ballroom stiffen. “Lee,” he said, still chuckling, “your daughter’s family is a liability wrapped in a couture dress.” He flicked his fingers toward Jiyeon like she was a speck of dust. “The merger is terminated.”

Jiyeon’s shriek shattered the stunned silence. “You can’t—”

“I just did.” Father Park’s voice cut through hers like a blade. He turned to Seonghwa, his gaze sharpening. “That girl of yours—she pulled these records?” 

Seonghwa’s throat went dry. He nodded once.

Father Park exhaled, shaking his head. Then he smirked. “She just saved our family ten billion won by playing dirtier than me.” He leaned in, lowering his voice so only Seonghwa could hear. “Go get her before someone else does.”

Jiyeon was still screaming when Seonghwa wrenched his arm free. He didn’t look back. 

The velvet-boxed phone sat on your desk, a silent testament to the wreckage you’d just caused. You stared at the dripping ceiling bucket, the steady plip, plip, plip sounding like a countdown for the fallout. You had successfully detonated a bomb in the middle of the Park family empire, and now the silence in your cramped studio apartment was suffocating. You paced the linoleum floor, your knuckles white, waiting for the world to end. Waiting to see if your gamble had ruined you completely.

And then, the door didn't just receive a knock—it violently rattled off its hinges.

The sound was desperate, a frantic pounding that made the old wood groan. Your body went rigid. You didn't reach for a weapon; you didn't need one. You strode across the room and yanked the door open, ready to face whatever fury Father Park had sent your way.

Instead, you froze.

Park Seonghwa stood in your dingy hallway, a breathtaking wreck. He was a stark, brutal contrast to the peeling paint and flickering fluorescent lights of your building. He was still wearing his gala tuxedo—a garment that probably cost more than everything you owned—but it was entirely ruined. The expensive jacket was unbuttoned, his silk bow tie torn open and hanging loose around his neck. His hair was completely soaked from the pouring rain outside, dark strands plastered to his forehead, and his chest heaved as if he had run the entire way to your building. His knuckles were bruised and bleeding slightly, a testament to how hard he had gripped the steering wheel of his car just to reach you.

For a heartbeat, neither of you breathed. He just stared at you, his dark eyes wide, frantic, and entirely undone, as if he were checking to make sure you hadn't evaporated into thin air.

Before you could utter a single razor-sharp defense, Seonghwa stepped across your threshold, reached back, and slammed the door shut behind him. The click of the lock had barely registered before he collapsed.

He didn’t try to pull you into an arrogant embrace. He didn’t try to smooth things over with a transactional smile. With a heavy, devastating finality, Park Seonghwa dropped straight to his knees on your cheap, cold linoleum floor.

Your breath hitched. You stepped back instinctively, but his long, ring-adorned fingers shot forward, wrapping around your thighs with a terrifying, loose desperation. He buried his face straight into your stomach, his broad shoulders instantly starting to violently shake. He was weeping. It wasn't the quiet, dignified crying of a wealthy heir; it was the raw, ugly, gut-wrenching sobriety of a man who had just escaped an execution.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, his voice a broken, ragged whisper that tore through the quiet of your room. His hands gripped your denim jeans tighter, pulling you flush against him as he hid his face. “I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

You stood frozen, your hands hovering over his soaked hair, the badass armor you had painstakingly built up over the last three days suddenly feeling too heavy to hold. “Seonghwa—”

“I thought playing the villain would keep him away from you,” he interrupted, his voice cracking as he looked up.

When you met his gaze, the sheer, unadulterated angst behind his eyes made your chest ache. His face was stained with a mixture of rainwater and genuine tears. The cold, unyielding mask from the courtyard was entirely gone, replaced by a vulnerability so deep it was almost terrifying to look at.

“My father... he had people outside your door,” Seonghwa whispered, his fingers trembling against your skin. “He was going to blacklist you. He was going to ensure you could never step foot on a university campus again. I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t care about the inheritance. But I couldn’t let them break your spirit. I couldn’t let them destroy your hustle because of me. So I lied. I said the cruelest things I could think of because I knew you’d walk away. I knew you’d be safe from him if you hated me.”

You reached down, your fingers finally sinking into his wet, dark hair. You gripped his jaw, your thumb wiping away a stray tear mixed with rain, forcing him to stand up. He rose unsteadily, his hands instantly coming up to cradle your face, his palms burning hot against your cheeks.

“I spent my entire life surrounded by gold, thinking everything in this world had a price tag,” Seonghwa breathed, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made the room tilt. He leaned in until his forehead rested against yours, his breath uneven and smelling faintly of the expensive champagne he hadn't drunk. “But being in that ballroom tonight... looking at Jiyeon, looking at my father... I was suffocating. I realized it then. All of it is worthless. The name, the empire, the luxury—it’s nothing but a golden graveyard. Your love is the only true luxury I’ve ever had in my miserable life.”

A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips, though his eyes remained fiercely devoted. “And then my father’s phone chimed. I saw your watermark on those files. You didn't run, sweetheart. You stayed and you fought. You played dirtier than all of them.” He slid his hands down to your neck, his thumbs tracing your pulse point, which was hammering wildly against his skin. “The merger is dead. Jiyeon is ruined. And my father told me to come get you before someone else does because you’re the only person who’s ever managed to out-hustle him.”

Seonghwa’s gaze dropped to your mouth, his thumb lightly brushing your bottom lip, smudging the residual red lipstick you wore like war paint.

“If I have to burn the entire Park empire to the ground to keep you,” he whispered, his voice dropping into a deep, velvety promise that sent a shiver straight down your spine, “I’ll let you light the goddamn match.”

The first kiss was a collision—not the practiced, staged performance of the gala, but something desperate and ravenous. Seonghwa’s mouth crashed against yours with the force of a man who had been drowning for years and finally breached the surface. You tasted rain on his lips, the salt of his tears, the faint metallic tang of blood from where he’d bitten his own tongue holding back your name all this time. His hands—those elegant, ring-adorned hands that signed million-won contracts without flinching—trembled as they gripped your waist, lifting you onto the fold-out desk with a single, ruthless motion. Textbooks and overdue bills scattered across the floor, forgotten. His tuxedo jacket hit the ground with a wet slap, the silk lining ruined by the storm.

For a breathless moment, all you could feel was the heat of his palms branding your skin through the thin fabric of your shirt, the way his fingers dug into your hips like he was afraid you’d vanish if he loosened his grip even slightly. Then his mouth was at your throat, teeth scraping over your pulse point as he muttered a litany of broken apologies and ragged praise. “I’m sorry—god, I’m sorry—you’re so fucking perfect—”

And then, just as suddenly as it began, he slowed.

Seonghwa pulled back, his chest heaving, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made your breath catch. Without a word, he slid his hands under your thighs, lifting you effortlessly off the desk and carrying you the three stumbling steps to your narrow bed. He laid you down like you were made of something precious, his fingers trailing over your skin with a reverence that bordered on worship. The contrast was dizzying—the cold silver of his rings against your flushed skin, the rough calluses on his fingertips from years of gripping pens and steering wheels and the edges of his own control.

He kissed every part of you like it was a confession. Your jaw, where you clenched it tight during exams. Your collarbone, where the strap of your work apron had left a permanent tan line. The dark circles under your eyes that he traced with his thumb before pressing his lips there, whispering, “Beautiful.” His mouth moved lower, down the slope of your breast, over the quickening flutter of your stomach, until you were arching off the mattress with a gasp.

“Seonghwa—”

“Let me,” he murmured, his voice rough. “Let me give you this.” His hands slid under your hips, lifting you to his mouth with a groan that vibrated through your skin. His tongue was relentless, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your thighs with just enough bite to make you whimper. You tangled your hands in his hair, tugging hard, but he didn’t stop—not until your thighs were shaking and your voice had cracked around his name.

When he finally pulled away, his lips were slick, his breathing ragged. He stripped off his ruined dress shirt with impatient hands, revealing the lean muscles of his torso, the faint scars from a life lived under scrutiny. You reached for him, your fingers tracing the lines of his body like you were memorizing him. He shuddered under your touch, his eyes closing briefly before he caught your wrist, pressing a kiss to your palm.

“Look at me,” he whispered, guiding your legs around his waist. “I want to see you.”

The first slow thrust stole the breath from your lungs. Seonghwa’s head dropped to your shoulder, his groan muffled against your skin as he buried himself to the hilt. He held still for a moment, trembling, his fingers lacing through yours and pinning them to the mattress—not to restrain you, but to anchor himself. When he finally moved, it was with a deliberate, aching slowness, his hips rolling against yours in a rhythm that had you gasping. Every drag of his body against yours was a promise, every whispered praise a vow.

Outside, the storm still raged, but inside your cramped apartment, the world narrowed to the space between your bodies. The dim light from your desk lamp cast shadows across Seonghwa’s face, highlighting the sharp angle of his jaw, the way his eyelashes fluttered when you tightened around him. He cursed under his breath, his grip tightening on your hands as he leaned down to capture your mouth again.

“You feel—” He broke off with a groan when you arched beneath him, your nails scraping down his back. “—like heaven. Fuck, you’re perfect.”

The friction built slowly, torturously, until every nerve in your body was alight. Seonghwa’s movements grew more erratic, his control fraying at the edges. His lips found your pulse point, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin there as he murmured your name like a prayer. When you finally fell apart, his arms locked around you, holding you close as he followed you over the edge, his voice breaking against your neck.

Afterward, he didn’t pull away. He stayed buried inside you, his forehead pressed to yours, his breath still uneven. His thumb traced your cheekbone, wiping away the sweat there before he kissed you softly, almost chastely.

“Mine,” he murmured against your lips, the word more a statement than a question.

You didn’t answer with words. You couldn’t. Instead, you simply tightened your arms around his bare neck, pulling him down until his heavy chest was resting completely against yours, the steady, thudding rhythm of his heartbeat echoing the frantic pace of your own.

The storm outside finally began to pass, the violent thunder tapering off into a soft, rhythmic patter against the glass. Inside your studio, the suffocating weight that had hung over you for days evaporated completely. Seonghwa shifted slightly, rolling onto his side but refusing to break the contact between your bodies. He pulled the cheap, faded duvet up over your shoulders, tucking you securely against his side as if the rest of the world might try to steal you away the second he let go.

His long fingers, still adorned with the expensive silver rings that had grazed your skin moments ago, traced idle, soothing circles along your bare arm. He stopped when his thumb hit your wrist, his touch lingering on your grandmother’s antique silver cuff.

“My father wants to meet with you,” Seonghwa murmured into the quiet room, his voice a low, post-coital rumble that vibrated through your chest.

You stiffened slightly, your badass instincts immediately flaring back to life. “If he thinks I’m going to sit across from him and apologize—”

“No,” Seonghwa interrupted softly, a low, genuinely amused chuckle vibrating in his throat. He leaned over, pressing a tender kiss to the crown of your head. “He doesn’t want an apology. He wants a negotiation. On your terms. He’s officially stepping down from the university board, and he’s handing the primary management of the domestic firm over to me. But he made it very clear that he won't finalize the paperwork unless you're standing in the room to witness it. He told me he’s never seen anyone dismantle a ten-billion-won merger with a student credential and a laptop.”

You let out a dry, quiet laugh, your fingers wrapping around the silver chain at his neck—the one that had dangled against your skin while he worshipped you. “I told you, Park. I don’t bow to spreadsheets. I rewrite them.”

“I know,” he whispered, his eyes dark and fiercely devoted as he looked down at you. He caught your hand, lifting it to his lips to press a soft kiss against your knuckles. “And you’ll never have to look at a past-due notice again. I’m yours. Everything I have, everything I am—it belongs to you.”

Three weeks later, the air inside The Iron Lotus was thick with the scent of expensive liquor, heavy smoke, and the deep, vibrating thrum of the bass. The exclusive, high-end campus club was packed to the brim with the university’s wealthy elite, but tonight, the hierarchy had completely shifted.

Up in the central VIP booth, you sat like royalty.

You weren't wearing the emerald dress anymore; tonight, you were in your own clothes, a sharp, badass outfit that screamed confidence, but the sheer luxury surrounding you was undeniable. Seonghwa didn't sit across from you. He sat right beside you, completely unbothered by his pristine reputation, his long legs tangled with yours. His expensive tailored suit jacket was unbuttoned, and as he reached over to pour your drink himself—completely ignoring the VIP hostess waiting on him—the gold strobes caught the light on his wrist.

Tangled directly into his expensive silver wrist chain was your grandmother's antique silver cuff, worn proudly like a charm of absolute ownership.

The Teezer boys were crowded around the table, the atmosphere loud and celebratory. Hongjoong raised his glass toward you from across the booth, a rare, highly respectful smirk on his face. He knew exactly what it took to win a war against the world, and he appreciated the way you’d handled the matches.

Seonghwa picked up his glass, his other arm securely winding around your waist to pull you directly into his lap. He didn't care who was watching. He didn't care about the whispers passing through the crowd below. He looked down at you, his dark eyes entirely whipped, radiating a heavy, breathless adoration that money could never buy.

"To the real boss," Seonghwa said smoothly, his deep voice carrying over the music as he raised his glass to the table. The boys cheered, clinking their glasses together. Seonghwa leaned down, pressing a lingering, possessive kiss to your temple, whispering into your ear, 

"My ultimate luxury."

You smiled, clinking your glass against his, completely content. The hustle was finally over. You had won.

The bass dropped heavily, the crimson and amber strobe lights slicing through the thick smoke of the club. As you and Seonghwa laughed, completely lost in each other’s space, the cinematic energy of the room naturally shifted away from the VIP booth. The camera panned down the velvet-lined stairs, moving past the dancing crowd, and landed squarely on the sleek, polished marble of the main bar.

Leaning against the counter was Wooyoung.

His pristine white shirt had the top two buttons undone, his dark hair slightly messy as he watched the VIP booth from a distance. A smug, deeply satisfied smirk played on his lips. He took a slow sip of his whiskey, genuinely happy to see his best friend finally breathing, finally free of the golden cage.

Wooyoung set his glass back down on the marble, his smirk widening as he prepared to turn back to the crowd.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over his space.

A girl stepped directly into his personal perimeter, completely ignoring the unspoken rule of giving the campus playboy his distance. She was significantly shorter than him, but she didn't look intimidated. Not even close. She wore an aura that screamed pure, unfiltered trouble, her posture rigid with an unbroken, badass confidence.

Without hesitation, she stepped so close her boots nearly brushed his, effectively cornering Wooyoung against the edge of the bar counter.

Wooyoung’s smug smirk instantly faltered. His posture froze, his glass hovering half an inch above the marble. He slowly lowered his head, his dark, piercing eyes locking onto hers, taking in the absolute defiance radiating off her small frame. She looked up at him, her chin tilted high, her gaze challenging him without uttering a single syllable.

The air between them turned electric, the heavy thumping of the club’s bass fading into the background as Wooyoung's eyes narrowed, a dangerous, deeply intrigued fire sparking in his gaze.

The hand-off was complete.

Cut to black.

navigation. – all works.

© KOZTION 2026 | Please don’t nibble on my work—no reposting, translating, or stealing!

DISCLAIMER | These posts are just little stories from my imagination! They are not a true representation of the members in any way. Please treat these fictions as a cozy escape and don't take them to heart!

If you want to be tagged please fill out the form.

SYNOPSIS ; You’re a hyper-independent student pulling back-to-back shifts just to keep your head above water. He’s Park Seonghwa—the untouchable, clinical heir to a multi-billion-won empire, suffocating inside a golden cage. When his family’s corporate meddling forces you into a high-stakes, transactional fake-dating contract, you think you’ve negotiated the ultimate hustle. Rule one: it’s just a performance. Rule two: no touching. But between quiet, reverent midnights in the dimly lit campus lab and the suffocating pressure of his world, the lines of the contract don't just blur—they catch fire. Old money plays dirty, but they underestimated a girl who has nothing left to lose.

PAIRING(S) ; Frat!Park Seonghwa x F!Reader

WARNING(S) ; !! MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!, explicit content/smut, heavy angst, emotional manipulation (by family members), financial sabotage, classism, temporary heartbreak/breakup (but a very happy ending), light violence (bruised knuckles/shattered glass), alcohol consumption, praise/worship, unprotected sex, and mutual desperation.

WC ; 14k

Part 5/8 of THE REVERENCE SERIES

Inspired by everytime by Ariana Grande

The front door of the frat house didn’t just close; it practically shuddered on its hinges, the echo reverberating through the crown molding of the foyer like a physical blow.

Upstairs, PARK SEONGHWA didn’t blink. He stood by the grand arched window of his room, buttoning the cuffs of a crisp, tailored shirt with practiced, clinical precision. Down the hall, he could hear the faint, exhausted murmur of Hongjoong’s voice—the infamous campus kingpin, the man who had literally written a rulebook to keep his heart under lock and key, now completely dismantled. Defeated. Whipped.

Hongjoong had broken his own rules for a girl. And the terrifying part? Looking at the quiet, breathless peace settled over the hallway, Seonghwa knew Hongjoong didn't regret a single second of the ruin.

Seonghwa’s phone vibrated violently against the mahogany dresser, shattering the silence.

[1] New Message: Lee Jiyeon Your father said you haven't confirmed the venue for Friday. Don't be childish, Seonghwa. We have a timeline to keep.

Right on cue.

He stared at the screen, a muscle feathering in his jaw. For months, he had played the dutiful heir, dodging his father’s corporate matchmaking and Jiyeon’s passive-aggressive ownership over a life he hadn't even chosen. But Hongjoong’s sudden surrender had lit a fuse. The clock had officially run out. He needed a shield, a distraction, a weapon to throw into his father’s meticulously planned boardrooms—and he needed it before Friday.

A sharp knock at his open door cut through his thoughts. Hongjoong was leaning against the frame, looking exhausted but clearer than he had in months.

"You're still brooding," Hongjoong observed, his voice quiet. He didn't need to ask to know what was on Seonghwa's phone. The whole house knew about the impending Park empire merger. "You need to figure something out, man. Fast. Before your old man locks you in a contract you can't claw your way out of."

"I'm working on it," Seonghwa replied smoothly, adjusting his collar.

Hongjoong let out a dry, humorless laugh. "Right. With who? Because the last time we talked about this, you mentioned that girl from the campus diner. The one working three jobs who looked at you like you were dirt beneath her shoes when you tried to tip her a hundred bucks." Hongjoong crossed his arms, a knowing smirk playing on his lips. "You've been tracing her schedule for a week, Seonghwa. The guys think you're losing your mind. She’s a hustler. She doesn't have time for your family drama."

"She has a tuition deadline on Friday," Seonghwa said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, calculated hum. "Everyone has a price, Hongjoong. I’m just going to find out hers."

He snatched his keys off the dresser, leaving Hongjoong shaking his head in the doorway. His reflection in the mirror was a mask of cold, unyielding desperation. If his father wanted a transactional relationship, Seonghwa was going to give him one. He just needed to secure his asset.

The neon sign of The 24-Hour Grind buzzed with a low, irritating hum that perfectly matched the headache building behind your eyes.

It was 9:00 PM. You had been on your feet since your 8:00 AM lecture, survived a mid-day shift at the library, and now you were balancing a tray of greasy burgers and lukewarm coffee for a booth of rowdy frat boys who thought a whistle was an appropriate way to get your attention.

"Hey, sweetheart," one of them smirked as you set down his plate, his eyes traveling entirely too slow down your apron. "You forgot the extra ranch. And maybe you can give us your number with it?"

You didn't flinch. You didn't smile, either. You simply leaned over the table slightly, your posture entirely relaxed, projecting an aura that was pure, unfiltered trouble.

"The ranch is fifty cents extra," you said, your voice smooth, calm, and terrifyingly sharp. "And my number costs more than your monthly allowance, kid. Eat your food before it gets as cold as your game."

The booth went dead silent, his friends instantly bursting into a chorus of mocking 'ohhhhh's' at his expense. You turned on your heel without waiting for a comeback, your posture rigid with a spine made of absolute steel. You didn't have time for this. You had a past-due tuition notice sitting in your backpack, and exactly forty-two dollars in your checking account.

From a secluded booth in the far corner, hidden in the shadows of the dim lighting, Park Seonghwa watched your every move.

He had a pristine leather folder resting on the tabletop, his long, elegant fingers lightly drumming against the surface. He had heard the rumors about you around campus—the girl who couldn't be bought, the girl who treated the wealthy elite like minor inconveniences, the badass who ran this town on pure, unadulterated hustle.

Seeing you in action, he realized Hongjoong was wrong. You weren't a risk. You were a masterpiece. You were exactly the kind of chaotic, unbreakable force he needed to completely shatter his father’s pristine, suffocating world.

As you grabbed a rag to wipe down the counter, a shadow fell over your station.

"I believe we have some business to discuss," a smooth, deep voice slid over the noise of the diner.

You looked up, locking eyes with Park Seonghwa. He looked entirely out of place amidst the peeling vinyl booths—wearing a coat that probably cost more than your rent for the entire year, his dark hair perfectly styled, an aura of wealthy, detached arrogance radiating off him.

You let out a long, exhausted breath and tossed the rag onto the counter. "Look, rich boy. I already told your little frat friends I'm not on the menu. If you want a coffee, sit down. If you're here to waste my time, the door is behind you."

Seonghwa didn't flinch at your tone. Instead, a slow, dangerously handsome smirk spread across his face. He slid the leather folder across the counter, tapping the top of it.

"I'm not here for coffee," Seonghwa murmured, leaning in just enough that his expensive cologne cut through the smell of grease. "I'm here to pay off your university tuition. In full. By tonight."

You froze, your eyes dropping to the folder. Through the clear plastic sleeve, you could see the exact dollar amount of your outstanding balance, printed out in bold, terrifying red ink.

"What's the catch?" you asked, your voice dropping its edge, replaced by a cold, protective suspicion. You knew guys like him. Nothing was free.

"The catch," Seonghwa said, his eyes locking onto yours with absolute, clinical focus, "is that for the next three months, you belong to me. You will sit at my father's dinner tables, you will wear the dresses I buy you, and you will play the role of the most terrifyingly devoted girlfriend this campus has ever seen." He tilted his head, his smirk widening. "Do we have a deal, sweetheart?"

Your laughter wasn’t the soft, flattered kind Seonghwa was used to hearing—it was a sharp, mocking bark that cut through the diner’s low hum like a switchblade. You leaned over the counter, close enough that the scent of his cologne tangled with the fryer grease clinging to your apron. “Let me get this straight, Park,” you said, voice dripping with venomous amusement. “You’re so insufferable you need to use Daddy’s corporate expense account just to get a girl to sit next to you at dinner?”

His mask cracked—just for a heartbeat. A flicker of something raw flashed behind his eyes before he smoothed it over, but his jaw tightened. Interesting. You’d struck a nerve.

You snatched the pen from your apron pocket before he could recover, flipping the folder open with a snap. The tuition amount glared up at you in bold, accusatory red. You circled it hard enough to leave an indentation in the paper. “Rule one,” you said, tapping the pen against the counter like a gavel. “This is a performance. Outside your family functions, you don’t touch me, you don’t control who I talk to, and you don’t show up at my jobs unless it’s part of the gig.”

Seonghwa watched you, rapt, as if you were a wildfire he couldn’t look away from.

“Rule two,” you continued, “if Jiyeon or your father even look at me sideways, I walk. And I keep every cent.”

His silence stretched a second too long—your jab had landed deeper than expected. Seonghwa's fingers twitched against the leather folder, the only crack in his polished facade. "You misunderstand," he said, voice dripping with practiced indifference. "This isn't about my inability to get a date. It's about my father's inability to accept that I won't marry a spreadsheet with legs." His gaze flicked to the diner's stained ceiling, then back to you with renewed intensity. "And you, sweetheart, look like the kind of chaos that would give him an aneurysm."

You snorted, uncapping the pen with your teeth. The plastic tasted like fryer oil and defiance. "Rule three," you added, scribbling violently next to the circled amount. "You don't call me sweetheart. Ever." The pen tore through the paper slightly. 

Seonghwa's lips parted—then curved into something dangerously close to genuine amusement. He leaned in until his tie brushed the counter's grime. "Fine. But when we're in that dining room," he murmured, "you look at me like I hung the moon. Can a hustler like you fake that, or is a man like me too much to handle?" The challenge in his voice sent an unwelcome spark down your spine. 

With a fluid motion, he produced a black credit card from his inner pocket. The embossed platinum caught the fluorescent light as he tapped it against his phone screen. Your own phone buzzed in your apron seconds later. The university's payment confirmation glowed back at you: *$0.00 BALANCE*. Your throat tightened. Freedom. Shackles. Same thing now.

Seonghwa stood abruptly, straightening his cuffs with a snap. He slid a velvet-lined box across the counter—inside, a phone so thin it looked like a credit card. "My driver will deliver your dress tomorrow. Seven sharp." His shoes echoed on the linoleum as he walked away, pausing only to toss over his shoulder: "Wear your hair down. My father hates ponytails."

The bell above the diner door jingled cheerfully as it swung shut behind him, a grotesque contrast to the suffocating weight that had just settled into your chest.

Through the smudged glass window, you watched him slide into the back of a sleek, midnight-black sedan that had no business idling in this neighborhood. The taillights flared, bleeding red into the rainy asphalt, and then he was gone. Left behind was the lingering scent of sandalwood, a brand-new phone glowing like a tiny piece of an alien spaceship against the sticky formica, and a clean slate you’d spent the last three years destroying your health to earn.

Zero balance. You were free of the debt, but as you stared down at the velvet-lined box, you knew you’d just traded a digital prison for a human one.

"Holy shit," a voice hissed from your left.

You didn't even look up as Minji, your co-worker, practically tackled the counter, her eyes wide enough to pop. "Was that... was that Park Seonghwa? From the TEEZER house? The guy whose family literally owns the hospital downtown?"

"It was a customer," you said flatly, shoving the velvet box into the deep pocket of your apron next to your order pad.

"A customer who just made you look like you were about to commit murder or faint," she shot back, leaning over to catch your eye. "What did he want?"

"To buy a headache," you muttered, grabbing the damp rag and wiping down the spot where his expensive tie had just brushed the counter. You scrubbed hard, trying to erase the ghost of his presence, but the challenge in his voice was still echoing in your ears. Can a hustler like you fake that?

You’d fake it. For that kind of money, you’d make his father think you were ready to die for him.

Meanwhile, the interior of the sedan was dead silent, save for the quiet purr of the engine. Seonghwa sat back against the leather, his eyes fixed on the rain tearing across the window glass. His fingers were still tapping a restless, uneven rhythm against his knee.

He pulled his personal phone from his pocket, the screen immediately lighting up with three more missed calls from Lee Jiyeon. He ignored them, dialing a number he knew by heart instead.

It rang twice before a deep, gravelly voice answered. No greeting. Just the heavy, expectant silence of a man who ruled by fear.

"Father," Seonghwa said, his tone instantly shifting into the smooth, perfectly modulated cadence of a dutiful son. The cold arrogance he’d thrown at you in the diner was gone, replaced by something rigidly controlled. "Tell Jiyeon to cancel the reservations at L'Avenue for Friday."

A sharp exhale came over the line. "And why would I do that? Her father is flying in from Seoul specifically to discuss the merger's press release."

"Because the press release is going to have to change," Seonghwa replied, his gaze flickering back toward the fading neon sign of the diner as the car rounded the corner. A small, dangerous smirk played at the corner of his lips. "I won't be bringing Jiyeon as my date. I'm bringing my girlfriend."

The silence on the other end of the line became deafening. "You don't have a girlfriend, Seonghwa. You have distractions. If this is another one of your pathetic attempts to delay—"

"She's not a delay," Seonghwa interrupted, his voice dropping an octave, carrying a sudden, unyielding steel that even his father hadn't heard before. He thought of the way you had looked at him—the absolute lack of fear in your eyes, the razor-sharp edge of your tongue, the beautiful, chaotic defiance of your posture. You were going to tear their pristine boardroom to pieces, and he couldn't wait to watch. "She's my guest. And I suggest you tell Jiyeon to get used to the view from the sidelines."

He hung up before his father could reply, tossing the phone onto the empty leather seat beside him. He let out a slow breath, his chest loosening for the first time all day.

The game had officially begun.

The knock at your apartment door came at exactly 4:03 PM—precise enough to make your teeth grind. You flung the door open to find a man in a black suit standing rigidly in your shitty hallway, holding a garment bag so sleek it looked photoshopped against the peeling paint. He didn’t speak, just extended it toward you like a ceremonial sword.

“What, no ‘have a nice day’?” you muttered, snatching the bag. The driver blinked once—his only reaction—before turning on his heel and disappearing down the stairwell. You almost laughed. Seonghwa’s people were just as robotic as he was.

The zipper hissed open like it was offended by your cramped studio. Inside, the dress was a deep emerald green, the fabric pooling across your bed like liquid wealth. A handwritten note fluttered out: Seven sharp. Don’t forget the hair. You crumpled it in your fist before grabbing the dress by its straps, holding it up to the dim light. It was backless, slit thigh-high, and probably cost more than your entire semester’s rent.

You almost didn’t put it on out of spite. Almost.

The silk slid over your skin like a second heartbeat. The mirror reflected a stranger—someone sharp and dangerous, all long lines and simmering intensity. You left your hair down as ordered, but dug out your grandmother’s antique silver cuff from the bottom of your jewelry box, snapping it around your wrist like armor. The bold red lipstick was pure defiance.

Outside, the black car arrived at 6:59 PM. The driver didn’t speak. Neither did Seonghwa when you slid into the backseat—at first. He was a silhouette of sharp angles and tailored black, his profile etched against the city lights. Then he turned. His breath caught, just once, before he locked it down.

“Take a picture, Park,” you said, crossing your legs deliberately. The slit fell open, revealing a flash of skin. “It lasts longer.”

His fingers twitched against his knee. “The dress fits,” he said, voice perfectly level. “At least I know my money didn’t go to waste.”

You smirked, tapping your cuff against the window. “Don’t get used to it. This isn’t my color.”

The car pulled into traffic. Seonghwa’s mask slipped back into place as he briefed you, his voice clinical. “Jiyeon will go for your throat. My father will test your spine. Neither of them will believe this is real.”

You snorted. “Because it isn’t.”

“Exactly.” His hand landed on yours without warning—warm, heavy, possessive. Your pulse jumped. His fingers laced through yours, pressing your palm flat against the leather seat. “Which is why we practice now. If you flinch when we walk through those doors, he’ll know.” His thumb stroked your knuckles once, deliberate. “Look at me like you love me.”

You laughed, sharp and humorless. “I don’t even like you.”

“Then you’re a better actress than I thought.” His grip tightened. “Try again.”

The challenge in his eyes was infuriating. You leaned in, close enough that your perfume clashed with his cologne. Your free hand landed on his thigh, fingertips pressing into the wool of his slacks. His breath hitched—just once. “Better?” you purred.

Seonghwa’s jaw flexed. “Too obvious.” His thumb traced your wrist, slow, deliberate. “Subtlety sells the lie.” His gaze flicked to your mouth, lingered, then dragged back up. “You look at me like I’m the only thing in the room.”

Your pulse betrayed you, hammering against his fingers. “You’re not.”

The car slowed. Outside, the restaurant loomed—all marble columns and gold-lit windows. Seonghwa’s hand slid from yours to the nape of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair. His lips brushed your ear. “Then lie better.”

The door opened. Cold air rushed in. Seonghwa stepped out first, his posture shifting seamlessly into arrogant elegance. When he turned back, offering his hand, his expression was a mask of practiced devotion. You took it, letting him pull you close. His palm settled at the small of your back, burning through silk.

“Showtime,” he murmured.

You stepped onto the pavement, the slit of your dress parting just enough to make the valet glance away. Seonghwa’s grip tightened—approval or possessiveness, you couldn’t tell. The hostess bowed, her smile faltering when she recognized him. “Mr. Park. Your party is already seated.”

The lobby smelled like money—crisp linen, aged whiskey, the faintest hint of cigar smoke. Your heels clicked against polished floors. Seonghwa’s thumb traced idle circles against your spine. “Jiyeon wears pink when she’s angry,” he whispered. “Consider yourself warned.”

The private dining room door swung open.

Lee Jiyeon sat perfectly poised in blush silk, her diamond choker glinting under the chandelier. Her smile froze when she saw your intertwined fingers. Across the table, Father Park didn’t look up from his wine glass. “Late,” he said, voice like gravel. “Your mother would be ashamed.”

Seonghwa’s fingers twitched against yours. You squeezed back—once, sharp—before sliding into the chair he pulled out. “Traffic,” you said, smiling sweetly at Jiyeon. “So sorry to keep you waiting.”

Jiyeon’s manicured nails tightened around her champagne flute. “How...unexpected.” Her gaze raked down your dress like she was pricing the stitching. “I didn’t realize Seonghwa had such...eclectic taste.”

You leaned forward, letting the slit in your dress part just enough to make her blink. “He doesn’t.” Your cuff flashed silver as you reached for the bread basket. “But I do.”

Father Park finally looked up. His eyes—sharp, calculating—lingered on your wrist. “That cuff,” he said slowly. “Where did you get it?”

“Stole it,” you deadpanned, tearing into the bread with your teeth. The crust crackled loud enough to make Jiyeon flinch. “From a museum.”

Seonghwa kicked your ankle under the table. You kicked back harder.

The silence that followed was a glorious, suffocating vacuum.

Jiyeon actually stopped breathing, her mouth parting in a tiny, horrified ‘O’ as her eyes darted to Father Park, practically begging him to call security. Underneath the heavy mahogany table, Seonghwa’s shoe remained pinned against yours, his weight pressing down as if he could physically force you into compliance. You didn't budge. You just chewed, holding the old man's gaze with the same unblinking stare you used on the midnight-shift drunks who refused to pay their tabs.

A slow, terrifying tick developed in Father Park’s jaw. For three agonizing seconds, the only sound in the private room was the soft, rhythmic hum of the restaurant’s air conditioning.

Then, the patriarch let out a sound. It wasn't a laugh—it was a dry, raspy bark that sounded like sandpaper on wood.

"Honesty," Father Park murmured, leaning back into his leather chair, his sharp eyes crinkling at the corners with a deeply unsettling amusement. "A rare commodity in this family. Most people spend their entire lives trying to lie to me about where they get their things." He flicked his gaze to Jiyeon, whose blush-pink silk dress suddenly looked very washed out. "And their intentions."

Jiyeon’s cheeks flushed a violent, blotchy red. "Father Park, surely you aren't—"

"Eat your salad, Jiyeon," the old man cut her off smoothly, not even looking at her. He tapped his wine glass, signaling the waiter standing rigidly in the corner. "Fill the lady’s glass. And bring our guest something that isn't bread. She looks like she hasn't eaten a full meal since the semester started."

Checkmate, round one.

You glanced at Seonghwa out of the corner of your eye. His perfect, aristocratic profile was completely rigid, but you could see the faint, frantic pulse point throbbing at the base of his throat. He was stunned. His father didn't praise people; he dismantled them. The fact that your reckless, IDGAF energy had actually bypassed his defenses was a variable Seonghwa hadn't calculated.

As the waiter glided forward to pour the wine, Seonghwa finally shifted his leg, his hand sliding beneath the table to find your knee. His fingers dug into your bare skin through the high slit of your dress—not in a reprimand, but with a sudden, heavy desperation. His palm was burning hot.

"She has an appetite," Seonghwa said, his voice dropping into that smooth, velvety cadence he used when he was playing the devoted boyfriend. He leaned into your space, his shoulder brushing yours, his scent completely clouding your senses. "It's one of the things I find most... captivating about her."

He looked at you then, and for a split second, the sheer intensity in his dark eyes made your breath hitch. It wasn't the fake, rehearsed look from the car. It was sharp, dark, and heavy with a strange kind of hunger.

"Is that so?" Jiyeon sneered, her voice trembling with suppressed rage as she gripped her fork. "And what department did you say you were in? I don't recall seeing your family name on the alumni donor list."

You leaned back, letting Seonghwa’s hand ride up your thigh just an inch higher, the physical friction sending a jolt of pure adrenaline straight to your core. You looked Jiyeon dead in the eye.

"I'm on the 'working forty hours a week to avoid drowning in debt' list," you said, matching her icy tone note for note. "But don't worry. I'm sure your family's spreadsheet covers that."

Beside you, Seonghwa choked on his wine.

Jiyeon's champagne flute trembled against the linen tablecloth as she forced a smile sharper than her diamond choker. "I do hope you appreciate opera, darling. The Seoul Arts Center is hosting La Traviata next weekend—though I suppose balcony seats are rather hard to come by without connections." Her gaze flicked to your silver cuff like she was pricing the scrap metal.

You speared a bite of seared scallop—deliberately using the wrong fork—and shrugged. "Never been. Though I did catch an amazing drag queen performing Bohemian Rhapsody at a dive bar last month." You tilted your head, grinning as Jiyeon's manicure dug into her napkin. "The costumes were probably cheaper than this scallop, but damn, could she hit those high notes."

Father Park's wine glass paused halfway to his lips. A muscle in Seonghwa's jaw twitched as his fingers flexed against your thigh, his thumb tracing slow, burning circles beneath the table.

Jiyeon rallied like a cornered viper. "How...quaint. Though I can't imagine Seonghwa slumming it in some bar." She fluttered her lashes at him. "Remember our private box at the Met last summer? You said the acoustics were—"

"—Overrated," Seonghwa interrupted, his voice dripping with lazy disdain. His hand slid higher up your thigh, fingers pressing into bare skin. "I prefer venues with...personality."

Jiyeon's champagne flute cracked against the table. The waiter rushed forward with a fresh glass, but Father Park waved him off, his gaze locked on you with unsettling focus. "And where else does our guest enjoy spending her time?" he asked, the question a blade wrapped in silk.

You leaned forward, letting the candlelight catch your grandmother's cuff. "Last weekend? I spent eight hours in the library basement fixing citations for a professor who paid me in stale granola bars." You smirked at Jiyeon's horrified blink. "Though I did swing by the museum after—free student tickets on Fridays."

Seonghwa's fingers dug into your skin hard enough to bruise.

Father Park set down his fork with deliberate precision. "Which exhibit?"

"The textile archives." You swirled your wine, watching the legs streak the glass. "Most people skip them for the flashy Impressionists, but there's a 15th-century hanbok in there with stitching so tight, it's survived five wars." You glanced at Jiyeon's designer dress. "Unlike some modern art."

Jiyeon's knife screeched across her plate. "How...quaint. Though I can't imagine Seonghwa wasting time in a museum." Her smile turned venomous. "Unless he was desperate to avoid—"

"—Boring people," Seonghwa interrupted, his thumb stroking your inner thigh. "A fatal flaw of mine."

Father Park's chuckle was a low, dangerous rumble. "You have your mother's taste for...unconventional beauty." His gaze lingered on your grandmother's cuff. "And her spine."

The air in the room shifted. Jiyeon's manicure clicked against crystal as she excused herself, her blush silk dress whispering like a threat. You counted to three before pushing back your chair. "Restroom," you murmured, catching the murderous glance Jiyeon threw over her shoulder.

The bathroom was all marble and orchids, the kind of place where rich women went to cry into gold-plated sinks. Jiyeon was already waiting, her reflection warped in the polished mirrors. "You pathetic little—"

"—Gold-digger?" You leaned against the counter, uncapping your lipstick with deliberate slowness. "Try harder, Jiyeon. Your insults are as stale as your champagne."

Her diamond choker trembled. "Do you really think this charade lasts?" She stepped closer, her whisper venomous. "You're a temporary amusement. Men like Seonghwa don't keep girls like you. They marry girls like me."

The lipstick snapped shut. You tilted your head, meeting her gaze in the mirror. "Then you better start praying," you murmured, swiping red over your bottom lip. "Because right now, he's paying my tuition just to avoid looking at your face."

Jiyeon's breath hitched—once—before she slammed her clutch down hard enough to crack the marble. "You have no idea what you're playing with."

You smirked, tucking the lipstick into your clutch. "Neither do you."

The heavy, gold-trimmed door of the restroom clicked shut behind you, cutting off the sound of Jiyeon’s ragged, furious breathing.

The moment you stepped back into the quiet hallway, the badass posture you’d been holding since seven o’clock slipped just a fraction. Your shoulders dropped. Your heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. You had just completely humiliated one of the wealthiest heiresses in the city, but the rush of adrenaline was fading, leaving behind the stark, cold reality of what you were actually doing. You were a mouse playing in a nest of vipers.

"You're late," a voice slid out of the shadows.

You gasped, your hand flying to the emerald silk at your chest. Seonghwa was leaning against the wood-paneled wall just a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest. The pristine jacket of his suit was unbuttoned now, his tie loosened just a fraction. He looked less like the untouchable heir and more like a predator waiting in the dark.

"I was busy," you snapped, recovering your edge instantly as you walked past him toward the dining room. "Your little spreadsheet has a really foul mouth when she's angry."

Seonghwa didn't move to follow you. Instead, as you brushed past him, his hand shot out, his long fingers wrapping tightly around your wrist—right over your grandmother’s silver cuff. The metal bit into your skin, but his grip wasn't malicious. It was desperate. He pulled you backward, anchoring you against his chest in the dim hallway.

"What did she say to you?" he murmured, his breath hot against the shell of your ear.

"Nothing I couldn't handle," you said, trying to pull away, but his other hand found your waist, his palm burning through the backless slit of your dress. Rule number one was screaming in your head, but the way his chest rumbled against your back made your knees dangerously weak. "Let go, Park. No touching behind closed doors, remember?"

Seonghwa let out a low, breathy laugh that sounded completely devoid of his usual arrogance. "My father just asked the waiter to pack up the rest of the dinner," he whispered, his lips brushing the column of your neck. You shivered, your eyes fluttering shut for a terrifying second. "He said he’s seen enough. We're leaving."

"Did we lose?" you whispered, your fingers curling into the fabric of his suit jacket.

Seonghwa leaned down, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made the rest of the hallway blur into nothingness. "No," he murmured, his thumb tracing a slow line down your jaw. "You won. He told me to keep you because you have more balls than I do."

The car smelled like leather and rain—and him. Seonghwa didn’t slide into his usual spot across the sedan’s expanse. Instead, the moment the door shut behind you, his arm hooked around your waist, hauling you sideways until you were straddling his lap, your emerald silk dress riding up your thighs. His breath hitched, warm against your smudged lipstick. "You completely destroyed her," he murmured, thumb dragging across your bottom lip, staining his skin crimson.

You smirked, pulse thundering where his fingers traced your jaw. "I told you, Park. I don’t bow to spreadsheets."

His grip tightened, pulling you closer until your chests brushed. "No," he agreed, voice rough. "You set them on fire." The car hit a pothole, jolting you against him. His exhale was ragged, his pupils blown wide in the dim light. For a heartbeat, neither of you moved. Then his fingers slid into your hair, tilting your face up. "Tell me to stop," he whispered.

You didn’t.

His mouth crashed into yours—hot, desperate, nothing like the calculated kisses at dinner. This was hunger, pure and unguarded. Your fingers twisted in his ruined tie as he licked into your mouth, tasting wine and victory. The partition was up, the driver oblivious, but it didn’t matter. The world narrowed to his hands gripping your hips, the way he groaned when you rocked against him—

The car slowed. Seonghwa tore away, lips swollen, his usually immaculate hair disheveled. Outside, rain sheeted against the windows of a massive Tudor-style house, its gabled roof cutting into the stormy sky. The Teezer House. You knew it by reputation—Sigma Nu’s lion’s den, where trust fund babies threw parties that made the campus gossip for weeks.

"Stay," he said, thumb wiping smudged lipstick from your chin. His voice was wrecked. "Just tonight."

You should’ve said no. Should’ve reminded him of Rule #4: No sleepovers. But the adrenaline was fading, leaving exhaustion in its wake. And the way he looked at you—like you’d hung the goddamn moon—made your chest ache.

"...Fine. But I’m taking the couch."

Seonghwa smirked, opening the car door. "It’s leather. You’ll hate it."

Raindrops caught in his lashes as he guided you up the stone steps, his palm burning through the silk at your waist. The Teezer House loomed—all dark wood and stained glass, smelling of cedar and spilled whiskey. A burst of laughter echoed from somewhere inside, followed by the thump of bass. Seonghwa ignored it, steering you down a shadowed hallway.

His room wasn’t what you expected. No Greek letters tacked to the wall, no neon beer signs. Just a massive four-poster bed, a sleek desk littered with finance textbooks, and—weirdly—a vintage record player spinning something soft and instrumental.

"You live like a retired professor," you muttered, toeing off your heels.

Seonghwa shrugged off his suit jacket, draping it over a chair. "My father’s decorator has opinions." He hesitated, then tossed you a folded T-shirt from his dresser. It smelled like his cologne. "Bathroom’s through there if you want to change."

The fabric slid over your skin like a whisper. When you emerged, Seonghwa was perched on the edge of the bed, rolling up his sleeves. Moonlight caught the silver in his rings as he reached for you—then stopped himself, fingers curling into his palm.

"You should take the bed," he said, voice rough. "I’ll—"

"Don’t be an idiot." You snatched a pillow from the mountain of them, tossing it onto the leather couch with more force than necessary. "We both know that thing costs more than my tuition. I’m not kicking you out of—"

His hand closed around your wrist. Not hard. Not demanding. Just... there. Warm. "Then share it," he said, so quiet you almost missed it.

The mattress dipped when he lay down, leaving a careful foot of space between you. You stared at the ceiling, acutely aware of every shift of fabric, every uneven breath. Outside, rain lashed the stained-glass windows, painting blue fractals across his profile.

"You were..." Seonghwa swallowed. "At dinner. When you talked about the hanbok stitching. You lit up." His fingers brushed yours—testing, retreating. "I didn’t know you studied textile conservation."

The admission startled you. He’d paid for your entire academic record, yet he remembered this detail like it mattered. "Minor," you muttered. "Just a hobby."

A lie. You’d spent three summers interning at the conservation lab, breathing in the scent of aged silk and parchment until it lived in your pores.

Seonghwa turned his head. Moonlight caught the silver chain around his neck—the one he always wore under his shirts. "Show me."

"What?"

"The hanbok stitches. You said they survived wars." His voice dropped. "Prove it."

You exhaled sharply through your nose. "You want a lecture on textile preservation at midnight?"

His fingers brushed yours again—lingering this time. "I want to know what makes your eyes light up when you're not pretending."

The rain drummed harder against the windows. You rolled onto your side, facing him. His dark eyes tracked the movement, pupils swallowing the silvered light. "Fine," you muttered. "But only because you're paying my tuition."

Seonghwa's lips twitched. You launched into an explanation—15th-century warp threads, indigo dye extraction methods, how the underlayer stitches formed geometric patterns invisible to the naked eye. Halfway through, you realized his breathing had slowed. His fingers were still tangled with yours.

"You're not even listening," you accused.

“I’m listening,” Seonghwa murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that brushed against your skin in the dark.

He didn’t blink. His dark eyes were fixed on your face, tracking the animated curve of your lips, the sudden spark in your expression that had nothing to do with defiance and everything to do with passion. Under the heavy duvet, his thumb began to stroke the side of your hand—slow, rhythmic, and devastatingly gentle.

“Warp threads,” he repeated softly, proving him right. “Indigo dye. Hidden geometric patterns.” He shifted closer, the distance between you evaporating until the heat of his chest was radiating against yours. “I’m listening to every word. I just... I’ve never seen anyone care about something that doesn’t have a price tag attached to it.”

Your throat went dry. The cynical, street-smart armor you wore every day felt incredibly heavy, and for the first time, you could feel it cracking. “Everything has a price tag, Park,” you whispered, though the edge was entirely gone from your voice. “Some things are just bought with time instead of black cards.”

Seonghwa’s gaze dropped to your mouth, lingering there for a long, agonizing second before dragging back up to meet your eyes. “Then you’re wealthier than anyone I’ve ever met,” he breathed.

He didn’t try to kiss you again. Instead, he simply closed the remaining inch of space, burying his face in the crook of your neck, his forehead resting against your collarbone. His arm wound around your waist, pulling you flush against him, his large hand splaying flat against your lower back. It wasn't the possessive, dominant grip from the sedan. It was the desperate, exhausting surrender of a man who had been holding his breath for twenty-three years and had finally found oxygen.

You froze, your pulse hammering against his forehead. Rule number one. Rule number four. Every boundary you had painstakingly drawn in that grease-stained diner was dissolving into the expensive silk sheets. Slow, steady, your hand lifted, your fingers hovering over the soft dark hair at the nape of his neck before finally sinking into it.

Outside, the storm raged, but inside the four-poster bed of the Teezer House, the silence was absolute. You fell asleep to the steady, rhythmic beat of Park Seonghwa’s heart beneath your palm, completely oblivious to the fact that dawn was about to bring the wrecking ball.

The smell of rich, dark espresso and sizzling butter was what finally woke you.

Sunlight was streaming through the stained-glass windows, painting fractures of gold and amber across the bed. The space beside you was empty, the sheets cold, but the oversized T-shirt you were wearing still carried the faint, intoxicating scent of sandalwood.

You sat up, rubbing your eyes, the events of the previous night rushing back all at once. You swallowed hard, a sudden wave of panic hitting your chest. You needed to get out of here. You needed to find your clothes, put your armor back on, and get to campus before you forgot who you actually were.

Stepping out into the hallway, your bare feet made no sound against the polished hardwood. You followed the scent of coffee toward the grand, open-concept kitchen.

You didn't expect to find an audience.

"I'm telling you, he's losing his mind," a voice laughed from around the corner. It was loud, chaotic, and entirely too energetic for 9:00 AM. Wooyoung. "He spent thirty minutes adjusting the espresso grind size. Thirty minutes. Who does that?"

"Someone who has a guest," a deeper, much calmer voice replied. Hongjoong.

You rounded the corner, freezing in the archway. Wooyoung was sitting on the marble kitchen island, swinging his legs, a bowl of cereal in his lap. Hongjoong was leaning against the counter, a mug in his hand. And there, standing in front of a high-end espresso machine, was Seonghwa.

He was wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung grey sweatpants. The silver chain around his neck caught the morning sun, dangling against the sharp, defined planes of his chest and the rigid lines of his abs. He looked devastatingly handsome, entirely unbothered, and completely domestic.

The moment your bare feet clicked against the kitchen tile, all three pairs of eyes snapped to you.

Wooyoung choked. A stray piece of cereal literally flew out of his mouth as he gagged, his eyes widening to the size of saucers as he took in the sight of you—wearing Seonghwa's oversized shirt, your hair a messy, sleep-tousled halo around your shoulders.

Hongjoong didn't choke, but his eyebrows shot straight up into his hairline. A slow, deeply knowing smirk spread across the captain's face. He looked at Seonghwa, then back to you, silently acknowledging that the legendary, untouchable campus kingpin had just met his match.

Seonghwa didn't flinch. He turned smoothly, holding a pristine porcelain cup filled with perfect latte art. His eyes raked down your legs, a dark, possessive warmth flaring in his gaze before he masked it.

"You're awake," Seonghwa said, his voice a deep, morning purr that made your stomach do a violent flip. He walked past his gaping friends, completely ignoring them, and slid the cup into your hands. "Black, right? No sugar?"

"Yeah," you muttered, your face burning as Wooyoung finally recovered, letting out a dramatic, high-pitched cackle.

"Oh, so this is the contract?" Wooyoung teased, leaning forward on the island. "The one who thinks we're all minor inconveniences? Good morning, sister-in-law. Nice shirt. Looks better on you anyway."

"Shut up, Wooyoung," Seonghwa said flatly, but there was no real venom in his voice. He kept his body positioned between you and them, a subtle, protective barrier. His hand briefly brushed the small of your back—a lingering, hidden touch. "Go change. I'll drive you to campus."

The engine of Seonghwa's Mercedes purred to a stop outside your apartment building—a crumbling brick structure with a flickering neon sign that had read "VAC NCY" for as long as you'd lived there. You reached for the door handle, but his hand closed over your wrist. "Wait," he said, already unbuckling his seatbelt. "I'm coming up."

"You're not," you scoffed, but he was already rounding the hood, his designer shoes crunching over broken pavement. The lobby smelled of mildew and old takeout, the elevator perpetually "out of order." Seonghwa didn't comment as you took the stairs two at a time, your key already poised between your knuckles—a habit from too many late-night returns.

Your studio was exactly as you'd left it: textbooks splayed across the fold-out desk, a single burner stove with a pot of half-eaten ramen, the ceiling leak in the corner dripping steadily into a dollar-store bucket. Seonghwa stood frozen in the doorway, his sharp eyes cataloging every detail—the patched radiator, the thrift-store armchair with duct-taped seams, the three alarm clocks lined up on your nightstand because you couldn't afford to oversleep.

You shoved your notebook into your bag with too much force. "Satisfied? Now you know where the scholarship money goes."

His fingers caught your chin, tilting your face up. There was no pity in his gaze—just a simmering, quiet fury. "You don't have to go back to the diner tonight," he said, thumb brushing the dark circles under your eye. "Let me take care of it. Just for this week."

You scoffed, but his hand slid down to your wrist, pressing against your racing pulse. "Not charity," he murmured. "A renegotiation. Addendum to the contract—you get sleep, I get..." His gaze dropped to your mouth. "Cooperation."

The textile lab was silent except for the hum of the HVAC system. Midnight oil was nothing new to you—spending hours under the magnifying lamp, carefully restoring a 19th-century silk sleeve with micro-stitches. What was new: the soft click of the door, the scent of lemongrass and chili wafting through the sterile air.

Seonghwa slid onto the stool beside you, his hoodie sleeves pushed up to reveal the delicate silver watch that cost more than your rent. He set the takeout container in your peripheral vision without speaking. You didn't look up from your work. "You're blocking my light."

He shifted obediently. "Show me," he said, nodding at the fragile fabric stretched across the conservation frame.

You hesitated, then guided his hands over yours, adjusting his grip on the tweezers. "Like this. You'll tear the warp if you—" His fingers trembled under yours. You glanced up—and froze.

He wasn't looking at the fabric. His dark eyes traced the furrow between your brows, the way your bottom lip caught between your teeth when you concentrated. The intimacy of it burned hotter than the magnifying lamp between you.

"Seonghwa."

He kissed you. Not like the performative press of lips at the fundraiser. Not like the desperate, angry clash in the car. This was slow—a question against your mouth, his hands cradling your face like you were the fragile artifact. When he pulled back, his breath was uneven. "I don't think I can go back," he admitted, voice raw. "To before."

Your throat tightened. The contract was supposed to be bulletproof. But here, in the dim lab with Thai food cooling on the desk and his thumb brushing your cheekbone, the lines had dissolved completely.

For the next four days, the world outside the Teezer House didn’t exist.

The contract had become a ghost, an unspoken joke neither of you referenced as you essentially moved into his room. The guys in the house learned to stop knocking. Even Wooyoung stopped making his loud, cackling jokes in the kitchen after he walked into the living room on Wednesday afternoon and found Seonghwa sitting on the floor, his head resting against your knee as you read aloud from a textile history journal, his long fingers mindfully tracing the silver cuff on your wrist.

By Thursday night, the domesticity felt terrifyingly real.

A fresh storm was battering the stained glass, casting deep indigo shadows across the four-poster bed. You were tangled together beneath the heavy duvet, the vintage record player humming a low, jazzy instrumental that filled the spaces between the thunder claps. Seonghwa’s chest was warm against your back, his strong arm wrapped securely around your waist, pulling you so close there wasn’t a single pocket of air between your bodies.

He was kissing his way up your spine, his lips soft, warm, and painstakingly slow. Every press of his mouth against your bare skin felt like a confession, completely stripped of the cold, arrogant heir you’d met in the diner.

"Seonghwa," you breathed, your fingers tightening in the silk sheets as his lips found the sensitive spot at the crook of your neck. "We're going to break the bed."

He let out a low, vibration of a laugh against your skin, his grip on your waist tightening just enough to pin you down. "Let it break," he murmured, his voice thick with sleep and an intense, heavy devotion. He rolled you onto your back, hovering over you, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he looked down at you. The silver chain around his neck dangled, brushing against your collarbone. "I'll buy another one tomorrow."

"Rich boy," you whispered, reaching up to cup his jaw. Your thumb traced the sharp line of his bone, and instead of flinching or pulling away, he leaned into your palm, his eyes fluttering shut.

"I used to think that was all I had," Seonghwa whispered into the dark, his forehead coming down to rest against yours. His breath hitched—just once—as his fingers tangled with yours, pressing your hands into the mattress. "The money. The name. I thought everything in my life had to be a transaction because that’s the only way people knew how to love me. But you..." He opened his eyes, and the sheer, raw vulnerability in his gaze made your chest ache. "You look at me like I'm just a man. And I don't think I can ever go back to the way things were before you. I don't want the empire if you're not in it."

You didn't answer with words. You pulled him down by his neck, kissing him with a fierce, desperate intensity that felt like a dam breaking. You loved him. The realization slammed into your ribs like a physical blow, terrifying and beautiful all at once. For that one night, wrapped in his arms, you believed the hustle was finally over.

The wrecking ball arrived at 6:00 AM on Friday.

The mattress dipped as Seonghwa shifted, sitting on the edge of the bed. The morning light was gray and clinical, cutting through the room. He was already dressed in his crisp, tailored suit, the unyielding armor of Park Seonghwa fully back in place. But when he looked back at you, tangled in his sheets, his expression softened into that tender, helpless gaze from the night before.

He leaned across the bed, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead. "I have to go to the estate," he whispered, his thumb stroking your cheekbone. "My father called an emergency board meeting about the merger documents. I'll be back by midnight. Wait for me."

"Don't let them bore you to death," you muttered sleepily.

He smirked, a flash of his usual playfulness returning. "Impossible. I have a reason to come back now."

But midnight came and went. The instrumental on the record player clicked off, leaving the room entirely silent.

By Saturday afternoon, the silence had turned into a suffocating weight. You texted the velvet-boxed phone—no response. You called—straight to voicemail. By Sunday night, a sick, cold knot of dread had settled deep into your stomach. You went back to your apartment, unable to sit in his empty room any longer, staring at the ceiling leak as the minutes ticked by. He had vanished into the golden cage of his family empire, and the door had slammed shut behind him.

On Monday morning, the floor completely dropped out.

You walked onto campus, your body aching from a lack of sleep, your mind spinning with worst-case scenarios. You headed straight to the library for your shift, desperate for a distraction. But the moment you walked through the doors, your manager met you with a pale face and a tight, sympathetic expression, holding a pink slip of paper.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, looking genuinely sick. "The university administration handed down a directive an hour ago. Budget cuts across the student employment sector. Specifically from the Park Foundation. We have to terminate your contract immediately."

Your heart stopped. "What?" you whispered.

Before she could answer, your personal phone buzzed violently in your pocket. It was an automated alert from the university registrar. With trembling fingers, you pulled it out.

NOTICE OF REGISTRATION HOLD: ACADEMIC YEAR 2026 Your account balance of $12,500.00 is strictly PAST DUE. The previously processed corporate transfer has been reversed due to 'unauthorized account activity.' You have 24 hours to clear the balance or your current enrollment will be permanently revoked.

The room tilted. You stared at the red text on the screen, a cold, venomous understanding washing over you.

It hadn't been a glitch. It hadn't been a mistake. Jiyeon and his father hadn't just discovered the fake contract—they had weaponized it. They had tracked every single detail of your life through Seonghwa's transaction records and systematically dismantled your survival. They were crushing you like a bug under a designer heel, showing you exactly how powerless a hustler was against old money.

And Seonghwa had been silent for three days.

Furious, terrified, and fueled by a raw, burning betrayal, you turned on your heel and sprinted out of the library. You didn't care who saw you. You didn't care about the rules anymore. You marched across the campus quad, your breath ragged, heading straight for the only place you knew he might be.

You stormed through the iron gates of the Teezer House, bypassing the front door and walking straight around to the private stone courtyard in the back.

You stopped dead in your tracks.

Seonghwa was standing by the fountain. But he wasn't alone. Lee Jiyeon was standing right beside him, looking radiant and untouchable in a flawless white designer dress, her manicured hand hooked tightly, possessively through the crook of his arm.

Seonghwa’s father stood a few paces away, talking quietly on a sleek phone, his presence casting a suffocating shadow over the courtyard.

The sound of your heavy breathing made Seonghwa snap his head around. For a fraction of a second, when his dark eyes locked onto yours, a flash of pure, agonizing horror ripped across his face. He took a single, instinctive step toward you, his lips parting as if he wanted to scream your name.

But Father Park slowly lowered his phone, his sharp, calculating eyes flicking from you to his son, a silent, deadly warning hanging in the air. One wrong move, and I destroy her permanently.

You saw the exact moment Seonghwa’s soul died.

The soft, vulnerable boy who had held you in the dark vanished. A cold, frozen wasteland washed over his features, his jaw tightening into a rigid, unbreakable mask of wealthy arrogance. He deliberately relaxed his posture, letting Jiyeon lean closer into his side, his eyes turning into two pools of dead, unfeeling black as he looked right through you.

"What are you doing here?" Seonghwa said. His voice didn't just sound cold—it sounded like glass snapping under a boot.

You took a step forward, your hands clenching into fists, your voice trembling with a mixture of rage and heartbreak. "The tuition check, Seonghwa. My job. What the hell did you do?"

Seonghwa let out a short, lazy chuckle, the sound entirely devoid of warmth. He reached up with his free hand, casually adjusting the cuff of his suit shirt—the exact same clinical motion he’d used the day you met.

"Did you really think that little performance was going to last forever?" he asked, tilting his head with a cruel, patronizing smirk. Beside him, Jiyeon let out a smug, quiet snicker. "My father saw right through the lie the moment we sat down at dinner. You played your part well enough to get your little bills paid for a week, but the game is over. I'm finalizing the merger with Jiyeon's family this afternoon."

The words felt like a physical blade ripping through your chest. You couldn't breathe. "You're lying," you whispered, searching his dead eyes for a single crack, a single trace of the man who had whispered that he loved you into your skin just three nights ago.

There was nothing.

"You're a temporary distraction, sweetheart," Seonghwa slid the word out like venom, his gaze dragging down your faded jeans and old sneakers with practiced disgust. "A street-smart girl with a sharp mouth. It was amusing for a few days, but a Park doesn't marry the help." He flicked his eyes past your shoulder, his voice dropping into a flat, dismissive command. "Wooyoung. Get her off the property. She's trespassing."

From the shadows of the courtyard porch, Wooyoung stepped out. His usual smirk was completely gone, his face pale and heavy with a dark, furious reluctance. He looked at Seonghwa like he wanted to kill him, but he walked over to you anyway, his hand gently touching your shoulder.

"Come on," Wooyoung muttered quietly, his voice cracked with a rare, genuine pity. "Let's go."

You didn't cry. Your badass pride—the only thing you had left—kept your chin up. You tore your shoulder away from Wooyoung's grip, taking one last, long look at Park Seonghwa. You looked at the silver chain around his neck, the one hidden beneath his tie, and you realized the absolute luxury he lived in was nothing but a golden graveyard.

"Keep your blood money, Park," you said, your voice steady, razor-sharp, and completely devastating. "You're right. You can't buy a girl like me anyway."

You turned on your heel and walked out, leaving the lion's den behind you, completely blind to the fact that the moment your back was turned, Seonghwa’s hand gripped the edge of the stone fountain so hard his knuckles bled, his chest heaving as he suffocated in his own ruin.

The first thing you noticed when you slammed your apartment door shut was the sound. That damn ceiling bucket—still dripping, still counting down the seconds like a metronome for your unraveling life. You threw your backpack onto the kitchen counter with enough force to send a stack of overdue bills fluttering to the floor. Fuck dignity. Fuck composure. You were done playing by anyone's rules but your own.

Your hands didn't shake as you yanked open the dresser drawer where you kept your student files. No tears. Just the cold, clinical detachment of a soldier packing up camp before the enemy artillery hit. Your fingers brushed against something hard in the bottom of your backpack as you reached for your ID. Not the cheap plastic card—no, this was the velvet-lined weight of betrayal itself. The goddamn phone.

You almost hurled it across the room. Almost. But the screen lit up like a flare in the dark, casting blue shadows across your peeling wallpaper. One message. Unknown number. Your thumb hovered—then stabbed the notification like it owed you money.

*DON'T WITHDRAW. CHECK YOUR PORTAL. HE'S LYING.*

The words burned your retinas. You fumbled for your laptop, nearly cracking the screen in your haste. The university login page loaded at agonizing speed. When the balance flashed up—$0.00—your breath left your body in one sharp exhale. Not corporate funds. Not the Park Foundation. The transaction ID was a string of numbers you recognized from nights spent half-listening to Seonghwa mutter about offshore accounts, his lips tracing your shoulder blade as he complained about his father's controls. His personal trust. The one locked until his wedding day.

You slammed the laptop shut. The velvet box hit the wall with a satisfying thud. 

Outside your window, campus security lights flickered on. Somewhere across town, Seonghwa was probably sitting through another torturous dinner with Jiyeon’s hand clamped over his wrist like a branded cuff. You imagined him—back straight, eyes dead—while his father toasted the merger. The mental image should have satisfied you. It didn’t. 

You yanked open your closet, fingers closing around the one item you’d sworn never to touch again: the silver cuff. The metal was cold against your palm. Your grandmother’s voice echoed in your skull: "You don’t bury your weapons when the war’s not over." 

The Teezer House loomed under amber porch lights. You bypassed the front door entirely, heading straight for the basement studio where Hongjoong composed his merciless beats. The bass shook the doorframe. You kicked it open without knocking.

Hongjoong didn’t look up from his mixing board. "Took you long enough," he said, slamming a track into silence. His eyes flicked to the cuff in your hand. "You here to cash that in or throw it at someone’s head?"

"Both," you said, your voice a flat line that cut right through the residual hum of the studio speakers. You marched over to his desk and slammed the silver cuff down onto the mahogany console, right next to his thousand-dollar mixing board. "Seonghwa thinks he’s the only one who knows how to play dirty because he has a trust fund. But he’s currently playing the martyr at his daddy's estate, and I don't let people fight my wars for me."

Hongjoong leaned back in his leather chair, laced his fingers together behind his head, and looked up at you. The smug, knowing smirk that usually lived on his face was entirely missing. In its place was a heavy, calculated curiosity. He looked at the antique silver, then up at the raw, unyielding fire in your eyes.

"He emptied the offshore account," Hongjoong stated, it wasn't a question. "Paid the twelve-grand directly to the bursar from a private terminal in his father’s study while the old man was asleep. If his dad tracks the IP, Seonghwa gets legally disinherited by morning. He knew that. He did it anyway."

"I didn't ask him to save me," you spat, crossing your arms tightly over your chest. "And I sure as hell didn't ask him to call me a 'temporary distraction' in front of that walking pink spreadsheet."

"He had a wiretap on his phone, sweetheart," Hongjoong said quietly, the sudden drop in his tone making your anger hitch. "His father had people outside your apartment. If Seonghwa didn't make you look like a discarded toy right then and there, his dad wasn't just going to pull your tuition—he was going to have the university board blacklist you from every academic institution in the country. He was protecting your hustle."

The air left your lungs in a sharp, painful rush. You stared at Hongjoong, the cold realization settling into your stomach like lead. Seonghwa hadn't broken the contract because he was bored. He had broken his own heart to keep you from being collateral damage.

"So what's the play?" you demanded, leaning over his desk, your face inches from his. "Because I'm not sitting in my studio apartment listening to a ceiling leak while he signs his life away to Lee Jiyeon."

Hongjoong’s lips slowly curved into a dark, dangerous smile—the exact look he wore when he was about to ruin a rival house's entire reputation. He pulled a sleek, encrypted flash drive from his pocket and tapped it against the desk.

"Lee Jiyeon's family empire isn't a fortress; it's a house of cards," Hongjoong murmured, his eyes flashing. "Her dad’s shipping company has been laundering money through dummy textile corporations in Europe for three years. Seonghwa’s been digging, but he can't get the internal authentication codes without triggering an alarm on his father's server." He slid the flash drive toward you. "But you... you have a student credential that gives you unrestricted remote access to the university's textile conservation archives. The exact archives where Jiyeon's family secretly hosted their 'cultural donation' appraisals last month."

You looked at the flash drive. A badass, lethal smile slowly spread across your face, matching his note for note. You uncapped your lipstick with your teeth, swiping a fresh layer of defiance over your lips.

"Tell Wooyoung to get his car ready," you whispered, snatching the drive. "If Seonghwa is going to burn his empire down, tell him I brought the matches."

The basement smelled like stale energy drinks and vengeance. Hongjoong’s fingers flew across the keyboard, his screens reflecting in his glasses like some cyberpunk prophet of chaos. You leaned over his shoulder, watching as the university’s archival portal flickered to life, your student credentials granting access to the digital vault of textile conservation records.

“There,” you muttered, stabbing a finger at the screen. “The ‘cultural donation’ logs from last month—those appraisal records are bullshit. Jiyeon’s family didn’t donate a damn thing. They just needed a paper trail to cover the money laundering.”

Hongjoong’s smirk was razor-sharp. “And here I thought you were just a pretty face with a lipstick arsenal.” He pulled up the metadata, isolating the authentication codes embedded in the files—codes that matched the dummy corporations Seonghwa had been tracking. The evidence was so blatant it was almost insulting.

You snatched the flash drive from his desk, plugging it in with a satisfying click. “Send it to the old man’s inbox. Right in the middle of his little gala.”

Hongjoong’s laugh was dark as he queued the file. “Timed delivery. Five minutes from now—just when they’re about to toast the merger.”

The gala would be in full swing by now—crystal chandeliers, orchestral pretension, Seonghwa suffocating in a tuxedo while Jiyeon clung to him like a gilded noose. You imagined Father Park’s phone vibrating discreetly in his pocket, the way his expression would freeze mid-sip when he saw the evidence. The way Jiyeon wouldn’t even understand why the room had gone silent until it was too late.

“Done.” Hongjoong spun his chair toward you, his fingers steepled. “Now what?”

You stood, tucking the flash drive into your back pocket like a loaded weapon. “Now we watch.”

The Park Estate ballroom glittered like a gilded tomb. Seonghwa stood statue-still at the head table, his champagne flute untouched. Jiyeon’s fingers dug into his arm, her smile venomous beneath the chandelier light. Father Park raised his glass, his voice carrying across the hushed room. “To the future of our families—”

A soft chime cut through his toast.

Father Park’s phone screen illuminated in his breast pocket. He frowned, retrieving it with the practiced grace of a man who never let anything disrupt his theatrics. Then he froze. His thumb hovered over the file labeled JY Holdings—Fraudulent Appraisal Records.

Jiyeon giggled, oblivious. “Father Park, surely business can wait—”

“Silence.” The word cracked like a whip.

Seonghwa’s breath hitched as his father’s gaze sliced across the room—not to Jiyeon, but to him. The old man’s lips curled into something between a snarl and a smile. He turned the screen toward Jiyeon’s father. “Explain this.”

The room held its breath as Jiyeon’s father paled, his fingers trembling around his champagne flute. The glass slipped, shattering on the marble floor. A server flinched. Seonghwa didn’t move. He watched, pulse hammering, as his father leaned in and murmured something that made Jiyeon’s father physically recoil.

Jiyeon’s manicured hand tightened on Seonghwa’s arm. “What’s happening?”

Seonghwa didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on his father’s phone—on the unmistakable university archive watermark in the corner of the screen. His chest tightened. He knew that watermark. Knew the hand that had accessed those files.

Father Park pocketed his phone with deliberate slowness. Then he did something Seonghwa had never seen in twenty-three years: he laughed. A dry, rasping sound that made the entire ballroom stiffen. “Lee,” he said, still chuckling, “your daughter’s family is a liability wrapped in a couture dress.” He flicked his fingers toward Jiyeon like she was a speck of dust. “The merger is terminated.”

Jiyeon’s shriek shattered the stunned silence. “You can’t—”

“I just did.” Father Park’s voice cut through hers like a blade. He turned to Seonghwa, his gaze sharpening. “That girl of yours—she pulled these records?” 

Seonghwa’s throat went dry. He nodded once.

Father Park exhaled, shaking his head. Then he smirked. “She just saved our family ten billion won by playing dirtier than me.” He leaned in, lowering his voice so only Seonghwa could hear. “Go get her before someone else does.”

Jiyeon was still screaming when Seonghwa wrenched his arm free. He didn’t look back. 

The velvet-boxed phone sat on your desk, a silent testament to the wreckage you’d just caused. You stared at the dripping ceiling bucket, the steady plip, plip, plip sounding like a countdown for the fallout. You had successfully detonated a bomb in the middle of the Park family empire, and now the silence in your cramped studio apartment was suffocating. You paced the linoleum floor, your knuckles white, waiting for the world to end. Waiting to see if your gamble had ruined you completely.

And then, the door didn't just receive a knock—it violently rattled off its hinges.

The sound was desperate, a frantic pounding that made the old wood groan. Your body went rigid. You didn't reach for a weapon; you didn't need one. You strode across the room and yanked the door open, ready to face whatever fury Father Park had sent your way.

Instead, you froze.

Park Seonghwa stood in your dingy hallway, a breathtaking wreck. He was a stark, brutal contrast to the peeling paint and flickering fluorescent lights of your building. He was still wearing his gala tuxedo—a garment that probably cost more than everything you owned—but it was entirely ruined. The expensive jacket was unbuttoned, his silk bow tie torn open and hanging loose around his neck. His hair was completely soaked from the pouring rain outside, dark strands plastered to his forehead, and his chest heaved as if he had run the entire way to your building. His knuckles were bruised and bleeding slightly, a testament to how hard he had gripped the steering wheel of his car just to reach you.

For a heartbeat, neither of you breathed. He just stared at you, his dark eyes wide, frantic, and entirely undone, as if he were checking to make sure you hadn't evaporated into thin air.

Before you could utter a single razor-sharp defense, Seonghwa stepped across your threshold, reached back, and slammed the door shut behind him. The click of the lock had barely registered before he collapsed.

He didn’t try to pull you into an arrogant embrace. He didn’t try to smooth things over with a transactional smile. With a heavy, devastating finality, Park Seonghwa dropped straight to his knees on your cheap, cold linoleum floor.

Your breath hitched. You stepped back instinctively, but his long, ring-adorned fingers shot forward, wrapping around your thighs with a terrifying, loose desperation. He buried his face straight into your stomach, his broad shoulders instantly starting to violently shake. He was weeping. It wasn't the quiet, dignified crying of a wealthy heir; it was the raw, ugly, gut-wrenching sobriety of a man who had just escaped an execution.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, his voice a broken, ragged whisper that tore through the quiet of your room. His hands gripped your denim jeans tighter, pulling you flush against him as he hid his face. “I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

You stood frozen, your hands hovering over his soaked hair, the badass armor you had painstakingly built up over the last three days suddenly feeling too heavy to hold. “Seonghwa—”

“I thought playing the villain would keep him away from you,” he interrupted, his voice cracking as he looked up.

When you met his gaze, the sheer, unadulterated angst behind his eyes made your chest ache. His face was stained with a mixture of rainwater and genuine tears. The cold, unyielding mask from the courtyard was entirely gone, replaced by a vulnerability so deep it was almost terrifying to look at.

“My father... he had people outside your door,” Seonghwa whispered, his fingers trembling against your skin. “He was going to blacklist you. He was going to ensure you could never step foot on a university campus again. I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t care about the inheritance. But I couldn’t let them break your spirit. I couldn’t let them destroy your hustle because of me. So I lied. I said the cruelest things I could think of because I knew you’d walk away. I knew you’d be safe from him if you hated me.”

You reached down, your fingers finally sinking into his wet, dark hair. You gripped his jaw, your thumb wiping away a stray tear mixed with rain, forcing him to stand up. He rose unsteadily, his hands instantly coming up to cradle your face, his palms burning hot against your cheeks.

“I spent my entire life surrounded by gold, thinking everything in this world had a price tag,” Seonghwa breathed, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made the room tilt. He leaned in until his forehead rested against yours, his breath uneven and smelling faintly of the expensive champagne he hadn't drunk. “But being in that ballroom tonight... looking at Jiyeon, looking at my father... I was suffocating. I realized it then. All of it is worthless. The name, the empire, the luxury—it’s nothing but a golden graveyard. Your love is the only true luxury I’ve ever had in my miserable life.”

A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips, though his eyes remained fiercely devoted. “And then my father’s phone chimed. I saw your watermark on those files. You didn't run, sweetheart. You stayed and you fought. You played dirtier than all of them.” He slid his hands down to your neck, his thumbs tracing your pulse point, which was hammering wildly against his skin. “The merger is dead. Jiyeon is ruined. And my father told me to come get you before someone else does because you’re the only person who’s ever managed to out-hustle him.”

Seonghwa’s gaze dropped to your mouth, his thumb lightly brushing your bottom lip, smudging the residual red lipstick you wore like war paint.

“If I have to burn the entire Park empire to the ground to keep you,” he whispered, his voice dropping into a deep, velvety promise that sent a shiver straight down your spine, “I’ll let you light the goddamn match.”

The first kiss was a collision—not the practiced, staged performance of the gala, but something desperate and ravenous. Seonghwa’s mouth crashed against yours with the force of a man who had been drowning for years and finally breached the surface. You tasted rain on his lips, the salt of his tears, the faint metallic tang of blood from where he’d bitten his own tongue holding back your name all this time. His hands—those elegant, ring-adorned hands that signed million-won contracts without flinching—trembled as they gripped your waist, lifting you onto the fold-out desk with a single, ruthless motion. Textbooks and overdue bills scattered across the floor, forgotten. His tuxedo jacket hit the ground with a wet slap, the silk lining ruined by the storm.

For a breathless moment, all you could feel was the heat of his palms branding your skin through the thin fabric of your shirt, the way his fingers dug into your hips like he was afraid you’d vanish if he loosened his grip even slightly. Then his mouth was at your throat, teeth scraping over your pulse point as he muttered a litany of broken apologies and ragged praise. “I’m sorry—god, I’m sorry—you’re so fucking perfect—”

And then, just as suddenly as it began, he slowed.

Seonghwa pulled back, his chest heaving, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made your breath catch. Without a word, he slid his hands under your thighs, lifting you effortlessly off the desk and carrying you the three stumbling steps to your narrow bed. He laid you down like you were made of something precious, his fingers trailing over your skin with a reverence that bordered on worship. The contrast was dizzying—the cold silver of his rings against your flushed skin, the rough calluses on his fingertips from years of gripping pens and steering wheels and the edges of his own control.

He kissed every part of you like it was a confession. Your jaw, where you clenched it tight during exams. Your collarbone, where the strap of your work apron had left a permanent tan line. The dark circles under your eyes that he traced with his thumb before pressing his lips there, whispering, “Beautiful.” His mouth moved lower, down the slope of your breast, over the quickening flutter of your stomach, until you were arching off the mattress with a gasp.

“Seonghwa—”

“Let me,” he murmured, his voice rough. “Let me give you this.” His hands slid under your hips, lifting you to his mouth with a groan that vibrated through your skin. His tongue was relentless, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your thighs with just enough bite to make you whimper. You tangled your hands in his hair, tugging hard, but he didn’t stop—not until your thighs were shaking and your voice had cracked around his name.

When he finally pulled away, his lips were slick, his breathing ragged. He stripped off his ruined dress shirt with impatient hands, revealing the lean muscles of his torso, the faint scars from a life lived under scrutiny. You reached for him, your fingers tracing the lines of his body like you were memorizing him. He shuddered under your touch, his eyes closing briefly before he caught your wrist, pressing a kiss to your palm.

“Look at me,” he whispered, guiding your legs around his waist. “I want to see you.”

The first slow thrust stole the breath from your lungs. Seonghwa’s head dropped to your shoulder, his groan muffled against your skin as he buried himself to the hilt. He held still for a moment, trembling, his fingers lacing through yours and pinning them to the mattress—not to restrain you, but to anchor himself. When he finally moved, it was with a deliberate, aching slowness, his hips rolling against yours in a rhythm that had you gasping. Every drag of his body against yours was a promise, every whispered praise a vow.

Outside, the storm still raged, but inside your cramped apartment, the world narrowed to the space between your bodies. The dim light from your desk lamp cast shadows across Seonghwa’s face, highlighting the sharp angle of his jaw, the way his eyelashes fluttered when you tightened around him. He cursed under his breath, his grip tightening on your hands as he leaned down to capture your mouth again.

“You feel—” He broke off with a groan when you arched beneath him, your nails scraping down his back. “—like heaven. Fuck, you’re perfect.”

The friction built slowly, torturously, until every nerve in your body was alight. Seonghwa’s movements grew more erratic, his control fraying at the edges. His lips found your pulse point, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin there as he murmured your name like a prayer. When you finally fell apart, his arms locked around you, holding you close as he followed you over the edge, his voice breaking against your neck.

Afterward, he didn’t pull away. He stayed buried inside you, his forehead pressed to yours, his breath still uneven. His thumb traced your cheekbone, wiping away the sweat there before he kissed you softly, almost chastely.

“Mine,” he murmured against your lips, the word more a statement than a question.

You didn’t answer with words. You couldn’t. Instead, you simply tightened your arms around his bare neck, pulling him down until his heavy chest was resting completely against yours, the steady, thudding rhythm of his heartbeat echoing the frantic pace of your own.

The storm outside finally began to pass, the violent thunder tapering off into a soft, rhythmic patter against the glass. Inside your studio, the suffocating weight that had hung over you for days evaporated completely. Seonghwa shifted slightly, rolling onto his side but refusing to break the contact between your bodies. He pulled the cheap, faded duvet up over your shoulders, tucking you securely against his side as if the rest of the world might try to steal you away the second he let go.

His long fingers, still adorned with the expensive silver rings that had grazed your skin moments ago, traced idle, soothing circles along your bare arm. He stopped when his thumb hit your wrist, his touch lingering on your grandmother’s antique silver cuff.

“My father wants to meet with you,” Seonghwa murmured into the quiet room, his voice a low, post-coital rumble that vibrated through your chest.

You stiffened slightly, your badass instincts immediately flaring back to life. “If he thinks I’m going to sit across from him and apologize—”

“No,” Seonghwa interrupted softly, a low, genuinely amused chuckle vibrating in his throat. He leaned over, pressing a tender kiss to the crown of your head. “He doesn’t want an apology. He wants a negotiation. On your terms. He’s officially stepping down from the university board, and he’s handing the primary management of the domestic firm over to me. But he made it very clear that he won't finalize the paperwork unless you're standing in the room to witness it. He told me he’s never seen anyone dismantle a ten-billion-won merger with a student credential and a laptop.”

You let out a dry, quiet laugh, your fingers wrapping around the silver chain at his neck—the one that had dangled against your skin while he worshipped you. “I told you, Park. I don’t bow to spreadsheets. I rewrite them.”

“I know,” he whispered, his eyes dark and fiercely devoted as he looked down at you. He caught your hand, lifting it to his lips to press a soft kiss against your knuckles. “And you’ll never have to look at a past-due notice again. I’m yours. Everything I have, everything I am—it belongs to you.”

Three weeks later, the air inside The Iron Lotus was thick with the scent of expensive liquor, heavy smoke, and the deep, vibrating thrum of the bass. The exclusive, high-end campus club was packed to the brim with the university’s wealthy elite, but tonight, the hierarchy had completely shifted.

Up in the central VIP booth, you sat like royalty.

You weren't wearing the emerald dress anymore; tonight, you were in your own clothes, a sharp, badass outfit that screamed confidence, but the sheer luxury surrounding you was undeniable. Seonghwa didn't sit across from you. He sat right beside you, completely unbothered by his pristine reputation, his long legs tangled with yours. His expensive tailored suit jacket was unbuttoned, and as he reached over to pour your drink himself—completely ignoring the VIP hostess waiting on him—the gold strobes caught the light on his wrist.

Tangled directly into his expensive silver wrist chain was your grandmother's antique silver cuff, worn proudly like a charm of absolute ownership.

The Teezer boys were crowded around the table, the atmosphere loud and celebratory. Hongjoong raised his glass toward you from across the booth, a rare, highly respectful smirk on his face. He knew exactly what it took to win a war against the world, and he appreciated the way you’d handled the matches.

Seonghwa picked up his glass, his other arm securely winding around your waist to pull you directly into his lap. He didn't care who was watching. He didn't care about the whispers passing through the crowd below. He looked down at you, his dark eyes entirely whipped, radiating a heavy, breathless adoration that money could never buy.

"To the real boss," Seonghwa said smoothly, his deep voice carrying over the music as he raised his glass to the table. The boys cheered, clinking their glasses together. Seonghwa leaned down, pressing a lingering, possessive kiss to your temple, whispering into your ear, 

"My ultimate luxury."

You smiled, clinking your glass against his, completely content. The hustle was finally over. You had won.

The bass dropped heavily, the crimson and amber strobe lights slicing through the thick smoke of the club. As you and Seonghwa laughed, completely lost in each other’s space, the cinematic energy of the room naturally shifted away from the VIP booth. The camera panned down the velvet-lined stairs, moving past the dancing crowd, and landed squarely on the sleek, polished marble of the main bar.

Leaning against the counter was Wooyoung.

His pristine white shirt had the top two buttons undone, his dark hair slightly messy as he watched the VIP booth from a distance. A smug, deeply satisfied smirk played on his lips. He took a slow sip of his whiskey, genuinely happy to see his best friend finally breathing, finally free of the golden cage.

Wooyoung set his glass back down on the marble, his smirk widening as he prepared to turn back to the crowd.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over his space.

A girl stepped directly into his personal perimeter, completely ignoring the unspoken rule of giving the campus playboy his distance. She was significantly shorter than him, but she didn't look intimidated. Not even close. She wore an aura that screamed pure, unfiltered trouble, her posture rigid with an unbroken, badass confidence.

Without hesitation, she stepped so close her boots nearly brushed his, effectively cornering Wooyoung against the edge of the bar counter.

Wooyoung’s smug smirk instantly faltered. His posture froze, his glass hovering half an inch above the marble. He slowly lowered his head, his dark, piercing eyes locking onto hers, taking in the absolute defiance radiating off her small frame. She looked up at him, her chin tilted high, her gaze challenging him without uttering a single syllable.

The air between them turned electric, the heavy thumping of the club’s bass fading into the background as Wooyoung's eyes narrowed, a dangerous, deeply intrigued fire sparking in his gaze.

The hand-off was complete.

Cut to black.

navigation. – all works.

© KOZTION 2026 | Please don’t nibble on my work—no reposting, translating, or stealing!

DISCLAIMER | These posts are just little stories from my imagination! They are not a true representation of the members in any way. Please treat these fictions as a cozy escape and don't take them to heart!

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SYNOPSIS ; Kim Hongjoong is the ruthless dictator of the TEEZER house, and his latest decree is simple: Absolute emotional detachment. No situationships, no distractions, no exceptions. It’s a foolproof system, except for one detail—the rules weren't written to keep his men in line. They were built to keep you out. Three months after breaking off your secret, late-night arrangement to protect his pride, Hongjoong finds himself trapped in a pitch-black room with you during a violent campus storm. Armed with ice-cold compliance and zero intention of backing down, you’re about to prove that you can’t regulate a heartbeat. The fortress is cracking, the paperwork has hit the floor, and the great Captain is about to learn exactly what it means to bow.

PAIRING(S) ; Frat Captain!Kim Hongjoong x Fem!reader

WARNING(S) ; Exes-to-lovers, secret history, forced proximity (trapped in a storm), corporate/fraternity au, mutual pining, malicious compliance, fake/hidden emotions. Explicit sexual content !!MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!, rough/frenetic intimacy, biting, slight blood (lip biting), marking/bruising, language/profanity, public display of affection/groveling.

WC ; 10k-ish

Part 4/8 of THE REVERENCE SERIES.

a/n ; Inspired by Rules by doja cat !

The air in the TEEZER house kitchen smelled like stale beer, expensive cologne, and immediate regret.

It was 10:00 AM on a Sunday, and the sunlight cutting through the blinds was entirely too bright for the seven men gathered around the scarred oak island. At the head of the space stood KIM HONGJOONG, looking less like a college senior and more like a corporate executioner. He hadn’t slept. His leather jacket was slung over the back of a chair, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing the sharp lines of his forearms as he aggressively smoothed down a crisp, printed sheet of paper against the stainless-steel refrigerator.

Magnetic tape snapped against the metal.

"Look at it," Hongjoong commanded, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that immediately silenced the low groaning from the hangover brigade. "Read it. Memorize it. Because as of five minutes ago, this house is under a strict goddamn lockdown."

Song Mingi, slumped so low in his chair his chin was practically resting on the table, let out a miserable whine. "Hongjoong, man, my head is literally splitting open. Can we do the dictatorship speech at noon?"

"No," Hongjoong fired back, his dark eyes snapping over to Mingi with zero mercy. "We do it now. Because last night, half of our executive board missed the alumni mixer because you were 'otherwise occupied' upstairs, and San was apparently too busy playing prince charming to notice someone threw up in the downstairs foyer. We are losing control. The TEEZER house has a reputation, and I am not letting a collective case of sudden, pathetic heart-eyes ruin our standing on this campus."

Choi San, sitting cross-legged on a barstool with a mug of black coffee cupped in his hands, didn't even look guilty. He just smirked into his mug, a faint, whipped softness around his eyes that only validated Hongjoong’s fury.

"So, what is that?" Jeong Yunho asked from the kitchen island, leaning forward with a smug, knowing grin. "A manifesto?"

"It’s a corrective measure," Hongjoong said coldly, tapping his knuckle against the paper.

Centered at the top of the page, bolded and unyielding, were the words: THE NEW RULES.

Rule 1: No overnight guests past 2 AM on weeknights.

Rule 2: No domestic privileges (cooking, laundry, or clothing borrowing) for non-residents.

Rule 3: Absolute emotional detachment. No situationships, no placeholders, no distractions that interfere with house duties.

"You've got to be kidding me," Mingi muttered, squinting at the page. "You literally wrote out an anti-feeling clause?"

"I wrote an anti-stupidity clause," Hongjoong corrected, crossing his arms over his chest. "If you can't keep your head straight, I’ll keep it straight for you. The next person who breaks a boundary or lets a girl dictate their schedule answers directly to me."

The front door clicked open down the hall, followed by the soft, familiar scuff of sneakers on the hardwood. Hongjoong didn't think much of it—until you walked straight into the kitchen.

You stopped dead in your tracks, a tote bag slung over your shoulder and your hair tied up in a messy clip. You had only come by to retrieve a denim jacket you’d left on the living room couch the Friday before, completely unprepared to walk into what looked like a high-stakes mafia tribunal.

Every eye in the room shifted to you.

Hongjoong’s posture went instantly rigid. The collective breath in his lungs hitched, his jaw tightening so hard a small muscle ticked beneath his skin. It had been three months since he abruptly ended the secret, late-night arrangement the two of you shared—three months of him pretending you were just another face on campus, and three months of you treating him like white noise.

You looked at the tense circle of boys, then at Hongjoong, and finally, your eyes drifted to the fresh piece of paper pinned to the fridge.

You walked over, entirely unbothered by the suffocating silence, and read the bolded title. Then, you read the three rules.

A short, genuine laugh burst from your lips—loud, mocking, and completely lethal to Hongjoong’s carefully constructed authority.

"The New Rules?" you murmured, looking back at him with an raised eyebrow, your eyes dripping with sharp amusement. "What is this, Hongjoong? A fraternity or a corporate internship?"

"It doesn't concern you," Hongjoong said, his voice dropping an octave, a dangerous edge cutting through his tone. "It's house business. Grab your things and leave."

You didn't flinch. Instead, you took a step closer to him, entirely immune to the "Captain" persona that kept the rest of the campus in check. You knew exactly what he looked like when he wasn't playing dictator; you knew the exact cadence of his breath against your neck at 3 AM.

"Oh, it does concern me, considering your little disciples usually come to me to complain when you have a power trip," you countered smoothly, crossing your arms. You tilted your head toward the fridge. "Emotional detachment? No situationships? Let's be real—if you can't text someone back, you should just look them in their face and say it, instead of printing out a manifesto because you’re terrified of a little vulnerability."

A collective, quiet 'oh shit' seemed to ripple through the boys. Yunho hid a laugh behind his hand, and San suddenly found his coffee very interesting.

Hongjoong’s eyes darkened, a flash of pure, unadulterated frustration breaking through his icy exterior. He stepped into your space, his chest practically brushing yours, trying to use his height and his position to crowd you out.

"Out," he ordered the room, not breaking eye contact with you for a fraction of a second. "Everyone. Out of the kitchen. Now."

Nobody argued. The boys scrambled out of their seats with frantic urgency, Mingi practically tripping over his own feet to escape the incoming blast radius. Within three seconds, the heavy swing door clicked shut, leaving just the two of you in the suffocating heat of the kitchen.

"You think you're exceptionally clever, don't you?" Hongjoong hissed, his voice low and dangerous as he leaned down, his face inches from yours.

"I think you're a hypocrite," you whispered back, matching his fire with a cold, steady gaze of your own. "You want to play the cold king who doesn't feel anything? Fine. Let’s see how long your little kingdom stands when you try to regulate the one thing you can't control."

Hongjoong’s fingers twitched at his sides, the only crack in his otherwise immovable posture. The scent of his cologne—something expensive and sharp—mixed with the residual musk of last night’s party, wrapping around you like an unspoken dare. "You don’t get to walk in here and act like you know how I operate," he said, voice rough-edged, the kind of tone that sent underclassmen scrambling.  

You didn’t scramble. Instead, you leaned in, close enough that your next words brushed against the shell of his ear. "I don’t act," you murmured. "I know." And just like that, you stepped back, pivoting toward the living room like none of it mattered—like he didn’t matter. The denim jacket was right where you left it, slung over the arm of the couch. You snatched it up, folding it over your arm with deliberate nonchalance.  

Behind you, Hongjoong let out a slow, controlled exhale. "Those rules apply to everyone," he said, quieter now, almost to himself. "Especially past mistakes."

You don’t stop walking. You let his words hit your back, but you refuse to let him see you stumble. You throw a sharp, careless smile over your shoulder as you reach the front door.

"Then you better pray I don't catch you breaking them, Captain," you fire back, the heavy front door clicking shut behind you.

Once you're gone, the narrative should shift briefly to Hongjoong's internal state. He is left alone in the quiet house, completely unraveled by a girl who didn't even have to raise her voice.

The kitchen door creaked open with theatrical slowness, Yunho peering in first with a smirk splitting his face. "Coast clear?" he stage-whispered, already laughing when Hongjoong threw a dish towel at his head. The boys flooded back in like a pack of hyenas circling wounded prey—San biting his lip to hide his grin, Mingi wolf-whistling under his breath as he grabbed a protein shake from the fridge.

"Clean this disaster up," Hongjoong snapped, kicking a toppled beer bottle toward Mingi’s feet. His voice carried enough venom to send them scrambling, but Yunho—always the boldest—lingered just a second too long.

"You can print out as many rules as you want, Hyung," Yunho murmured, tapping the fridge with his knuckles. "But she just rewrote them in five seconds."

Hongjoong didn’t dignify that with a response. He stormed upstairs, the weight of their laughter pressing against his ribs like a physical ache.

His office door slammed shut behind him, the sound reverberating through the empty room. He braced his hands on the edge of his desk, head bowed, fingers digging into the wood. The air still carried traces of your perfume—something citrus and sharp, clinging stubbornly to the space like it had every right to be there. Three months. Three months of cold shoulders and calculated avoidance, and yet the second you walked into a room, his pulse spiked like he was some lovestruck pledge.

He wanted to regulate the house because if he couldn’t control his own heartbeat when you walked into a room, he had to control everything else.

His phone buzzed on the desk—San sending him a picture of Mingi dramatically clutching the fridge door with the caption, [Rule #4: No mocking the captain’s fragile ego.] Hongjoong flipped the phone face-down with a muttered curse. He’d always been good at compartmentalizing, at locking away inconvenient desires in neat little boxes labeled Later or Never. But you? You were the exception that unraveled every rule, the glitch in his system he couldn’t debug.

A sharp knock at the door snapped his head up. "I swear to god, Yunho, if you’re here to—"

Park Seonghwa stepped inside, shutting the door behind him with deliberate quiet. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, his usually immaculate blazer wrinkled at the elbows. He didn’t glance at Hongjoong’s tense posture or the way his knuckles were still white against the desk. Instead, he pulled a cream-colored envelope from his pocket and dropped it onto the polished surface between them.

"You’re dealing with a ghost, Hongjoong," Seonghwa said, voice flat. "I’m dealing with a legal contract." The paper crinkled as Hongjoong flipped it open, skimming the dense corporate language until the final line leapt out: Failure to comply with marital arrangements by December 31st will result in forfeiture of all inheritance rights.

Seonghwa exhaled through his nose, loosening his tie like it was choking him. "My father is giving me six months to marry into the corporate line, or I’m cut out entirely."

Hongjoong’s jaw clenched. This wasn’t just about money—Seonghwa’s entire identity was wrapped up in that legacy. "Who’s the unlucky debutante?"

"Lee Jiyeon." Seonghwa’s lip curled at the name. "Finance VP’s daughter. Same age as Mingi’s little sister, if that makes you nauseous."

The hypocrisy was almost impressive. Seonghwa’s father had three mistresses Hongjoong could name off the top of his head. "We’ll find a loophole," Hongjoong said automatically, already scanning for soft spots in the contract’s wording.

A bitter laugh. "There isn’t one. Unless—" Seonghwa hesitated, running a thumb over the embossed family seal. "Unless I prove I’m already in a serious relationship. But we both know my dating history reads like a fucking champagne commercial."

Hongjoong exhaled through his nose. Outside, Mingi’s dramatic wailing echoed up the stairs—something about unfair tyranny. He tuned it out, focusing on the sharp lines of Seonghwa’s shoulders, the way his knuckles whitened around the envelope. This wasn’t just stress. This was panic.

"You need a placeholder," Hongjoong realized aloud. "Someone credible enough to stall."

Seonghwa’s smile was razor-thin. "Preferably someone who’d make my father’s monocle pop out." He glanced meaningfully toward the kitchen, where San was now loudly debating the ethics of Rule #2 with Yunho. "But your circus is currently on fire."

Hongjoong let out a dry, humorless chuckle, finally leaning back against his desk and crossing his arms. "The circus is always on fire, Seonghwa. I’m just the guy holding the matches."

He looked down at the contract again, the cold weight of corporate greed practically radiating off the heavy cardstock. It was the ultimate irony. Here he was, trying to force his fraternity into a state of clinical detachment to keep them from crashing and burning, while his best friend was being legally suffocated by a family that viewed love as a poor return on investment.

"A placeholder," Hongjoong repeated, the wheels in his mind already turning. He was a fixer by nature; give him a crisis and he’d give you a strategy. "It can't just be some girl from a mixer. Your dad has investigators on retainer, Seonghwa. He’ll sniff out a fake relationship in twenty-four hours if she looks like she belongs in a champagne commercial with you. You need someone... disruptive. Someone who needs the arrangement as much as you do, so she won't crack under the pressure."

"And where exactly do I find a girl willing to play sacrificial lamb to the Park empire?" Seonghwa asked, running a hand through his dark hair, completely exasperated. "Most girls on this campus would jump at the chance to marry into the name. I don't need a gold-digger who's going to try and turn the fake contract into a real one."

"We'll find her," Hongjoong said firmly, his eyes darkening with that familiar, calculating spark that made him the undisputed captain of the house. "But right now, I need to handle my own perimeter."

Seonghwa pushed off the doorframe, his eyes scanning Hongjoong's face with a sudden, knowing intensity. The panic in his expression faded, replaced by the sharp, protective intuition of a best friend. He tilted his head toward the window, where the faint sound of your car engine revving in the driveway echoed through the glass.

"You're talking about finding loopholes for me," Seonghwa murmured, his voice dropping into a quieter, heavier register. "But you're bleeding out right here. You think you can control this house with a piece of paper, Hongjoong? You're trying so hard to play the dictator because you're terrified that if you let your guard down for even a second, she'll walk right back in and burn down everything you've built."

The words hit exactly where Hongjoong was weakest. His jaw tightened, a hard, defensive wall dropping over his features. "I'm doing what's best for the house."

"No," Seonghwa countered smoothly as he turned the doorknob, looking back over his shoulder with a pitying smile. "You're doing what's safe for your pride. But out of the two of us, you're the one giving your future away willingly. At least I'm being forced into my cage."

The door clicked shut, leaving Hongjoong alone with the silence.

Safe for his pride.

Hongjoong pushed away from the desk and walked over to the window, pulling back the heavy curtain just in time to see your car pull out of the TEEZER house driveway. He watched the taillights disappear around the campus bend, his throat tight.

He could still feel the phantom sensation of your breath against his ear from only ten minutes ago. I don’t act. I know. You knew him. You knew that beneath the leather jacket, the captain's title, and the unyielding rules, he was just a man who used to hold you until the sun came up, whispering promises into the dark that he was now too cowardly to honor in the light.

He looked down at his desk, where a copy of THE NEW RULES sat waiting to be filed.

Rule 3: Absolute emotional detachment.

Hongjoong picked up a black marker, his hand steady even as his heart hammered violently against his ribs. He gripped the paper, his mind flashing to the mocking, beautiful laugh you’d left behind in his kitchen. If this was going to be a war of malicious compliance, he was going to make sure he survived it.

He walked over to his office corkboard and pinned the manifesto right at eye level.

"Let's see who bows first," he muttered into the empty room.

The bass from the Alpha Sigma mixer was vibrating through the floorboards of the off-campus venue, a heavy, rhythmic thud that Hongjoong could feel in his teeth. He was standing on the mezzanine balcony, a lukewarm solo cup sweating in his hand, his eyes scanning the sea of sweaty, dancing bodies below like a hawk mapping a hunting ground.

"You look like you're about to authorize a drone strike," Yunho said, leaning his forearms on the wooden railing next to him. He took a sip of his drink, his eyes scanning the crowd with an easy, untroubled grin. "Relax, Hyung. San is checking IDs at the door, and Mingi hasn't broken anything in at least forty minutes. The house is perfectly compliant."

"Compliant," Hongjoong muttered, his voice a low gravel under the music. "Right."

He wasn't looking at San, or Mingi, or the pledges. He was looking at you.

You were standing near the makeshift bar under the dim red neon lights, wearing a top that caught the light every time you laughed, your hair down and falling over your shoulders. And you were laughing at something a tall senior from the lacrosse team was saying, your fingers brushing lightly against his forearm.

Hongjoong’s grip on his solo cup tightened until the plastic groaned.

For the past seven days, you had followed The New Rules with terrifying, clinical perfection. You hadn’t texted him at 2 AM. You hadn’t shown up at the house to study. When you passed him on the quad on Tuesday, you didn't even look his way; you just kept walking, your shoulder brushing right past his like he was nothing but a stranger taking up space on the sidewalk.

It was exactly what he had demanded. And it was driving him completely, unevocably insane.

If you can't text me back, then look me in my face. It played like a taunt in his head. You weren't hiding behind a screen anymore. If he wanted your attention, you were forcing him to come down from his castle and take it in broad daylight—or under the suffocating heat of a crowded red-lit room.

"Hey, isn't that—" Yunho started, but before he could even finish your name, Hongjoong set his cup down on the railing with a sharp thud.

"I'm going down," Hongjoong said coldly.

"To check the perimeter?" Yunho called out, his smirk widening as Hongjoong pushed past him.

"To enforce decorum," Hongjoong shot back, his leather jacket cutting a path through the crowded stairs as he descended into the heat of the floor, his eyes locked entirely on the target.

The lacrosse player was mid-sentence—something about his summer internship in Monaco—when Hongjoong materialized at your elbow like a pissed-off shadow. His presence didn’t ripple; it ruptured the air, cutting through the bass-heavy thrum of the party with the precision of a scalpel.

"Greek life matter," Hongjoong announced, not bothering to look at the guy, his voice low and edged with something that wasn’t quite authority—more like territorial possession wrapped in bureaucratic bullshit. "She’s needed."

The lacrosse player blinked, his tanned forehead wrinkling. "Uh, we were kinda—"

"Now." Hongjoong didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. Three years of running this campus had honed his tone into a weapon that made even seniors flinch. 

The guy hesitated, glancing at you for confirmation. You shrugged, sipping your drink with deliberate slowness, the ice clinking like a countdown. "Guess I’m being summoned," you murmured, your voice dripping with saccharine compliance. "Duty calls."

Hongjoong’s jaw ticked as the guy wandered off, shooting one last confused look over his shoulder. The second he was out of earshot, Hongjoong pivoted toward you, his leather jacket creaking with the movement. "You’re violating house decorum."

You didn't lower your cup. You just tilted your head back against the wood paneling of the hallway, letting your eyes slowly track the hard line of his jaw up to his dark, dangerous eyes.

"House decorum?" you echoed, your voice barely louder than a whisper, yet carrying perfectly over the muffled bass vibrating through the walls. "Remind me, Captain—since when does a Sigma Chi mixer count as TEEZER house property? Last I checked, my presence here doesn't violate a single piece of your precious fine print."

Hongjoong stepped closer, entirely unbothered by the fact that anyone walking down the hall could see him crowding you into the shadows. He placed one hand on the wall right beside your head, his leather sleeve brushing against your bare shoulder. The heat coming off him was immense, a sharp contrast to the cold condensation on your fingers.

"You know exactly what you're doing," he hissed, his face inches from yours. He smelled like his signature expensive cologne and the bitter edge of black coffee. "You’re making a scene. You've spent the last hour treating this place like your personal audition tape, and you're doing it right in my line of sight."

"I'm socializing," you corrected smoothly, meeting his glare with a level of calm that you knew was actively draining his battery. "Isn't that what we're supposed to do when we're absolutely emotionally detached? I haven't sent you a 2 AM text. I haven't asked to borrow a shirt. I’m practicing perfect compliance, Hongjoong. I'm leaving you alone."

You brought the cup to your lips, taking a slow, deliberate sip while looking at him over the rim.

"Unless," you murmured, lowering the cup until it rested against his chest, right over his hammering heart, "you're having trouble following your own rules."

Hongjoong’s breath hitched. His eyes dropped to your lips for a fraction of a second—a desperate, telling slip in his armor—before snapping back up. His fingers curled against the drywall, the plaster groaning under the pressure.

"Don't flatter yourself," he growled, though his voice lacked its usual clinical weight. It sounded rougher. Desperate. "I wrote those rules to protect the house."

"Then go protect it," you whispered, using your free hand to gently tap his cheek, a mocking, affectionate gesture that felt like a slap to his pride. "Go find Seonghwa. Go check the budget. Because right now, you look a lot less like a dictator and a lot more like a hypocrite."

You didn't wait for his response. You ducked under his arm, your hip deliberately brushing against his thigh as you slid past him. You walked down the hallway, the heels of your shoes clicking rhythmically against the floorboards, leaving him standing alone in the dim, neon-lit corridor with his hand still pinned to the wall and his chest heaving.

Behind you, Hongjoong let out a low, ragged breath, his fist slamming quietly against the wood.

He was losing. And the worst part was, he hadn't even realized the game had officially begun.

The rain hadn't just started; it had broken over the campus like a dynamic assault, sheets of heavy water hammering against the floor-to-ceiling glass of the student union’s multi-purpose room. It was 11:45 PM on a Thursday, four days after the Sigma Chi mixer, and the cavernous space was entirely dead except for the low, hum of a single vending machine and the sharp, rhythmic clack of your laptop keyboard.

The tables around you were a disaster zone of floorplans, vendor invoices, and color-coded seating charts for the upcoming Greek Gala. Because you were the student senate liaison and Hongjoong was the Interfraternity Council president, the university administration had forced the two of you into a shotgun marriage of logistics.

Across the table, Hongjoong sat behind his own laptop, the blue light of the screen catching the dangerous, exhausted sharp angles of his face. He’d shed his leather jacket hours ago, leaving him in a black ribbed tank top that showed off the tense, coiled muscles of his shoulders every time he reached for a highlighter.

Neither of you had spoken a word of substance in three hours. It was professional compliance at its most toxic.

"The catering invoice is missing the security deposit line," Hongjoong said, his voice a low, gravelly friction that seemed to scrape against the quiet of the room. He didn't look up from his screen. "Did you file it?"

"It’s in the blue folder right in front of your face, Captain," you replied smoothly, not pausing your typing for a single beat.

Hongjoong’s fingers froze over his trackpad. Slowly, he raised his head, his dark eyes locking onto yours through the dim light. The silence between you didn't just linger; it suffocated. The storm outside seemed to fade into a dull, white noise, leaving nothing but the high-voltage current running between your chairs.

"I asked you a direct question," he murmured, his tone dropping into that quiet, dangerous register that usually signaled an execution.

"And I gave you a direct answer," you said, finally stopping your fingers to look back at him. You leaned back in your chair, crossing your arms, completely unbothered by the predatory focus of his stare. "It's right there. Unless your little rulebook doesn't allow you to look at things that are convenient for you."

Hongjoong closed his laptop with a sharp, controlled snap. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table, invading your space across the paperwork. "You've been pushing your luck for a week."

"I've been doing my job," you corrected, tilting your head. "And I've been following your rules. No calls. No distractions. Absolute emotional detachment. I'm practically a saint, Hongjoong."

"You're a menace," he hissed, his jaw clenching so hard a small muscle jumped beneath his cheek. "You stand in my hallway looking like that, you touch my chest in front of forty people, and then you come in here and act like we're just two bureaucrats shuffling paper. You’re trying to make me look like a fool."

"No," you whispered, leaning in just enough that he could see the cold, mocking amusement dancing in your eyes. "I'm letting you see exactly what you gave up when you decided your pride was worth more than my time. You wanted a robot, Hongjoong? You got one. Enjoy the clinical efficiency."

A sudden, violent crack of thunder shook the glass panes behind you, the building’s overhead fluorescent lights flickering once, twice, before dying completely.

The room plunged into near-total darkness, saved only by the eerie, ambient glow of the emergency exit signs and the rhythmic flash of lightning outside.

In the shadows, you heard the sharp drag of a chair against the linoleum. Before you could even blink, a heavy, calloused hand wrapped around your wrist, his grip hot and unyielding as he yanked you out of your seat.

Hongjoong's grip on your wrist was iron, his fingers pressing into your pulse point like he needed the proof of your heartbeat to believe you were real. In the storm-darkened room, the only light came in fractured bursts—lightning flashing across his sharp cheekbones, the whites of his eyes burning with something feral. You barely had time to suck in a breath before he wrenched you forward, your chest colliding with his so hard the impact rattled your teeth.

"Tell me why," you hissed, palms braced against his ribcage, fingers curling into the thin fabric of his tank top. The words weren't a question; they were a blade pressed to his throat. "You ended it like I was a liability. Was I just another loose end for the great Captain to tidy up?"

Hongjoong’s breath came in ragged bursts, his other hand sliding up to grip the back of your neck, fingertips digging into the base of your skull. "Because I was losing my goddamn mind," he snarled, the admission ripped from him like a confession under torture. "Because I stayed up until sunrise memorizing the way you laughed when you were half-asleep. Because I couldn’t look at the goddamn budget spreadsheets without wondering what you’d say about them." His voice cracked, raw and furious. "The rules were never for them. They were for me—to stop myself from tearing apart every boundary I ever built just to get you back."

Lightning split the sky outside, illuminating the desperate twist of his mouth for one searing second before darkness swallowed you both again. You could feel the wild thrum of his pulse where your thumb brushed his collarbone, the heat of his skin branding you through his clothes.

Somewhere in the chaos, your knee hit the edge of the oak desk. Hongjoong didn’t pause—he crowded you against it, his hands dropping to your hips to lift you onto the surface in one brutal motion. Paperwork scattered to the floor in a rain of spreadsheets, his forearm braced beside your head as he leaned in, his nose skimming your jaw. "You win," he growled, the words vibrating against your throat. "I broke my own rules. Now tell me to stop, or I swear to god, I’ll—"

You bit his lower lip. Not a kiss—a punishment.

Hongjoong made a sound like a gutted man, his fingers digging into your thighs hard enough to leave marks. The desk creaked dangerously as he surged forward, his mouth crashing into yours with three months of pent-up fury. He kissed like he fought—all precision and teeth and calculated violence, his tongue sliding against yours with a hunger that bordered on starvation.

Rain lashed the windows in relentless sheets, the storm’s rhythm syncing with the sharp hitch of his breath when your fingers twisted in his hair. He shuddered, his hips pressing forward instinctively, the hard line of him dragging against your thigh in a way that made you both gasp.

"Tell me you thought about this," you demanded, arching into him as his mouth moved to your neck, his teeth scraping over your pulse.

Hongjoong laughed—a dark, ragged thing—and wrenched your shirt collar aside to bite down on your shoulder. "Every goddamn day," he admitted against your skin, his voice wrecked. "Every time I walked past your dorm. Every time I heard your voice in the goddamn library." His hands slid under your thighs, hauling you flush against him as he ground into the heat of you. "I wrote those rules because I knew—" His breath hitched when your nails scored down his back. "—one look from you, and I'd fold."

The admission hung between you, suspended in the charged air before you shattered it by yanking his tank top up over his head. His chest was a map of taut muscle and shallow breaths, his skin fever-hot under your palms. Lightning flashed, illuminating the desperate way his pupils swallowed all but a sliver of gold around them.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, rolling your hips in a slow, deliberate grind that tore a groan from his throat. Hongjoong's forehead dropped to yours, his breath coming in uneven bursts as his hands flexed on your hips—half restraint, half surrender. "You don't get to be smug about this," he muttered, even as his fingers slipped under the waistband of your jeans.

"I'm not," you lied, arching into him. "I'm just proving a point."

His mouth crashed into yours again, all teeth and tongue and three months of pent-up frustration. The desk groaned under your combined weight, pens skittering to the floor as he crowded you back onto the scattered paperwork. His hands were everywhere—tugging at your clothes, skimming up your ribs, thumbing over your nipples through the fabric until you gasped into his mouth.

Hongjoong dragged his lips down your throat, his breath hot against your racing pulse. "Tell me you thought about this too," he demanded, his voice rough with want. His teeth grazed your collarbone, his hands sliding under your thighs to hike your skirt up around your waist.

"Every damn time you walked past me in the library," you admitted, tangling your fingers in his hair. "Every time you pretended not to stare."

He groaned against your skin, his hips rolling against yours in a slow, deliberate grind that made you both shudder. The thick ridge of him pressed against your core, separated only by layers of denim and restraint. "Fuck," he breathed, his forehead dropping to yours. "I tried so hard to hate you."

The confession hung between you, suspended in the charged air before you shattered it by yanking his belt open. His breath hitched as your fingers brushed the hard line of him through his briefs. "Too bad," you murmured, dragging your nails down his stomach just to watch him tremble. "Because I think you like me."

Hongjoong's hands tightened on your thighs, his fingers digging into bare skin where your skirt had ridden up. "I don't like you," he growled, even as he rocked into your touch. "I'm fucking obsessed with you."

The raw honesty of it punched through your chest. Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the desperate hunger in his eyes—gold swallowed by black, his pupils blown wide. You could feel the rapid flutter of his pulse beneath your fingertips, the way his breath stuttered when you palmed him through the fabric.

He didn't wait for permission. One hand fumbled between your bodies, popping the button of your jeans with practiced ease. His fingers slid beneath the waistband of your panties, calloused fingertips dragging through slick heat. "Still this wet for me?" he rasped, his voice wrecked. "After everything?"

You arched into his touch, biting back a moan as his thumb circled your clit. "Shut up," you gasped, tugging his briefs down just enough to free him. The first brush of his cock against your inner thigh sent a shudder through both of you.

Hongjoong exhaled sharply, his forehead dropping to yours. For a heartbeat, he hesitated—eyes searching yours in the fractured light. Then the storm outside roared, shaking the windows, and whatever restraint he had left snapped. He lifted your hips, the head of his cock dragging through your folds before he thrust in with a single, brutal stroke.

The desk groaned beneath you. Hongjoong swore violently, his arms trembling as he braced himself above you. "Fuck," he choked out, his hips stuttering. "You feel—" His words dissolved into a groan when you clenched around him.

Rain pounded against the glass in relentless sheets, the rhythm syncopated with the sharp slap of skin as Hongjoong set a punishing pace. His hands gripped your hips hard enough to bruise, his breath coming in ragged bursts against your neck. Every snap of his hips was a confession—three months of denial unraveling with each desperate thrust.

"You thought you could walk away," you gasped, nails scoring down his back. "But you were always coming back to me."

Hongjoong growled low in his throat, biting down on your shoulder as his fingers dug into your thighs. "Shut up," he panted, though the way his hips stuttered betrayed him. Lightning flashed, illuminating the sweat-slicked planes of his chest, the wild hunger in his eyes.

You laughed—a breathless, triumphant sound—and arched against him. "Make me."

His hand tangled in your hair, yanking your head back to expose your throat. His mouth crashed into yours, all teeth and tongue and the copper tang of blood where you'd bitten him earlier. The kiss was a battle—messy, frantic, alive—and when you moaned into his mouth, he shuddered like a man coming undone.

Hongjoong's rhythm faltered when you rocked up to meet him, your legs locking around his waist to drag him deeper. "Fuck," he gasped, forehead dropping to yours. "I can't—" His voice broke as you rolled your hips, dragging him impossibly closer. "I'm not gonna last."

"Then don't," you whispered against his lips.

Lightning split the sky outside, illuminating the wrecked expression on his face—eyelids heavy, lips parted, every muscle straining with the effort of holding back. His hips stuttered, his fingers digging into your thighs as he lost the fight for control. With a ragged groan, Hongjoong buried his face in your neck and came apart, his body shuddering against yours in violent, helpless waves.

For a long moment, the only sounds were the rain pounding against the windows and your mingled breaths. Then, slowly, Hongjoong lifted his head. His fingers traced your jawline with a tenderness that contradicted the possessive grip he'd had on your hips moments ago. In the dim emergency lighting, his pupils were still blown wide, his lips swollen from your teeth.

"You're impossible," he murmured, but the words lacked any real bite. His thumb brushed over your bottom lip, catching the faint smear of blood where you'd bitten him. "You ruin everything."

You arched an eyebrow. "You're welcome."

The overhead lights flickered once, twice, then buzzed back to life with a harsh fluorescent glare. Hongjoong flinched, his body tensing as reality crashed back in. The desk was a disaster of scattered papers and discarded clothes. His hands were still braced on either side of your hips, his skin damp with sweat.

Outside, the storm raged on, but inside, the air was thick with something heavier—something irreversible.

Hongjoong exhaled sharply through his nose, his gaze darting to the door, then back to you. For a split second, you saw it—the panic. The frantic, fleeting urge to rebuild the walls before anyone noticed they were gone. His fingers twitched against your thigh, like he couldn't decide whether to pull you closer or push you away.

"You're thinking too loud," you said, tracing the tense line of his jaw.

His breath hitched. "I'm calculating damage control."

You laughed, low and knowing, and watched the way his pupils dilated at the sound. "Too late for that, Captain. The damage is done."

Hongjoong didn’t move for a long three seconds. The harsh, hum of the fluorescent lights overhead felt like an interrogation, exposing the raw, red marks your nails had left across his shoulders and the dark bruises his fingers were already leaving on your thighs.

Slowly, the mechanical gears of his brain tried to clank back into place. He pulled out of you with a low, wet sound, immediately turning his back to pull up his briefs and fasten his belt. The sudden absence of his heat made the air-conditioned room feel freezing.

"We need to clear this out," he said. His voice was no longer the rough, wrecked rasp that had begged you to hold him tighter a minute ago. It was flat. Corporate. The Captain was trying to put his armor back on, piece by jagged piece. "Someone could walk in. Security does rounds at midnight."

You sat up on the edge of the desk, your clothes rumpled, watching him with a cool, dangerous detachment that made his hands slightly tremble as he gathered the scattered gala papers from the linoleum.

"Damage control," you murmured, adjusting your skirt. "Right."

He didn't look at you. He couldn't. "I'm being practical. What happened here... it changes the logistics. But the house still needs to function."

"The house," you repeated, a cold, mocking smile twisting your lips. You slid off the desk, your heels hitting the floor with a sharp, final click. "You just spent an hour burying yourself inside me, telling me you're fucking obsessed with me, Hongjoong. And the second the electricity turns back on, you’re worried about the logistics?"

Hongjoong froze, a stack of invoices clutched in his hand. His jaw clenched so hard the bone looked sharp. "I have a responsibility to eight men who depend on me to keep this house from sinking. I can't let a personal... distraction..."

"Don't finish that sentence," you interrupted, your voice dropping into a dangerous, quiet register that effectively cut the air out of his lungs. You walked up to him, yanked your tote bag off the chair, and looked him dead in the eyes. "You want to play the cold king who hides his mistakes in the dark? Fine. Sleep with your rulebook, Hongjoong. Because from this second on, you don't even get to look me in my face."

You turned on your heel and walked out of the multi-purpose room, the heavy double doors swinging shut behind you, leaving him completely hollowed out in the blinding white light.

The coffee maker hissed like a wounded animal at 6:03 AM, spitting steam and grounds across the counter. Hongjoong didn't flinch. He'd been standing there for seventeen minutes already, palms flat against the Formica, staring at the fridge where his manifesto hung—the ink slightly smudged now at the edges from where someone had splashed vodka on it during last night's party.

San shuffled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, and immediately froze at the sight of Hongjoong's rigid silhouette against the dawn light. "Uh. Morning?"

"Kitchen closes at 9 PM," Hongjoong said without turning. His voice was scraped raw. "There's a mold culture growing in the sink that could qualify for its own PhD. Clean it."

Mingi, trailing behind San, choked on his own spit. "It's literally sunrise—"

"Now."

The sharpness of it made Mingi stumble back a step. His gaze darted to San, who just shook his head in silent warning. Yunho leaned against the fridge, arms crossed, watching Hongjoong's stiff shoulders with the focus of a bomb squad technician.

"You look like you got hit by a bus," Yunho said casually. "Or fucked by one. Those scratches on your neck are—"

Hongjoong whirled. The coffee pot shattered against the wall inches from Yunho's head.

The silence was atomic.

San grabbed Mingi's elbow and hauled him backward out of the kitchen. Yunho didn't move. He just tilted his head, studying the fresh, ragged marks peeking above Hongjoong's collar—the same ones disappearing beneath his shirt.

"You're bleeding," Yunho said mildly.

Hongjoong's knuckles whitened around another mug. "Get out."

Yunho didn't. He stepped closer instead, lowering his voice. "She's not answering your texts, is she?"

The ceramic cracked in Hongjoong's grip.

Across campus, you sipped iced coffee in the library courtyard, laughing at something your study partner said. You hadn't checked your phone once. Not when it buzzed at 3:17 AM. Not when it lit up with a seventh call at sunrise. The screen faced down on the table, buried under your economics textbook like a corpse.

Back in the kitchen, Hongjoong's throat worked silently. He turned the mug in his hands—once, twice—before setting it down with unnatural precision. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Bullshit." Yunho grabbed a rag to wipe coffee off the wall. "You reek of her perfume. And before you snap again—" He held up a hand when Hongjoong's shoulders tensed. "I don't care. But you look like you got run over by the feelings bus, and it's fucking with the house vibe."

The fridge hummed. Somewhere upstairs, Mingi's panicked whisper carried down the stairwell—"Dude, we are not going back in there."

Hongjoong stared at the manifesto pinned to the fridge door. Rule #3 glared back in bold font: NO EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENTS. The paper was pristine. His knuckles were split.

Seonghwa chose that moment to walk in, crisp dress shirt rolled to the elbows, a manila envelope tucked under his arm. He took one look at the shattered coffee pot, the tension strung tight between Yunho and Hongjoong, and sighed. "Christ. Do I need to separate you two?"

Hongjoong didn't turn. His voice came out flat. "Kitchen's closed."

"Not for me." Seonghwa dropped the envelope on the counter with deliberate weight. "Legal team found three loopholes in my father's contract. Thought you'd want to see them."

The silence stretched. Yunho wiped coffee off his jaw, eyes darting between them. "I'll just..." He jerked a thumb toward the exit, abandoning the rag as he fled.

Seonghwa waited until the door swung shut before speaking again. "You look like hell."

Hongjoong's fingers flexed against the countertop. "Not now, Seonghwa."

"It's 6 AM," Seonghwa said evenly. "You're bleeding through your shirt." He reached for the envelope, sliding it closer. "The clauses circled in red? They're actionable. My father can't enforce the marriage if I prove financial independence."

Hongjoong didn't move. His gaze remained locked on the fridge, where Rule #4—NO OVERNIGHT GUESTS—hung crookedly next to a Polaroid of last semester's formal.

"You're not listening," Seonghwa observed. He stepped closer, voice dropping. "Look at me."

The order—the exact tone Hongjoong himself used during house meetings—made his shoulders tense. Slowly, he turned. The morning light caught the shadows under his eyes, the raw scrape of teeth marks disappearing beneath his collar.

Seonghwa exhaled sharply. "Christ. Did you even sleep?"

Hongjoong’s fingers twitched toward the manifesto. "We have a chapter meeting at noon. The alumni liaison is coming—"

"You’re spiraling," Seonghwa interrupted. He jabbed a finger at the envelope. "My father is blackmailing me into an engagement. And you—" His gaze flicked to the fridge, to the fresh nail marks on Hongjoong’s knuckles. "You’re self-destructing over a girl who won’t even look at you."

Hongjoong’s jaw clenched. "This isn’t about her."

"Bullshit." Seonghwa grabbed the manifesto, shaking it once. The paper rattled like a surrender flag. "You wrote these rules to punish yourself. Because you couldn’t handle wanting her." He stepped closer, voice dropping to a whisper. "She walked out because you’re a coward. Not because of the house. Not because of the rules. Because you won’t admit you love her."

The hiss of the burner was the only sound left in the kitchen.

Hongjoong stared at Seonghwa, his chest rising and falling in shallow, sharp increments. For a fraction of a second, the Captain persona entirely fractured, leaving him looking exactly like what he was: a twenty-two-year-old kid who had built a fortress out of pride, only to realize he’d locked himself inside it alone.

"Watch your mouth," Hongjoong whispered. The threat was empty, his voice too thin, too wrecked to carry any real malice.

Seonghwa didn't even blink. He dropped the manifesto back onto the counter, the paper fluttering against the stainless steel. "I’m the only one in this house who isn’t afraid of you, Hongjoong. And right now, you look pathetic. You’re trying to manage my crisis because you’re completely incapable of handling your own."

"I am fixing your life!" Hongjoong suddenly roared, his hand slamming down on the counter so hard the remaining mugs rattled. The outburst seemed to drain the last of his artificial energy. He dropped his head, his damp fringe falling into his eyes as his shoulders slumped. "I am fixing it because I can't... I can't fix this."

"You haven't even tried," Seonghwa said softly, the harsh edge leaving his voice, replaced by the heavy, grounding weight of a brother. He reached out, his hand gripping Hongjoong’s tense shoulder, squeezing tight. "You didn't fix anything with her. You just ran damage control until she decided she was done being treated like a hazard."

Hongjoong closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his eyelids, all he could see was the way you looked under those unforgiving fluorescent lights a few hours ago. The cool, absolute finality in your eyes when you told him he didn't even get to look you in the face.

You hadn't just walked out of the student union. You had taken the air in the room with you.

"She won't even look at me, Seonghwa," Hongjoong confessed, his voice barely a breath. The admission felt like drawing blood. "I called her seven times. She turned her phone off."

"Then stop calling her like a coward from the safety of your office," Seonghwa said, pulling his hand back and adjusting his cuffs, his stately composure perfectly restored. He picked up his manila envelope, tucking it back under his arm. "Go find her. Tear that stupid piece of paper off the fridge, walk across campus, and bow down. Because if you don't, someone else is going to give her the worship she actually deserves."

Seonghwa turned on his heel, his pristine loafers clicking against the tile as he exited the kitchen, leaving Hongjoong alone with the wreckage of the coffee pot and his own suffocating thoughts.

The crumpled manifesto hit the trash bin with the finality of a gunshot. Hongjoong didn't pause to watch it land—he was already striding past the gaping faces of Mingi and San in the living room, out the front door, into the brutal clarity of morning sunlight. His knuckles throbbed where the paper edges had bitten into his skin. He didn't care.

You were sprawled on the union steps with your study group, highlighters strewn across your notebook, when a shadow fell across your page. The chatter around you died mid-sentence. You didn’t need to look up to know who stood there—the scent of his cologne (bergamot and something burnt, like he’d been chain-smoking all night) preceded him.

"Move," you told your friend, nudging her knee aside without glancing up. "You're blocking my light."

A beat of silence. Then Hongjoong dropped to his knees on the concrete in front of you, his hands braced on either side of your sprawled legs. The collective inhale from your study group was audible. His forehead pressed against your thigh, his breath hot through the denim.

"I don’t care about the house," he said, voice rough. The words weren’t whispered; they rang clear across the steps. "I don’t care about the rules. Tear me apart if you want, but don’t make me go back to pretending I don’t—” His fingers flexed against the concrete. "I’m completely undone without you. Please."

Your highlighter rolled off the notebook. Someone’s phone clattered to the ground. Hongjoong didn’t move, his shoulders bowed under the weight of surrender, the morning light catching on the fresh scratches peeking above his collar.

You closed your notebook with a snap. "Get up."

He did—immediately, like your voice was a leash around his throat. His eyes were wild, gold swallowed by black. You stood, shouldering your bag, and walked past him without a word. He followed like a shadow, his fingers brushing yours once, twice, before you let him tangle them together.

By the time you shoved him through your apartment door, his composure had fractured entirely. He crowded you against the wall, his mouth desperate on yours, his hands shaking where they gripped your hips. "Tell me you're mine," he demanded between kisses that tasted like salt and sleepless nights. "Tell me I didn't ruin this."

You bit his lower lip hard enough to make him groan. "Shut up and worship me properly."

He did. Everywhere. His mouth traced the arch of your foot, the delicate bones of your ankle, the soft skin behind your knee. He lingered there, teeth scraping, until your thighs trembled. "You own me," he whispered against your inner thigh, his breath hot. "You have since the first time you laughed at my rules."

When his tongue finally slid between your legs, he moaned like he was the one being unraveled. His fingers dug into your thighs, holding you open as he licked into you with slow, deliberate strokes that had your back arching off the bed. "Fuck—Hongjoong—"

"Say it again," he growled, lifting his head just enough to watch your face as his thumb circled your clit. "Say my name like I'm yours."

You came with his name on your lips, his fingers fucking you through it, his eyes locked on yours like he was memorizing the way you fell apart for him.

Later—much later—when he was buried deep inside you, his forehead pressed to yours, his hips moving in slow, grinding rolls that made you both gasp, he choked out the words he'd been swallowing for months: "I love you. I love you, I love you—" Each confession punctuated by a thrust that stole your breath. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry—"

You silenced him with a kiss, your fingers tangling in his hair as he trembled above you. His pace faltered, his rhythm breaking apart as he came with a ragged groan, his body collapsing against yours. For a long moment, he just breathed against your neck, his lips brushing your pulse point between exhales. When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were red-rimmed, his lashes damp. "I didn't ruin this?" he whispered.

You traced the curve of his bottom lip with your thumb. "You ruined everything else. But not this."

His laughter was rough, relieved, as he rolled onto his back, pulling you with him. Your legs tangled together, your head pillowed on his chest where his heartbeat still raced beneath your ear.

A week later, sunlight streamed through the cafe windows, catching the steam rising from your lattes. Hongjoong's arm was draped over the back of your chair, his fingers absently playing with the ends of your hair as you quizzed him on midterm material. He answered every question wrong on purpose just to make you groan.

The bell above the door jingled. Seonghwa looked like he hadn't slept in days—his usually pristine dress shirt wrinkled, his tie loosened. He collapsed into the chair across from you with the grace of a collapsing building.

"They're flying her in next week," he said without preamble, rubbing his temples. "Legal team found another clause. If I don't formally meet her by the end of the month, my trust fund defaults to my cousin."

Hongjoong's fingers stilled in your hair. You exchanged a glance—his raised eyebrow asking permission. You nodded.

You leaned forward, stirring your latte. "I have a friend," you said casually. "Brilliant girl. Triple major, works three jobs. She's exactly the kind of girl your parents would hate."

Seonghwa's head lifted slowly. "Define 'hate.'"

"She's loud," you counted off on your fingers. "Has tattoos. Once threw a drink at a senator's son for grabbing her ass. Needs rent money."

Hongjoong snorted into his coffee. "Perfect."

Seonghwa's tired eyes sharpened. "You're joking."

"She's also fluent in three languages and can debate political theory better than your father's lawyers," you added. "Imagine the look on his face when you bring home a scholarship student who outsmarts him at dinner."

Hongjoong's fingers trailed down your arm, pride evident in the way his thumb circled your wrist. "Pay her to be your fake girlfriend. Your parents will combust."

Seonghwa exhaled sharply through his nose. "This is insane."

"So was Hongjoong's rulebook," you countered, smirking when Hongjoong nipped at your earlobe in retaliation.

Seonghwa's eyes flickered between you both—the way Hongjoong's hand now rested possessively on your thigh, how you leaned into his touch without hesitation. Something in his expression shifted. "You're serious."

"Deadly," Hongjoong said. He nudged your coffee closer to you, the gesture almost subconscious. "She's right. Your parents want a docile society girl who'll smile and breed heirs. Bring them a hurricane instead."

You twisted in your seat to face Seonghwa fully. "I'll text her tonight. She'll want contracts drawn up—payment, boundaries, termination clauses."

Seonghwa stared at you. "You've done this before."

"Not personally." You smirked, tapping your nails against your cup. "But I know someone who spent six months pretending to date a senator's daughter for tuition money."

Hongjoong choked on his coffee. "That was you?"

"Different lifetime." You waved a hand. "Point is, my friend will eat your parents alive and enjoy it. But she won't do it for free."

Seonghwa exhaled sharply, rubbing his temples again. When he looked up, there was something dangerously close to hope in his exhausted gaze. "How soon can I meet her?"

"Tomorrow." You pulled out your phone, already composing a text. "She works the morning shift at the campus coffee kiosk. Come hungry—she'll poison you if you order anything basic."

Seonghwa’s hand froze halfway to his forehead, his knuckles locking as he stared at your screen. "Define basic."

"Caramel macchiatos, anything with extra whip, and talking down to her while she’s holding a steaming metal pitcher," Hongjoong answered for you, his chest vibrating against your back as he chuckled. He leaned his chin on your shoulder, entirely unbothered by the fact that they were in public or that his best friend looked like he was about to have a stroke. "Trust her, man. If she says the girl is a hurricane, you better start boarding up your windows."

A slow, tentative exhale slipped past Seonghwa’s lips. The crushing weight that had been bowing his shoulders for weeks didn't vanish, but for the first time since his father had dropped that legal ultimatum on his desk, the panic in his chest receded, replaced by a cold, calculating curiosity.

"Contracts," Seonghwa repeated, the word tasting familiar and solid on his tongue. "I can do contracts. Boundaries, timelines, financial compensation—I’ll have my personal attorney draft a non-disclosure agreement by tonight."

"Don't bother," you said, sliding your phone back into your bag with a decisive click. "She writes her own terms. Just bring your checkbook and an open mind, Park. You're about to meet the best thing—or the absolute worst thing—that's ever happened to your family name."

Seonghwa stood up, the wrinkles in his blazer suddenly seeming less like a sign of defeat and more like armor after a battle. He adjusted his tie, his regal, untouchable composure locking back into place like a shield. He looked at Hongjoong, then down at you, a faint, genuine glint of amusement finally breaking through the exhaustion in his dark eyes.

"If she manages to make my mother spill her tea at dinner next week," Seonghwa murmured, picking up his manila envelope, "I’ll pay her double her asking price."

"Consider it done," you smirked.

With a final, lingering nod, Seonghwa turned and walked out of the cafe, his posture straight, his stride carrying the familiar, commanding authority of the richest man on campus. The glass door jingled behind him, letting in a brief gust of warm summer wind.

The second he was gone, Hongjoong turned his head, his lips instantly finding the sensitive skin right beneath your ear. He nipped at it softly, his fingers digging into your thigh under the table with a possessive, heavy pressure that made your breath hitch.

"A hurricane, huh?" he whispered against your skin, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that always made your pulse spike. "You really like orchestrating chaos in my house, don't you?"

"I'm just fixing your friends, Captain," you murmured, tilting your head back to give him better access. "Someone has to look out for the TEEZER boys now that your little manifesto is in the dumpster."

Hongjoong groaned softly, wrapping his arms fully around your waist and pulling you flush against his chest. He didn't care about the rules, he didn't care about the standings, and he certainly didn't care about the onlookers in the cafe. He was completely, irrevocably whipped—and as he pressed a deep, bruising kiss to your lips in the bright morning light, he knew he’d spend the rest of his life gladly bowing down to the only girl who had ever refused to be a placeholder.

© KOZTION 2026 | Do not steal, plagiarize, translate or repost any of my work.

DISCLAIMER ; this is no way of a true representation of any of the members. This is purely fiction and for the enjoyment of the reader and not to be taken seriously.

a/n ; Hi.. Hello.. Is this thing on..? Sorry guys for the late update, I’ve recently changed jobs and haven’t had the time to finish up but I promise more is coming sooner than you think!! Spacer from @celcero !!

If you want to be tagged please fill out the form.

— celebrating birthday!teez • ateez masterlist

pairing: yeosang x reader

tags/genre: fluff, slight miscommunication, soft!yeo

word count: 2.1k words

synopsis: yeosang hasn't heard from you all day. everyone else has blown up his phone for his birthday ... so why haven't you? did he do something wrong? was he in trouble? did he accidentally charge your card for his season pass for league again?

notes: it's only right that i really come back in full swing to tell our PRETTY GEMINI BOY THE HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS!!!!!!

chapter four: second chances

warnings: cursing, mentions of sex, name-calling

previous chapter | series masterlist | next chapter

note: updated my taglist, lmk below if you wanna be untagged or tagged ^^ uploads will be longer and more consistent

frat!ateez x f!reader, all stories are separated.

In the halls of the TEEZER House, the music is too loud, the drinks are too strong, and the boys are far too reckless. They are the kings of campus, the "Ain't Shits" who treat hearts like trophies and love like a distraction. It’s a place where 2 AM texts are the only currency and being "triggered" is the only way they know how to feel.

But every kingdom has its breaking point.

The Reverence Series follows the eight men of the house as they are forced to confront the wreckage they’ve left behind. From the bitter rivalries of San and Mingi, to the cynical games of Yunho, and the iron-clad control of Hongjoong, each story explores the moment these men realize that the girls they used as bandages or backups are the only real thing they have left.

It’s a journey from the red flags of a dark dorm room to the hard-earned worship of a life in the light. Because in this house, the men might start off as nothing—but they’ll learn exactly what it means to bow.

"They said the men in this house weren't worth the heartbreak. They were right—until they met the girls who refused to be placeholders."

01. Leave You Alone — C.SN

What begins as a strictly "no-strings" arrangement between you and Choi San, a magnetic but commitment-phobic frat playboy, quickly spirals into a messy and emotionally charged situationship. While you both initially agree to a "no feelings" rule, you struggle to maintain that boundary as the line between casual hookups and genuine intimacy blurs.

02. Triggered — S.MG

You were the bandage for a wound he refused to let heal. Song Mingi offered you a deal: be his distraction, and he’d give you the world in the dark. But as the lines between performance and reality blur, he realizes he’s no longer triggered by his past—he’s terrified of a future without you.

03. Wanna Bet? — J.YH

Cynical architect [Name] treats the TEEZER house like a case study in disappointment after the "San and Mingi Eras" . To prove he’s the exception, the house’s Architect, Jeong Yunho, bets your $20,000 tuition that he can dismantle your "men ain't shit" anthem.

04. The New Rules — K.HJ

As the iron-clad captain of the frat, Kim Hongjoong watches the first three members fall in love and realizes control is slipping. To contain the chaos, he changes the rules of the house entirely—only to find himself caught in his own trap.

05. Luxury — P.SH

Desperate to avoid an arranged marriage that secures his inheritance, Park Seonghwa—the richest member of the frat—needs a distraction. Following Hongjoong's new philosophy, Hongjoong and his lover set Seonghwa up with a fiercely independent, straight-A scholarship student working three part-time jobs. She thinks it's a transactional arrangement; he turns out to be a total menace who falls head over heels.

06. For The Night? — J.WY

Inspired by a viral moment. A drunken night out leads a girl to film a video with a handsome stranger, boldly claiming, "This is my boyfriend for the night." When Jung Wooyoung counters with a heavy-eyed, "For the night?", she pushes back with "Forever?"—sealing a chaotic, high-stakes trajectory that will either be the best or worst decision of her life.

07. The Final Score — C.JH

Choi Jongho plays to win, both on the field and in the house. You knew him before he became the campus’s untouchable star athlete—back when he was just the boy next door. But after a bitter falling out turned your shared history into a cold war, Jongho realizes that breaking your rules is the only game he actually cares about winning. When the final score is tallied, he’ll realize some trophies are meant to be worshiped, not collected.

08. Outline Of Her — K.YS

Kang Yeosang is the quietest storm in the TEEZER House, watching the chaos from the shadows while keeping everyone at an icy distance. He didn't believe in the house curse until he saw you—a complete stranger who completely redefined his world in a single glance. In a house built on loud lies and reckless nights, Yeosang becomes quietly, fiercely consumed by the urge to learn every single outline of who you are.

NAVIGATION. — THE BUNNY BIBLE.

a/n ; i’ve been thinking about making this a whole series, ive got too many ideas but i still have to finish seonghwa’s series.. i might put it on hiatus cause my ideas are burning out. :’o

© KOZTION 2026 | Please don’t nibble on my work—no reposting, translating, or stealing!

series masterlist

⚽️ summary -> Only a few short weeks after signing a contract to become the new physical therapist for one of South Korea's top soccer clubs, their star player, San, crumbles with a serious knee injury. You're in charge of taking care of him through his recovery process, but San is not exactly the nicest patient to deal with. Suddenly, your life takes a new direction as you get to know the grumpy player and watch him bond with your son.

⚽️ pairing -> physical therapist! (f) reader x injured soccer player! San

⚽️ genre/au -> sports romance, single parent, smut, fluff, angst

⚽️ warnings/tags -> 18+ MINORS DNI, unprotected sex, secret romance (kind of), single parent/divorcee reader, san is such a good father figure, injury warnings, ACL tear, emotional distress with recovery, breeding kink, bathtub sex, voyeurism, longing, forced proximity

⚽️ word count -> TBA

⚽️ taglist -> @jjhmk @yukine-smx @roe-sinning @meowmeowminnie @yeritheloml @y00nzin0 @yesv01 @halesandy @shegotboreddsoo @kangyeosangelic @gayliljoong @sanshineeeeee @kodzukein @baguette-atiny @seokwoosmole @nyeatinyjunkie @juliettechokilo @pockyddalgi @justaqueerbufoin @hwaightme @likexaxdaydream @ssaboala @gtr-skyline-lover @miriamxsworld @daegale @knucklesdeepmingi @naiify @yeoyeoland @arya9111 @mdibby @8tinytings @angelicyeo @wooyoungjpg @lonewolfjinji @asjkdk @charreddonuts @mangishii @yeoyeoland @pink-hwaberry @wooyoluvrr @maru-matt @pearltinyy @loveuwoo @m3chigo @northerngalxy @silverpixiedust23 @interweab @skz1-4-3 @kikivonpoopyhead @dana-nite @sannies-tiddies @vixensss @soso59love-blog

(if I missed you please lmk!! bold = can’t tag)

join the taglist!

⚽️ Parts ⚽️

ONE - the injury || w.c: 3.0k

TWO - the encounter || w.c: 6k

THREE - the bath

FOUR - whipped cream

★ prev called: show & tell universe ★

An exploration of the eight distinct stories of friendship, love, and self-discovery that intertwine as each character faces the trials of entering adulthood and falling in and out of love.

warnings: smut, drinking and drugs, adult language and female presenting oc's (with breasts and vaginas), angst, tears and attempted comedy throughout all stories.

note: this masterlist is organized so that stories are in chronological order, although there's some context within them that range from their childhood, teen years and college years. in these stories, the guys are in their last years of college/entering their first job and tasting a bit of adulthood as they navigate through the motions and find love along the way.

MINGI'S STORY: SHOW AND TELL (bf2l).

summary: you have known mingi since you both were fourteen. you’ve been by his side through thick and thin and you would do anything for him, really, considering he’s your other half. when he has an unfortunate bed experience and asks for your help and you say yes, he starts considering that, maybe, you’re just the best friend a guy like him can have.

main story: part one (8k) & part two (11k).

extras: a very show & tell christmas (7k), tba.

WOOYOUNG'S PRELUDE: A CLOWN'S REMEDY TO HEAL A BROKEN HEART (halloween special, hookup2??).

summary: a drunk and kind of akward conversation inside of a closet is the start of Wooyoung's journey into healing his broken heart. only he doesn't really know the name of the scarlet witch that helped mend a heart that wasn't supposed to break anymore, even if she starts plaguing his thoughts and dreams after that.

posted here (11.9k).

SAN'S STORY: WE CAN'T BE FRIENDS (f2s2l).

summary: san is your first love. he broke your heart and played with your feelings without even kissing you back when you two were in highschool. now, many years later, you do your best to avoid crossing paths with him because there's just no way you could ever hate him, but there's also no way you two can be friends again. but his best friend is also one of your best friends, so there's only so much you can do to avoid san when he arranges a dinner you're forced to go to.

main story: one shot (20k).

extras: tba.

SEONGHWA'S STORY: I WAS MADE FOR LOVIN' YOU (s2l, love at first sight).

summary: in an attempt to grasp at his youth, seonghwa buys a motorcycle despite not knowing the first thing about them. when it inevitably breaks down, he has no other option that to ride it to a mechanic shop and, after following a sweet hum, he’s faced with the life-changing (and predictable) fact that, maybe, what he needed after all was not a motorcycle. maybe, just maybe, what he needed was you.

main story: one shot (20k).

extras: i was made for lovin' you (even in a galaxy far, far away) (9.6k), tba.

YUNHO'S STORY: MOUNTEBANK CHEM (e2f2l, arranged pr relationship).

summary: the first time you met yunho, you knew he was going to be part of the biggest tragedy of your life: the loss of your freedom, of your free will. you didn't know why back then but what you did figure out is that you and jeong yunho were going to, eventually and very publicly, date each other at some point. is that reason enough to hate his guts? well, of course! now, when the time comes to fulfill the prophecy, how the hell are you going to pull it off? and, most importantly, what do you need to do to not fall in love with him in the process?

main story: part one (9.7k), part two (14.2k), part three (16.5k), part four (24.1k), epilogue (7.08k).

extras: tba.

WOOYOUNG'S INTERLUDE: A POOL PARTY FOR STARVED HEARTS (summer special, full on situationship).

summary: summer parties are boring but thankfully your life has been full of surprises and fun since you met wooyoung. even if you can’t call him yours, and you’re not so sure that’s what you want anyways, he sure knows how to make your fall for his schemes in way no other… friend? has before. it must be the summer heat and definitely not the love that’s been brewing in your heart for him, right?

posted here (8.2k)

YEOSANG'S STORY: THE RHYTHM OF OUR HEARTS (s2f2l, slow burn, two part).

summary: yeosang, with his camcorder and his looks from afar, ignites your curiosity in a way that makes you act a little dumb and against your friend’s judgments. when you finally get tired of him not approaching you, you decide that the night is young and life’s too short to not find an answer to your questions. on a dirty rooftop, your newfound friendship with him might just be the most surprising outcome of the whole ordeal. Is it enough to make you stay, though?

main story: part one (17.5k), part two (21.1k).

extras: tba.

HONGJOONG'S STORY: THE GHOST OF US (childhood friends to lovers to exes to bandmates to friends to girl idk, series!)

summary: hongjoong has his music, his band and his friends by his side. he wishes he could say he felt complete the entire time, but the truth is that it all started to make sense when you showed up in his life once again. with your siren voice and your loyalty, he's trying really hard to keep the curtain drawn over what you two once had but there's a ghost from your past and a common goal that hints at him that there's simply no way of getting over you. now, all he does is wonder: do you feel the same way?

main story: prologue (2.9k), chapter one (7.9k), chapter two (8.3k), chapter three (7.7k), chapter four (???)

extras: tba.

ღPairing: Wooyoung x Seonghwa x Reader(f) x Yunho x San

ღGenre: non-idol au, gaming nerds au

ღWord Count: 3,716

ღWarnings: mlm (kissing, groping, mentions of sex), oral m receiving, multiple partners sex, handjobs, nipple play, body covered in cum, multiple orgasms (everyone cums okay)

ღRated: 18+, smut with some plot

ღSummery: you were supposed to be weaving a tale so that your four best friends could traverse the land of Faerun… not whatever the hell this turned into

ღAuthor’s Note: everyone is kinda just… winging it sexuality wise? All kissing and groping and… is consensual…yes this is basically an orgy, I have no regrets

ღ as always, love to my forever beta readers @mejuii @downtoamagicalland for encouraging my decent into whoredom <3

{Dungeons and Dragons--no! Dicks and Debauchery}

"Your guide for your mission has bright purple hair pulled into a tight ponytail and gives you the once over," You say behind your cardboard shield. As Dungeon Master, it was imperative that you keep an air of mystery about you.