🦉

The dressing room had always been the liveliest place in the building before a performance. It was an organized sort of chaos, one that every member had grown accustomed to over the years.

Music leaked from someone's speaker, blending with the muffled cheers of fans filtering through the concrete walls outside. Stylists hurried from one chair to another with curling irons, makeup brushes, and armfuls of freshly steamed stage outfits. Managers called out reminders that no one was listening to. Laughter erupted every few seconds over conversations that constantly overlapped one another.

It was noisy, comfortably so. The familiar disorder had always settled your nerves before stepping onto a stage. Today, however, the sounds surrounding you felt strangely distant, as though you were hearing everything through layers of water.

James occupied the center of the room, unable to remain still for longer than a few seconds. Even while waiting for final touch-ups, his feet instinctively traced fragments of the choreography across the floor, lips silently counting each beat beneath his breath.

"Five, six, seven..." He pivoted too sharply, his elbow narrowly colliding with Martin's shoulder for what had to be the third time in less than five minutes.

"Bro," Martin sighed, taking a step back before another collision could happen. "Watch where you're going."

"I am watching."

"No," Martin deadpanned, adjusting the rings decorating nearly every finger. "You're literally walking into me."

James blinked. "...Was I?"

"Yes bro."

"Oh." Two seconds passed, then he absentmindedly drifted forward again.

Martin caught himself before impact and simply stared. "...Okay I’m taking a break."

Meanwhile, Juhoon remained secluded in the quietest corner of the room, entirely detached from the surrounding commotion. His earbuds muted the world's constant chatter as he methodically stretched his shoulders, neck, and wrists with practiced precision. His movements were slow, measured, deliberate, almost meditative.

Across from him, Keonho had somehow managed to sprawl himself across three separate chairs as though they had been specifically designed for his personal comfort. “I just finished my obby in Roblox!" he announced dramatically to absolutely no one.

"Are you done with your break yet?" Seonghyeon replied without looking up.

"Nah, I’m tired."

"You’re just being lazy bro."

"No I’m not, my legs have been hurting since this morning."

Seonghyeon sighed before casually tossing the makeup sponge in his hand. It struck Keonho directly in the forehead. "...Ow."

Another toss directly at Keonho. "Stop."

"No."

"Seriously."

"No."

"Seonghyeon."

"No."

"Martin," Keonho whined, sitting halfway upright. "Tell him to stop."

Martin didn't bother lifting his gaze. Instead, he continued straightening the silver rings adorning his fingers with meticulous concentration.

"You’re grown, just throw something back at him."

A brief silence settled over them. "...You’re right," Keonho admitted.

The room dissolved into another wave of laughter. Ordinarily, you would have been laughing alongside them, you would have thrown another makeup sponge at Keonho yourself, you would have teased James for rehearsing choreography every waking second or stolen one of Juhoon's earbuds just to see him finally react.

This room had never simply been a dressing room, it had become home. A sanctuary hidden behind backstage hallways where exhaustion transformed into excitement, where nervous anticipation dissolved into jokes, and where every performance began long before anyone stepped beneath the blinding stage lights.

Yet today, everything felt oddly disconnected, like you were standing several feet away from your own body, merely observing the scene instead of existing within it. Quietly, you tugged the oversized hoodie closer around yourself, your fingers instinctively gripping the sleeves until the fabric concealed most of your hands.

It wasn't because you were cold. Although, maybe you were. It was difficult to tell anymore, your body couldn't seem to decide whether it was freezing or burning alive. A dull ache settled behind your eyes, pulsing relentlessly with every beat of your heart. Each throb radiated deeper into your skull until even the fluorescent lights overhead felt painfully bright.

Swallowing became an ordeal. Your throat felt scraped raw, every movement accompanied by a sharp sting that refused to disappear no matter how often you reached for your water bottle. Your muscles protested even the smallest motions, simply sitting upright required far more effort than it should have. Every joint felt unbearably heavy, as though invisible weights had been fastened to your limbs overnight.

Sleep hadn't helped, medicine hadn't helped. Nothing had, you knew exactly why. The moment you'd opened your eyes that morning, you knew. Your forehead had been burning. Your entire body had shivered beneath blankets despite the overwhelming heat radiating from your skin.

A fever, and not a mild one.

Your manager had suggested resting, the company doctor had advised you not to overexert yourself. Even looking in the mirror had been enough to tell you something was wrong. Your complexion lacked its usual color, faint shadows settled beneath your eyes, and the exhaustion clinging to your expression couldn't be disguised with even the most skilled makeup artist.

Under any other circumstances, you would've stayed in bed without hesitation. But today wasn't an ordinary schedule, today was one of the largest university festivals of the year. Thousands upon thousands of fans had gathered hours before the gates even opened. Multiple cameras would broadcast the performances live. Special collaboration stages, months of relentless rehearsals, countless sleepless nights, endless practice until every movement became instinct.

Too many people had worked too hard for you to disappear because of a fever. There wasn't a universe where you would willingly miss it. So you smiled. You laughed at the appropriate moments, you nodded through conversations, you answered questions with just enough enthusiasm to avoid suspicion, you performed normalcy almost as carefully as you performed on stage. No one needed another problem to worry about.

"...You okay?" The voice interrupted your thoughts.

You slowly lifted your head, and Juhoon removed one earbud. His usually serene expression hadn't changed much, but his gaze remained fixed on you with quiet attentiveness.

"Hm?"

"You've been awfully quiet."

"Oh." You forced a small smile. "I'm just... sleepy."

He studied you carefully, as though attempting to piece together something you hadn't said aloud. "...Did you actually sleep last night?"

The question lingered between you. You hesitated for the smallest fraction of a second before answering. "I slept fine…."

It wasn't exactly the truth, but it wasn't entirely a lie either. You had slept, just not well. Not peacefully, not in any way that resembled actual rest.

Juhoon's eyes remained on yours for another lingering moment. Long enough that your heartbeat subtly quickened, long enough for you to wonder whether he had noticed the faint flush spreading across your face... or the slight tremor hidden within your hands.

Then, he simply gave a quiet nod. "...Okay." Without another word, he placed the earbud back in his ear and resumed stretching.

The conversation ended there, you released a breath so quietly that no one noticed.

You were safe. At least, for now.

Except...

Your performance wasn't nearly as convincing as you believed it to be. You had spent the entire morning carefully constructing an illusion, masking every symptom behind practiced smiles and casual responses, convincing yourself that if you acted naturally enough, no one would question it.

Unfortunately, the people surrounding you knew you far too well.

Especially when something felt even slightly off. By the time rehearsal began, the enormous stage was already buzzing with activity.

Towering LED screens illuminated the venue in shifting colors while technicians hurried across the platform adjusting cameras, checking microphones, and shouting cues through their headsets. Dancers occupied every corner, running through formations one final time before the audience would eventually flood the festival grounds.

Music thundered through the stadium speakers, powerful enough that it vibrated beneath your shoes. Usually, that familiar bass settles your nerves. Today, it only made the pounding inside your skull significantly worse. You inhaled quietly. Just one rehearsal, then the real performance. You could manage that, you had to.

The opening track began. Your body moved almost entirely on instinct, years of relentless practice carrying you through each sequence despite the overwhelming fatigue weighing down every muscle. Every step, every turn, every transition had long since become engraved into your memory. Yet your concentration continued slipping through your grasp.

The choreography blurred together, the lights overhead seemed unusually brilliant, forcing your eyes to squint against their intensity, the relentless heat radiating from your skin contrasted strangely with the persistent chill creeping through your fingertips.

You blinked for only a fraction of a second, and that was enough. Instead of moving forward on the second count, your foot landed a beat too late.

Most people probably wouldn't have even noticed. The formation remained intact, the audience certainly never would have realized. But someone did, Martin. His awareness during rehearsals bordered on frightening. The music hadn't even finished before he turned toward you, eyebrows subtly knitting together.

"You normally step two counts earlier."

You glanced toward the mark on the floor before offering an apologetic smile. "...I know."

Silence lingered for a brief moment, Martin studied your expression. "You okay?"

The question arrived so naturally it almost caught you off guard. You answered just as quickly. "Yeah."

He didn't respond immediately. Instead, his gaze drifted over you once more, taking in details you desperately wished would remain unnoticed. The slight sluggishness in your movements, the faint flush coloring your cheeks despite the cool air inside the venue, the way your breathing seemed just a little heavier than usual.

"...You sure?"

"Mhm." You smiled, the exact smile you'd been giving everyone since waking up that morning.

Martin simply stared. His expression remained unreadable, but his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. He had known you for years, long enough to distinguish every genuine smile from every fabricated one. This was definitely the latter. Still, he chose not to press the issue. "...Okay."

Nearly ten minutes later, rehearsal paused for a short break. The music abruptly faded, replaced by scattered conversations as dancers wandered toward the sides of the stage to catch their breath. Staff members quickly distributed towels while stylists rushed in for last-minute touch-ups.

James, unsurprisingly, had volunteered to pass around bottled water before anyone else could. "You get one."

He tossed a bottle toward Seonghyeon. "You too."

Another landed neatly in Juhoon's lap.

"Keonho."

"What?"

"Drink water."

"I'm not thirsty."

"I wasn't asking."

"So bossy…."

James ignored the complaint altogether before continuing down the line until he eventually stopped in front of you. "Here."

You accepted the bottle with a quiet smile. "Thanks."

Your fingers brushed against his hand for barely a second and James froze. "...Whoa."

You blinked. "What?"

He instinctively reached forward again, lightly catching your wrist before you could pull away. His eyebrows lifted almost immediately. "...Your hands."

You looked down. "My hands?"

"They're freezing."

You let out a small laugh, attempting to sound unconcerned. "They're fine."

James shook his head almost instantly. "No."

His grip wasn't tight, just enough to keep your hand from slipping away. He rubbed his thumb lightly across the back of your knuckles, his expression gradually shifting from confusion to unmistakable concern. "They're literally ice cold."

You gently withdrew your hand before anyone else noticed. "It's probably just the air conditioning."

James instinctively glanced toward the massive ventilation units mounted high above the stage. "...The air conditioning doesn't make someone's hands that cold."

You shrugged as casually as you could manage. "I guess I just get cold easily."

His lips pressed into a thin line. That explanation didn't satisfy him in the slightest. James wasn't usually the most observant person in the room. In fact, he often overlooked things everyone else noticed immediately.

But whenever it came to the members, especially you. His instincts rarely failed him. Something wasn't right, he could feel it. "...If you say so," he murmured at last.

Backstage descended into complete pandemonium as the final countdown approached. The corridors that had seemed relatively calm only moments ago were suddenly overflowing with movement.

Production staff hurried from one end of the venue to the other, clipboards clutched tightly against their chests as they called out last-minute instructions over the deafening noise. Stylists darted between artists with remarkable efficiency, adjusting collars, smoothing wrinkles, reapplying makeup that had begun to fade beneath the relentless stage lights, and carefully securing in-ear monitors so they wouldn't shift during the performance.

Managers moved with equal urgency, repeatedly checking schedules and communicating through crackling headsets. "Three minutes."

"Camera three is ready."

"Pyrotechnics are confirmed."

"Stand by."

Every announcement blended into another until individual voices became impossible to distinguish. Beyond the heavy backstage curtains, the audience was already roaring. Thousands upon thousands of excited fans filled the stadium, their collective cheers reverberating through the walls with enough force to make the floor tremble beneath your feet.

Ordinarily, hearing them would have filled you with anticipation. It was the sound every performer longed for. Today,  It felt overwhelming. Your heartbeat echoed relentlessly inside your ears, drowning out nearly everything else.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It almost seemed louder than the crowd itself.

The fluorescent lighting hanging overhead appeared unusually brilliant, forcing you to squint against its harsh intensity.  Heat spread uncomfortably beneath your skin until it seemed impossible to breathe. Then, without warning a violent chill coursed through your body.

The abrupt contrast made your teeth threaten to chatter, your vision wavered only for the briefest moment. The hallway tilted ever so slightly before righting itself again. Instinctively, your hand shot forward, fingers curling tightly around the edge of a nearby equipment table.

Cold metal pressed against your palm. You inhaled slowly, steady. Just steady.

Don't panic now, not when you had made it this far. One performance, just one. After that, you could collapse into bed and sleep for an entire day if necessary. You only had to hold yourself together for another hour.

"...You look pale." 

The voice startled you from your thoughts. You turned your head, Keonho had somehow materialized beside you without making a sound. He wasn't joking. Instead, his usual playful grin had been replaced by something considerably more concerned.

You forced an easy smile. "I always look pale."

"No."

His answer came almost immediately. He tilted his head slightly, studying your face with surprising concentration. "You look..." His sentence trailed off as though he couldn't quite find the right comparison. His eyebrows gradually pulled together. "...Like you’re about to die."

Despite everything, a quiet laugh escaped you. almost involuntary. "I promise I'm okay."

Keonho didn't return your smile. "You don't sound okay."

"I'm fine."

"You've been saying that all day."

"Because I am."

His eyes narrowed. "You've coughed six times in the last ten minutes."

You blinked. "...I did not."

"I’ve counted."

"I—" A tickle blossomed deep inside your throat. You barely had enough time to turn your head before another cough escaped. then another. You pressed your fist against your mouth, attempting to muffle the sound. It didn't help much.

Silence followed.

Keonho slowly folded his arms across his chest. His expression became almost unbearably smug. "...Seven."

You stared at him.

He lifted a single eyebrow. "Busted."

"...You're actually counting?"

"I started after the third one."

"You seriously have nothing better to do?"

"Apparently not."

You rolled your eyes, grateful that he had shifted the conversation back toward something familiar, even if only briefly.

Before either of you could say another word— "CORTIS!" The stage manager's voice rang throughout the hallway. "Two minutes!"

Instantly, the atmosphere transformed. Casual conversations vanished, the joking stopped, every member instinctively gravitated toward one another until all six of you stood together in a tight circle just beyond the stage entrance.

Martin extended his hand first, without hesitation, everyone stacked theirs on top. James, Juhoon, Keonho, Seonghyeon, then yours.

Martin glanced around the circle, making eye contact with each member before speaking. “Our usual.”

"Don’t forget our lyrics." Seonghyeon added without missing a beat.

"Don’t forget our formation." Keonho dramatically placed a hand over his heart.

"And absolutely no embarrassing fancams" James immediately grinned.

"No injuries." Martin nodded.

James snorted. "That’s hard to get through."

"It isn't."

"It really is."

Seonghyeon pointed directly at Keonho. "He’d probably break a finger.”

A chorus of laughter erupted almost instantly. You laughed too, only for a moment. The sound disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. Your smile faded before anyone else seemed to notice almost. But Martin did. His gaze lingered on you for just a fraction longer than usual.

Long enough to notice how quickly your expression had fallen, long enough to recognize the exhaustion hiding beneath your carefully maintained composure. Concern flickered across his features before he quietly asked, "...Ready?"

You swallowed against the persistent ache in your throat, then nodded. "...Ready."

The stage doors opened, an explosion of brilliant light flooded your vision, the deafening roar of the audience crashed over you like an ocean wave. Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands. An endless sea of illuminated light sticks stretched across, shimmering beneath the night sky like constellations brought down to earth.

For one breathtaking moment, everything else disappeared. The fever, the dizziness, the aching muscles, the relentless pounding inside your head. Adrenaline surged through your bloodstream with overwhelming intensity, silencing every protest your body had been making throughout the day.

The opening notes echoed through the stadium, your body moved before your mind had the chance to think. Months of repetition took over. Every count, every transition, every formation, every lyric, every expression practiced endlessly inside mirrored rehearsal rooms. Muscle memory carried you effortlessly across the stage.

You danced, each movement appeared just as sharp as it had during rehearsal. You sang, your voice remained remarkably steady despite the burning sensation lingering in your throat. You smiled, bright enough that cameras captured nothing but confidence.

You waved toward every section of the audience, fans screamed your name until their voices became indistinguishable from one another. To everyone watching, you looked perfectly fine. The audience noticed nothing unusual, the broadcast cameras captured flawless angles, the MCs enthusiastically praised the performance from the sidelines.

Not a single person outside the group would have guessed you had woken up with a high fever. Your performance was nearly immaculate, because the people who had spent years standing beside you didn't need obvious signs. They recognized the smallest deviations. 

Halfway through the second song, Seonghyeon caught it first. Your breathing. Usually, your inhalations remained controlled regardless of how demanding the choreography became. His eyes lingered on you for a beat longer than necessary before returning to the choreography.

By the beginning of the third chorus, Keonho noticed something different. Normally, during formation changes, you'd instinctively glance toward whichever member happened to be beside you. A quick smile, a playful expression, some tiny interaction reserved for fans paying close attention.

This time, your eyes never left the floor markings. You weren't looking at anyone, you were concentrating entirely on maintaining your balance. On staying upright, mn making sure your legs continued carrying you through each step.

During the final chorus, James happened to catch your hand while the choreography briefly brought you shoulder-to-shoulder, only for a split second.

Martin saw your eyelids flutter noticeably slower than usual, like keeping them open had suddenly become difficult. Then, the cameras shifted toward another member.

Barely noticeable to anyone else, Juhoon saw your hand briefly press against your stomach as you lowered your head, your fingers tightening against the fabric of your outfit for the shortest moment before smoothly returning to your side.

The movement lasted less than two seconds, the cameras missed it, the audience missed it, everyone else missed it. Your members didn't. One by one, the same realization settled over each of them. 

Something was very wrong.

The final note echoed across the stadium. For a fleeting moment, it seemed as though time itself had paused. Then, an explosion of silver and sapphire confetti erupted from above, cascading through the air in shimmering waves that reflected the stadium lights like falling stars.

The audience's cheers swelled into an almost deafening roar. Thousands of voices merged into one overwhelming chorus, chanting the group's name with unwavering enthusiasm. It was impossible to distinguish individual faces anymore. All you could see was a sea of glowing light sticks stretching endlessly into the darkness.

Everything you had worked toward for years stood before you. You forced another brilliant smile, the kind fans expected, the kind cameras loved.

You raised your arm, waving toward every section of the audience despite the growing ache radiating through your shoulders. "Thank you!" Your voice carried through the microphone with practiced warmth. "We had so much fun tonight!"

The members stood shoulder-to-shoulder, bowing deeply toward the crowd one final time. "Thank you for coming!"

More cheers, more applause. Another wave, another smile, another carefully maintained illusion. Every movement demanded far more energy than you had left. Your vision blurred briefly as you straightened from the bow, you blinked until the world sharpened again.

Just a little longer, only a few more steps.

The cameras followed the group as everyone began making their way toward the backstage entrance, continuing to wave until the very last possible second. Your smile never faltered, not once.

The instant you disappeared behind the towering stage curtains, everything collapsed. The overwhelming rush of adrenaline that had carried you through the performance vanished with astonishing speed, abandoning your body all at once.

The exhaustion returned tenfold, your hearing dulled, the voices surrounding you became muffled, as though someone had wrapped thick fabric around your ears, the hallway tilted.

No… It wasn't the hallway, it was you. Your legs suddenly refused to cooperate. Strength drained from your muscles so abruptly that your knees buckled beneath your weight. The floor rushed toward you.

"Whoa!"

Before you could hit the ground, a pair of strong arms caught you securely around the waist. James. His reflexes had acted before his mind even processed what was happening. "What the—"

His voice broke off in alarm as he steadied your unbalanced weight against him. The sudden movement instantly drew everyone's attention.

Martin spun around almost immediately. "What happened?"

Juhoon reacted just as quickly, reaching behind you to unclip your microphone pack before it could crash onto the floor. The expensive equipment barely cleared your body before he set it aside.

Seonghyeon was already kneeling beside you, his usual easygoing expression had vanished entirely.

Keonho hurried over next. For perhaps the first time all day, there wasn't even the slightest trace of humor lingering on his face. His playful demeanor disappeared so completely that it almost startled you. "...Hey." His voice came out quieter than expected.

Your breathing had become irregular, every inhale felt painfully shallow, every exhale trembled despite your efforts to steady it. "I..." You instinctively tried to push yourself upright. "I can..."

The moment you attempted to stand, the entire world lurched violently. Your vision darkened around the edges, the hallway spun in dizzying circles. You instinctively reached for something to stabilize yourself but found only empty air. "...I can't..." Your voice barely rose above a whisper.

James immediately tightened his grip around your shoulders, supporting nearly all of your weight without hesitation. "You don't have to."

"I..." You swallowed against the burning pain in your throat. "I'm okay."

"No." Martin's response arrived instantly. For perhaps the first time that day, there wasn't even a hint of gentleness in his voice. "For once..." He took another step closer. "Stop saying that." Silence settled over the group. "You are not okay."

You lowered your gaze. "I just need..."

The sentence never reached completion. A violent coughing fit seized your chest without warning. You doubled forward instinctively, one hand flying to your mouth as each cough became harsher than the last.

Your lungs burned, your throat felt raw, breathing itself became unexpectedly difficult. The hallway fell silent, completely silent. Even the bustling activity surrounding other artists seemed to fade into the background. 

Juhoon's eyes widened ever so slightly. For anyone else, the change might have gone unnoticed, but the members knew him well enough to recognize that expression. It meant he was genuinely worried.

Seonghyeon slowly reached forward. "...Can I?"

You gave the faintest nod. The back of his hand brushed gently against your forehead. His expression changed immediately. He pulled his hand away as though the heat had startled him. His eyes lifted toward Martin. "...Hyung." His voice came out unusually subdued. "She..." A brief pause. "She’s burning up."

James stared at him. "...What?"

Without waiting for confirmation, he placed his own hand against your forehead. The moment his skin made contact, his eyes widened dramatically. "...Oh my gosh." His voice was barely audible. "You're..." He shook his head in disbelief. "You're absolutely burning."

Martin looked at you, horror gradually settling across his face as realization finally clicked into place. "You have a fever."

You immediately attempted another weak smile. "It isn't that—"

"It is." The interruption came quietly.

Everyone turned toward Juhoon, he rarely interrupted people. When he did, it usually mattered. His calm voice remained remarkably even. Yet beneath that familiar composure lingered unmistakable certainty. "You've had one all day."

Your eyes slowly found his. For a moment, neither of you spoke. Then, almost hesitantly. "...You knew?"

Juhoon nodded once. "I wasn't completely certain." His gaze remained steady. "But..." He exhaled softly. "I suspected."

Pieces of the day suddenly replayed inside your mind. The lingering glance in the dressing room. The questions. The way he had continued watching you during rehearsal. He hadn't been imagining things, he had noticed.

"You still performed." His voice softened further. "...Why?"

The question pierced far deeper than you expected. Your gaze drifted toward the floor. You searched for an answer that sounded reasonable, one that justified everything. "I..." Your fingers tightened weakly around the sleeve of your hoodie. "I didn't want to disappoint anyone."

Nobody answered. The silence that followed felt infinitely heavier than any response could have been. Then–

Flick.

"...Ow." Your forehead stung.

You instinctively looked up. Keonho stood directly in front of you, his hand still half-raised from flicking your forehead. Normally, his expression after doing something like that would've been mischievous, teasing, accompanied by an insufferably proud grin.

Instead, he looked devastated. His eyes shimmered with frustration. He looked hurt. "...You idiot." The words were quiet, almost fragile.

You blinked. "I..."

"You seriously thought..." He stopped himself, taking a slow breath before speaking again. "You thought we'd rather watch you collapse after the performance than know you were sick?"

Your lips parted. "I just didn't want—"

"You should've told us."

For the first time since any of you had met him, his voice cracked. 

"We're a team." He swallowed. "If one person's hurting… We will deal with it together." He gestured toward the rest of the members. "You don't have to carry everything by yourself."

Your chest tightened, the exhaustion, the fever, the overwhelming relief of finally no longer pretending… Everything crashed into you simultaneously, your vision blurred, not from dizziness this time, your eyes burned. "...I didn't want everyone worrying."

A small, bittersweet smile appeared on Seonghyeon's face. He crouched beside you again, his voice impossibly gentle. "...Too late."

James gave a tiny nod. Martin folded his arms, though the sternness on his face had softened into quiet concern. Even Juhoon's usually unreadable expression carried unmistakable relief that the truth had finally come out.

Seonghyeon reached over, lightly squeezing your shoulder. "We've been worried all day."

James let out a quiet sigh. "You just didn't let us help."

Martin shook his head. "You've spent the entire day protecting everyone else's feelings." His gaze met yours. "...Now it's our turn to take care of you."

The moment your manager understood the severity of the situation, every remaining commitment on the day's itinerary was abandoned without hesitation. There was no discussion, no negotiation, no insistence that you could simply "push through it."

The decision was immediate. "Cancel everything." His voice carried a level of authority that silenced the room almost instantly. "The post-performance interviews are off." He turned toward another staff member. "Notify the broadcasting team."

Another nod.

"The radio recording scheduled for tonight?"

"Canceled."

"The behind-the-scenes content?"

"Canceled."

"The promotional livestream?"

"Canceled."

Every obligation that had once seemed impossible to postpone disappeared from the schedule within minutes. Phones rang continuously throughout the backstage hallway as managers hurried to contact organizers, publicists, and production teams. Apologies were exchanged, rescheduling discussions began, none of it mattered to you anymore. The only priority left was getting you back to the hotel.

The journey there felt strangely subdued. Ordinarily, the van would have been filled with excited chatter after a successful performance. James would enthusiastically replay clips from the stage, insisting everyone watch his favorite moments. Keonho would dramatically complain about some microscopic mistake that nobody else had even noticed. Martin would pretend not to laugh before inevitably joining the conversation. Seonghyeon would tease everyone until the entire vehicle dissolved into another round of laughter. Even Juhoon, despite his naturally reserved personality, usually smiled quietly while listening to everyone else.

Tonight, none of that happened. The silence settled gently over the van, the kind of silence born from shared concern. Rain hadn't begun to fall outside, but the city lights still reflected softly across the windows as the vehicle navigated through evening traffic. Streetlights streaked past in blurred ribbons of gold and white.

You rested against the seat, every ounce of energy seemingly drained from your body. The adrenaline that had sustained you throughout the performance had disappeared entirely, leaving nothing behind except overwhelming fatigue. Even keeping your eyes open demands effort.

James occupied the seat directly beside you, he hadn't said much since leaving the venue. Instead, his attention remained fixed almost entirely on you. Every time the van rolled over uneven pavement or turned too sharply around a corner, he instinctively reached out before you had the chance to lose your balance.

When the driver slowed suddenly at a traffic light, your body tipped slightly forward. James immediately steadied you with a gentle hand against your shoulder. "You okay?" His voice barely rose above a whisper, as though speaking too loudly might somehow make your headache worse.

You gave the smallest nod. "...Mhm."

He wasn't convinced again. But unlike earlier, he didn't argue. He simply kept his hand resting nearby, prepared to catch you again if necessary.

Several minutes passed before Juhoon quietly leaned forward from the seat behind you. Without saying anything at first, he unscrewed the cap of a water bottle he'd been holding before extending it toward you.

"You need this." His voice remained calm, gentle, almost soothing.

You slowly accepted it. "...Thanks."

Your throat still burned every time you swallowed, but the cool water offered a fleeting moment of relief. Not enough to make you feel better, just enough to make breathing hurt a little less.

Juhoon waited until you had taken several careful sips before speaking again. "Drink slowly."

You nodded obediently.

He didn't add anything further, he simply settled back into his seat, satisfied that you were at least staying hydrated.

A few minutes later, another shiver unexpectedly coursed through your body. It arrived without warning. One moment, your skin felt unbearably warm. The next, an icy chill wrapped itself around you so intensely your shoulders instinctively curled inward. You rubbed your arms through the fabric of your hoodie, hoping the sensation would pass. It didn't.

Martin noticed almost immediately. From the opposite side of the van, his eyes lifted from the schedule displayed on his tablet. "You cold?"

You hesitated, then quietly nodded. "...A little."

Without another word, Martin reached toward the air conditioning controls mounted above the seats. The steady stream of cool air gradually weakened before disappearing altogether. The warmth inside the vehicle slowly returned. Still, you continued shivering.

Martin watched for another moment. Then, with characteristic practicality, he pulled the oversized hoodie he had been wearing over his head. "You'll be warmer in this."

Before you could protest, he carefully draped it across your shoulders. The soft fabric settled comfortably around you, noticeably larger than your own sweatshirt. It retained the lingering warmth from where he'd been wearing it only moments earlier. A faint scent of fresh laundry detergent clung to the material, accompanied by traces of the subtle cologne he always wore. The familiar fragrance surrounded you almost immediately.

You instinctively pulled the sleeves closer around yourself. "...Thank you."

Martin simply nodded once."No problem."

Across the aisle, Keonho appeared completely absorbed in his phone. At least, that was the image he attempted to maintain. His thumb lazily scrolled through social media, occasionally tapping at the screen with exaggerated nonchalance. Anyone glancing over would have assumed he was far too distracted to notice anything happening around him.

Except, every thirty seconds, almost precisely every thirty seconds, his eyes drifted upward. Just for a moment, long enough to check whether your eyes remained open. Whether your breathing still looked steady, whether you seemed any worse than before.

The instant he confirmed you were still conscious, he'd immediately lower his gaze back to the screen as though nothing had happened. Then another half minute would pass, and he'd do it again. It became so predictable that James eventually noticed. Without turning his head, he quietly muttered, "...You're checking on her."

Keonho's eyes remained fixed on his phone. "No, I'm not."

"You've looked up six times."

"I have not."

"Seven."

"...You're counting?"

James shrugged. "I started after the third one."

For the briefest moment, Keonho looked genuinely offended.

Then he sighed, locking his phone without another attempt to deny it. "...Fine."

His voice was barely audible. "I just..." He glanced toward you one more time. "...I wanted to make sure she didn't pass out."

The confession lingered in the quiet van. No one laughed, no one teased him for caring. Because the truth was, every single person inside that vehicle had been doing exactly the same thing. Some were simply less obvious about it than others.

By the time the van finally pulled beneath the hotel's covered entrance, the exhaustion weighing upon your body had become almost unbearable. The journey itself hadn't been particularly long, but every passing minute seemed to magnify the fever's relentless grip.

Your muscles felt impossibly heavy, as though every movement required far more strength than your body could offer. Even lifting your head from the seat demanded a level of concentration that should never have been necessary.

The vehicle rolled to a gentle stop. Outside, the hotel entrance glowed beneath elegant chandeliers, their warm golden light spilling across the polished stone driveway.

The manager climbed out first, exchanging a few hurried words with the staff waiting near the entrance before opening the sliding door. "We're here."

One by one, everyone stepped onto the pavement. James turned toward you almost immediately. "Easy."

He extended a hand without hesitation. You accepted it, allowing him to help you out of the van. The instant your feet touched the ground… Your knees nearly buckled again. The solid pavement beneath you felt strangely unsteady. Your vision swayed, you instinctively reached toward the side of the van for support.

"...I'm fine."

James caught your elbow before you lost your balance. "You don't look fine."

You forced yourself upright, taking a slow breath. "I can walk."

"No." His answer arrived so quickly that you almost laughed. "...Seriously."

"I can."

"No." James folded his arms. His expression carried the unmistakable stubbornness everyone in the group recognized immediately. Normally, the two of you would have turned this into a playful argument. Tonight, there wasn't anything playful about it.

"I've walked farther than this before."

"No."

"It's literally only the lobby."

"No."

"I—" Before another protest could leave your lips, someone quietly stepped in front of you. You looked up.

Seonghyeon. 

Without saying another word, he turned around and lowered himself into a crouch directly in front of you. "...Get on."

You blinked. "...What?"

He glanced over one shoulder. "Piggyback."

The suggestion caught you completely off guard. "...Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"I'll crush you."

Seonghyeon slowly turned back toward you, looking so dramatically offended that even Martin let out the faintest sigh. "...Excuse me?"

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

"You've seen me."

"I have."

"I'm not exactly light."

He placed a thoughtful hand beneath his chin, pretending to contemplate the matter with exaggerated seriousness. "Hmm..." Everyone waited, after several unnecessarily dramatic seconds, he finally nodded to  ."You weigh..." Another pause. "...Approximately..." He squinted as though performing complex calculations. "...Two pillows."

Silence. Then, a weak laugh escaped you before you could stop it. "...Two pillows?"

"Mhm."

"I don't think you've ever picked up a pillow."

"I've picked up plenty."

"Clearly not."

"They're notoriously heavy."

James snorted. 

Martin pinched the bridge of his nose.

Keonho muttered, "That's the worst comparison you've ever made."

"I disagree." Seonghyeon looked back at you again, smiling far more gently this time. "I'm serious."

"So am I."

"I don't want to inconvenience you."

"You won't."

"I can manage."

"You've been saying that all day."

The words weren't harsh, just quietly honest. He shifted slightly, still crouched in front of you. "...Come on."

You hesitated.

He smiled. "You've carried me emotionally for years."

You blinked. "What?"

"You listen every time I complain." He began counting on his fingers. "You've stayed awake helping me memorize lyrics, covered for me when I overslept, talked me through panic before concerts, and convinced me I wasn't completely hopeless after that awful audition." A small grin tugged at his lips. "I think..." He glanced back over his shoulder. "I can return the favor."

Your eyes softened. "You don't have to."

"I know." His voice remained impossibly warm. "I want to."

A brief silence settled between the two of you. Then he added with a quiet chuckle, "I can carry you physically for five minutes."

The remark earned a chorus of amused laughter, and despite the pounding in your head, you laughed, only softly for a moment. But this time, it felt genuine. "...Fine."

Seonghyeon's smile brightened immediately. "I knew you'd say yes."

"I didn't."

"You were going to."

"I really wasn't."

"You absolutely were." With one last sigh of surrender, you carefully leaned forward. Your arms settled loosely around his shoulders while he reached behind to secure your legs.

"...Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

Without the slightest indication of strain, Seonghyeon stood smoothly to his full height. The movement was so effortless that you blinked in surprise. "...See?" He adjusted his grip slightly. "Told you."

"You weren't kidding."

"I rarely kid."

Every member stared at him, James raised an eyebrow. "That's the biggest lie you've told all year."

"...Okay."

Seonghyeon laughed. "I occasionally kid."

"You've been making jokes for the last ten minutes," Martin pointed out.

"Details."

The group began making their way toward the hotel entrance together. The revolving glass doors turned quietly as staff respectfully greeted everyone upon entering.

Throughout the entire walk, Keonho remained close, very close. He positioned himself beside Seonghyeon without anyone asking him to. His pace matched theirs perfectly. Every few steps, his gaze instinctively drifted toward you. Checking your expression, watching your breathing, making sure your eyes stayed open.

At one point, when Seonghyeon stepped down from a curb leading toward the lobby entrance, Keonho's hand instinctively lifted. It hovered only inches beneath your leg. Not touching, simply waiting. Ready to catch you if your balance shifts. The moment the step was over, he lowered it again as though nothing had happened.

Several minutes later, another uneven section of flooring again, and his hand rose again. Almost unconscious in its timing. He never acknowledged it, never said a word, never drew attention to what he was doing.

But the others noticed, James noticed, Martin noticed, Juhoon noticed, even Seonghyeon felt it every time Keonho instinctively moved closer whenever your weight shifted unexpectedly. No one teased him, no one pointed it out, because they all understood. For all of Keonho's endless jokes, dramatic complaints, and playful antics, when someone he cared about was hurting. His concern always revealed itself in the quietest ways.

The moment the hotel room door clicked shut behind the six of you, the atmosphere shifted completely. The bright stage lights, the roaring audience, the cameras, the endless expectations. All of it remained outside. Within the quiet sanctuary of the room, there were no performers. No carefully rehearsed smiles, no need to convince anyone that you were perfectly fine.

There were only six exhausted people who had spent years becoming one another's family, and at that particular moment. Five of them shared the exact same objective, making sure you recovered.

As expected, Martin assumed responsibility before anyone else even had the opportunity to speak. He didn't hesitate, didn't ask for opinions. He simply assessed the situation with the same composed efficiency that had earned him the unofficial title of the group's dependable leader years ago.

His eyes swept across the room once, then he began issuing instructions. "James." James looked up immediately. "Medicine."

"Got it."

Without another word, he disappeared toward the kitchenette, already rummaging through the medical supplies the company insisted every group carried during schedules.

"Juhoon." Juhoon had already retrieved an empty glass from one of the cabinets. "Water."

He gave a quiet nod. "I'm already filling it."

Martin wasn't surprised, of course he was. Juhoon always anticipated what people needed before they asked.

"Keonho." Keonho straightened from where he'd been helping you remove your shoes. "Blankets."

"I'm on it." He vanished into the bedroom, returning moments later with far more blankets than anyone had actually requested.

James stared. "...Planning to mummify her?"

"You can never have too many blankets."

"I think four qualifies."

"She’s cold."

"She’s also running a fever."

"Exactly."

James blinked. "...I don't think that's how fevers work."

"I wasn't a science major."

"You weren't any major."

"...Rude." Despite the exchange, Keonho still carefully draped every blanket over you with surprising gentleness.

Martin almost smiled. "Seonghyeon." He was already opening one of the drawers. "Temperature."

"I've got the thermometer."

Within only a few minutes, the once ordinary hotel room had undergone a remarkable transformation. Water bottles lined the bedside table. Medicine rested neatly beside them. Extra pillows appeared from somewhere. Blankets were layered carefully around your shoulders. A small trash bin had even been moved closer to the bed.

It looked less like a hotel room now, and more like a miniature recovery station assembled entirely through quiet teamwork.

You sat propped against the headboard, cocooned beneath multiple oversized blankets until only your face remained visible. "I can't move."

Keonho looked entirely satisfied. "Good."

"I've become a burrito."

James returned first, carrying a small packet of medication. "Here." He carefully placed the tablets into your palm. "Medicine."

Almost simultaneously, Juhoon approached with a steaming mug. "Warm water." He offered it toward you. "Drink slowly."

The warmth seeped pleasantly into your chilled fingers as you wrapped both hands around the mug. "...Thank you."

Before you could take the medicine, Martin reached over. "Wait." He picked up the instruction leaflet again.

James blinked. "You already read it."

"I'm reading it again."

"You've read it twice."

Martin ignored him. He carefully scanned every line one final time. Dosage, side effects, time intervals. Satisfied, he finally nodded. "Okay." He handed the tablets back. "Nothing crazy."

You sighed dramatically. "...You’re being paranoid now."

"I've had to be." He folded his arms. "You become impossible to handle when you're sick."

Your eyebrows immediately lifted. "I do not."

"You do."

"When?"

Martin gave you an incredulous look. "You spent the entire day insisting you were perfectly healthy."

"I managed."

"You nearly collapsed."

"I stayed standing until the performance ended."

"Barely."

"I still succeeded."

James raised a hand. "Objection."

"Denied."

"You can't deny your own objection."

"I just did."

Martin looked at you with complete seriousness. "You literally attempted to convince five people you weren't sick."

You opened your mouth, nothing came out.

A soft electronic beep interrupted the conversation. Seonghyeon lowered the thermometer, his cheerful expression fading almost immediately as he looked at the display. The room fell noticeably quieter.

"...Thirty-nine point two."

Silence, complete silence. Even James stopped smiling. 

Martin slowly looked up. "...What?"

Seonghyeon silently turned the thermometer around. Martin stared, then rubbed a tired hand across his face. "...That's over a hundred and two."

James looked horrified. "You had that kind of fever?"

Across the bed, Keonho slowly turned toward you. His eyes widened in complete disbelief. "...You seriously danced an entire festival like this?"

You shrank slightly beneath the blankets. "...Maybe."

"Maybe?" He stared another second. Then dramatically dropped backward onto the mattress with an exaggerated groan. "You stress me out."

"I didn't mean to."

"I know." He sighed deeply, running both hands through his hair, his expression softened almost immediately afterward. "...That's what makes it worse."

Without another word, he shifted closer. Then gently rested his head against your shoulder. He simply leaned there, saying absolutely nothing. His quiet presence somehow communicated far more than words ever could.

You didn't move away, a few peaceful seconds passed. Then the mattress dipped again. "...Scoot over." You turned.

Seonghyeon had decided there was apparently enough room for one more person. He settled beside your opposite shoulder, carefully making sure not to jostle you too much. Now, you were sandwiched between them.

James immediately laughed. "...You're literally making her into a sandwich."

"It’s okay." Seonghyeon looked entirely pleased with himself. "The safest place."

"You two have absolutely no understanding of personal space." Martin shook his head, though there wasn't any real irritation behind the words.

James pointed toward him. "You say that..."

Everyone looked over. Martin had unconsciously begun tucking one corner of the blanket more securely around your shoulder after it slipped. He froze.

James grinned wider. "You're literally fixing her blanket."

Martin looked down, then quietly adjusted it anyway. "...Shut up."

Laughter instantly filled the room. Martin couldn't suppress the reluctant smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. The warmth of that shared laughter settled softly throughout the room, wrapping around all of you as comfortably as the blankets piled across the bed. The kind of laughter that only existed between people who had known one another long enough to understand every habit, every expression, and every unspoken thought.

As you listened to them teasing each other over absolutely nothing, a realization settled gently inside your chest. Home, had never been defined by walls, home had always been this. James stealing everyone else's snacks before pretending he had no idea where they'd gone. Martin sighing dramatically every time someone ignored the schedule he'd painstakingly organized. Keonho borrowing hoodies without permission and somehow insisting they had belonged to him all along. Seonghyeon finding excuses to make everyone laugh, even during the most exhausting days. Juhoon quietly noticing the smallest details everyone else overlooked.

They argued constantly, they stole each other's clothes, they complained, they bickered over food, they teased one another without mercy. Yet the instant one person was hurting, every joke disappeared, every complaint became insignificant, every ounce of their attention shifted toward protecting the person who needed it.

You slowly looked around the room.

James sat cross-legged on the floor, rereading the medication instructions for what had to be the third—or perhaps fourth—time, muttering quietly under his breath to ensure he hadn't overlooked anything.

Juhoon sat at the small dining table, carefully peeling an orange into perfectly even slices. He remembered that fruit was one of the few things you could usually manage when you were sick, and without mentioning it aloud, he arranged the pieces neatly onto a plate.

Martin remained by the window, sending message after message to the company's staff, reorganizing tomorrow's schedule so you could rest without worrying about upcoming commitments.

Keonho, despite insisting he wasn't doing anything, absentmindedly reached over every few minutes whenever one of the blankets slipped from your shoulder, quietly pulling it back into place before pretending he hadn't noticed.

Beside you, Seonghyeon hummed softly beneath his breath, no particular song, just a gentle melody. His shoulder rested lightly against yours, close enough that the quiet contact reminded you someone was there. Someone wasn't going anywhere.

A smile slowly found its way onto your face. "...Thank you."

The room immediately became still. Five heads turned toward you almost simultaneously. James tilted his head. "...For what?"

You looked at each of them, then quietly answered, "For... everything."

James smiled first. "You would've done exactly the same." A pause. Then he laughed softly. "You have done exactly the same."

Martin nodded in agreement. "When I completely lost my voice before promotions..." He looked at you. "You stayed awake the entire night making ginger tea because you kept saying it might help."

Keonho immediately pointed toward himself. "When I sprained my ankle. You carried my backpack for almost two weeks, and you refused to let me carry anything heavier than a water bottle."

Juhoon spoke next, his voice as quiet as ever. "The night before debut..." He met your eyes. "I couldn't sleep. You stayed awake with me until sunrise. You didn't even try convincing me everything would magically be okay. You just..." He smiled faintly. "Sat beside me." The memory lingered between you.

Seonghyeon gently nudged your shoulder. "So..." His smile was impossibly soft. "It's our turn." The words settled somewhere deep inside your heart. Your vision blurred again, emotion tightened painfully inside your chest.

Outside the hotel, the city remained alive with celebration. Fans still filled the streets after the festival, laughing excitedly as they replayed videos from the concert and shared their favorite moments from the night.

Inside your room, the world felt entirely different. Soft lamplight bathed the room in a warm golden glow. Blankets were scattered everywhere. Empty mugs rested across the coffee table.

The conversation drifted effortlessly from ridiculous childhood stories to embarrassing rehearsal memories, from arguments over whose turn it was to order dinner tomorrow to complaints about James' habit of leaving phone chargers everywhere except where he needed them.

The hours slipped quietly by. Gradually, your eyelids grew heavier. The medicine began taking effect. Your breathing finally slowed into a steadier rhythm. Words became harder to follow. Voices blurred into something gentle and distant.

Just before sleep completely claimed you, you felt careful fingers brushing several loose strands of hair away from your forehead. Someone was checking your temperature again. The touch was impossibly gentle, as though they were afraid even the slightest movement might wake you.

A moment later, another pair of hands carefully pulled the blanket a little higher beneath your chin, making certain no cold air could reach you.

"...Sleep well." Seonghyeon's voice was barely above a whisper.

Then another voice followed, carrying the faint smile you couldn't see but somehow heard anyway. "We've got you."

Keonho, the words settled around you like another blanket.

the rehearsal studio mirrors were always too loud when the room went quiet, reflecting every sharp angle of your body and the slight, exhausted tremble in your knees, but nothing felt as loud as the notification that popped up on your phone screen. you had been leaning against the ballet barre, catching your breath while the choreographer adjusted the speaker volume, when you pulled your phone out of your cargo pants. 

the weverse notification was right there at the top of your screen. a fan had commented on a photo of james from his recent weverse update, ‘his face card never declines’. a standard, sweet compliment meant to stay buried in the endless scroll of idol praise. but it was james’ account handle right beneath it that made your heart drop into your stomach.

‘never thought i had one.’

the words looked so tiny on the screen, so casual, but you knew him well enough to read the staggering weight of defeat behind them. you knew about the tabs he’d been opening late at night when he thought juhoon and you were asleep in your shared room, the way his thumb would relentlessly scroll through search results for ‘cortis visual hole’ and the brutal forums where strangers dissected his features with clinical cruelty.

“hey,” you said, your voice cutting through the heavy studio air as you looked over at the choreographer, already grabbing your gym bag from the floor. “i have to go. something came up at the dorm. i’ll be here two hours early tomorrow to make up for the rest of this run-through, i promise. i’m so sorry!—”you didn’t even wait for a proper response, just throwing a polite, rushed bow before slipping out the heavy acoustic doors, your sneakers squeaking against the hallway floor.

the taxi ride back was a blur of neon city lights and the sharp ache of anxiety building in your chest. you kept staring out the window, chewing on the inside of your cheek, thinking about how unfair it was that the oldest member of cortis—the boy who held the group together with his quiet kindness and undeniable talent—was currently drowning in self-doubt all alone.

when you finally let yourself into the dorm, the silence hit you first. it wasn’t a peaceful quiet; it felt heavy, stagnant, like the air in a room that hadn’t been lived in for days. you kicked off your shoes by the door and walked down the short hallway toward your shared room, your heart hammering against your ribs.

when you pushed the door open, the sight of him made a sudden, sharp wave of sadness wash over you so intensely it felt physical. james was just sitting on the edge of his unmade mattress, his long legs drawn up slightly, his hands loosely clasped between his knees. the curtains were half-drawn, letting in only a dim, grey slice of late afternoon light that caught the dust motes dancing in the air. he wasn’t crying, he wasn’t on his phone anymore; he was just staring blankly at a spot on the hardwood floor, his shoulders hunched inward as if he were trying to occupy as little space in the universe as possible. he looked so small in his oversized black HYBE hoodie, stripped entirely of the stage presence he usually forced himself to wear like armor.

you didn’t say anything at first. you just quietly dropped your bag by the door and walked over, the floorboards giving a faint, familiar creak beneath your weight. you sat down right next to him on the mattress, the spring shifting beneath you. he didn’t look up immediately, but you saw the slight twitch in his jaw, the way his eyelashes fluttered as he swallowed hard, acknowledging your presence without having the energy to meet your eyes.

“how dare you call yourself not pretty?” your voice broke the silence, soft but laced with a fierce, protective ache that made his shoulders flinch slightly. you reached out, your fingers gently finding his chin and tilting his face toward yours, forcing him to look at you. his eyes were bloodshot, the dark circles under them looking almost like bruises in the dim light, and his lips were dry and bitten raw. “jamie, look at me. please, just look at me. you are quite literally the most beautiful human i’ve ever laid eyes on. you look like a damn angel. how could you reply to a fan like that? do you have any idea what you put me through seeing you say something so heartbreaking while i’m stuck at practice?"

he finally let out a ragged breath, his gaze wavering before he looked down at your hands, his fingers idly tracing the cuff of your sleeve. “you shouldn’t have left practice for me,” he mumbled, his voice thick and scraped raw from hours of silence. “i didn’t mean to make a big deal out of it. it just... it came out before i could think. i just got tired of pretending like i don’t see what everyone else sees. you know what the comments call me. i’m the ‘visual hole’. when we stand in a line for photo walls, i can see the cameras shifting away from me to focus on the others. i see the edit videos where they crop me out. i just look at the mirror sometimes, especially after the stylists finish with me, and i don’t see an idol. yn. i see someone who doesn’t belong in this group. i feel like i’m ruining the image of cortis just by standing there.”

“james, stop saying that, please,” you pleaded, your voice cracking as your own eyes started to fill with tears. “you’re the heart of this group. cortis doesn’t even exist without you. how can you think you’re ruining anything, baby?”

“because it’s all people talk about sometimes,” he whispered, a sharp sob breaking through his words as he finally looked into your eyes, his gaze frantic and shattered. “it’s not just the comments. it’s the way it makes me feel inside. like i’m constantly wearing a mask that doesn’t fit. every time i get on stage, i feel like a fucking fraud, yn. i see the way the light catches the other members, how effortlessly perfect they look, and then i see my own reflection in the monitor and i just want to… disappear. it’s this constant, suffocating weight in my chest that tells me i’m not enough, that i’ll never look good enough, no matter how hard i try or how much weight i lose or how much makeup they put on me. it makes me feel so small, so completely worthless, and it terrifies me that everyone else sees it too… that you can see it too.” he paused. “i look in the mirror and i hate what i see, and then i feel guilty because i’m an idol and i’m supposed to be confident, but i’m just... i’m just breaking down over a stupid screen.”

“it’s not stupid if it’s hurting you this badly,” you said softly, the tears spilling over your cheeks as you leaned in closer, wrapping your arms securely around his neck and pulling his heavy frame against your chest. your own vision blurred completely as you felt him hesitate for a fraction of a second before he completely collapsed into you, his face burying into the crook of your shoulder, his hands gripping the back of your damp practice shirt so tightly his knuckles turned white. “but those people online don’t know anything. they don’t see the real you, james. they don’t know the millions of reasons why i love you, or the little things that make you so incredibly special. please listen to me.”

“how can you even look at me like this?” he choked out, his whole body shuddering against yours as a loud, breathless cry escaped his throat. “i’m a mess. i’m sitting here crying over netizen comments while you’re working hard at the studio. i feel so pathetic.”

“you’re not pathetic,” you said fiercely, pulling back just enough to look into his eyes, your hands framing his face, your thumbs desperately wiping away the thick dampness on his cheeks. “i love you because you are the kindest, most selfless person i have ever met. i love the way your eyes crinkle up into tiny, perfect crescents when you’re genuinely laughing at something stupid, and how your nose does that little twitch whenever you’re about to sneeze. i love the way you always make sure everyone else has eaten and liked their food before you even look at your own plate, and how you stay up late to help the younger members with their dance or vocals even when you’re completely exhausted yourself. i love the quiet, gentle way you speak to me when it’s just the two of us, like i’m the only thing that matters in the entire world. i love how you love people around you. so how can you say you aren’t enough when you’re everything to me?”

“but what about the fans?” he sobbed, his eyes wide and glossy with pain, his lips trembling violently. “what about the people who buy the albums and see me and get disappointed? i want to look perfect for them. i want them to be proud to say i’m in their favorite group.”

“they are proud of you, james. the real fans love you for exactly who you are, and the ones who don’t? they don’t deserve a single second of your thoughts,” you pressed your forehead against his, letting him feel the warmth of your breath, your voice dropping to a fierce, emotional whisper. “and physically? james, you are breathtaking. i love the soft slope of your jawline, and the way your hair falls perfectly across your forehead when you wake up in the morning. i love the tiny mole on your nose that the stylists always try to cover up with concealer, but it’s my absolute favorite thing to kiss. i love the warmth of your hands and the way your lips feel when you smile against mine. you’re not a visual hole, you’re a masterpiece, and i need you to start seeing yourself through my eyes because my eyes only see perfection when they look at you. please, tell me you hear me. tell me you believe me even just a little bit.”

“yn, i swear i want to,” he wept openly now, the walls completely broken down as he let out a raw, painful sound that made your own chest heave with fresh, violent tears. “i want to believe you so badly. it just hurts so much inside. i’m so tired of feeling like this.”

“i know, baby, i know,” you whispered into his hair, your own tears streaming down your face in earnest now, dripping onto his hair and sliding down his neck as you squeezed him as tight as your arms would allow. the room was entirely filled with the sound of your shared crying, the agonising release of all the pain he’d been harboring silently, and the desperate, fiercely protective love you kept pouring into him with every ragged breath you took. you rocked him through the violent tremors of his body, crying just as hard as he was, your hearts beating erratically against each other’s ribs in the dim, grey light. “i’ve got you. i’m right here. we’re going to get through this together, i promise you.”

when the heavy, gasping sobs finally started to slow down, leaving both of you completely spent and trembling, you pulled back just enough to look at him through your swollen, wet eyes. you used the pads of your thumbs to tenderly wipe away the remaining tears, your hands shaking slightly from the emotional toll. his nose was bright red, his eyes puffy and glassy, but to you, he had never looked more precious, more real, or more stunningly beautiful.

“look at me, jamie,” you murmured, your lips brushing against his cheek as you kissed a lingering tear away. “are you still in there? still listening to my voice?”

“yeah,” he whispered, his breath hitching as he tried to stabilise his breathing. “i’m listening.”

“good,” you said softly, leaning forward to press a soft, lingering kiss to his forehead, then to the bridge of his nose, and finally against his lips—a slow, reassuring pressure that tasted heavily of salt and shared sorrow, but carried all the quiet, unbreakable devotion you couldn’t put into words. “let’slie down. no more phones, no more comments. just us.”

“okay,” he whispered against your wet lips. you pulled gently at his waist until he complied, letting himself be guided backward onto the tangled sheets. you curled yourself directly into his side, throwing one leg over his thighs and resting your head squarely on his chest, listening to the steady, gradually calming rhythm of his heartbeat beneath your ear. his arm wound tightly around your waist, pulling you flush against him as if you were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth, his fingers still twitching with the residual adrenaline of his tears.

“thank you,” he whispered into the quiet of the bedroom, his voice still incredibly small and raspy from crying, but the sharp, suffocating tension in his frame had finally begun to melt away, leaving him soft, vulnerable, and safe in your arms. “i don’t deserve you. i really don’t.”

“you deserve the whole world,” you corrected him quietly, squeezing your eyes shut and breathing in the familiar, comforting scent of his fabric softener and skin as you gripped his hoodie tightly. “and i’m going to spend every single day reminding you until you finally believe it.”

💌 ❤︎ notes ─── ৻ꪆ i didn’t wanna take up space before the fic to yap so i moved the notes part down but what i wanted to say was.. this fic is more than just words to me. there’s been so many instances in my own life where i’ve felt like i was the ugly one of my friend group or not smart enough or not pretty enough and just.. not enough. when i first saw james in august ‘25, i don’t know what it was, but i genuinely felt like i saw pieces of me in him or vice versa. and when he was subtly making self-deprecating comments about himself (but people tried to call it ‘humility’ when it really wasn’t), i think i finally found home in him.

and ik i joke a lot about being a james stan and saying goofy stuff all the time but i wanna admit that he’s just so painfully relatable, to me. yk how that thing where people say “you choose your bias because you see yourself in them”? i think that’s exactly why he’s my bias </3 i try to never bring heavy topics ab myself onto my blog bc most of u follow me for my fics but this one fic has become an exception; im sorry ):

i also think that’s why writing this specific story was so heavy, but so necessary for me. it wasn’t just about building on a supposedly ‘small’ comment he made today; it was about pouring all those late-night thoughts, the suffocating insecurities, and the silent breakdowns into a space where they could finally be held and comforted. seeing someone you look up to battle the exact same quiet demons you do is a strange, comforting kind of ache. it reminds you that you aren’t alone, but it also makes you want to protect them from the very things that hurt you.

when i write scenes of him being held and reminded of his worth, i’m reminding myself of mine too. so i wanted to give him the gentle, unwavering love that we all deserve to receive when we feel entirely invisible.

to anyone who read this and felt a little too close to the words: i hope this fic felt like a soft place to land. thank you for letting me share a piece of my heart with you <3

© hyuneskkami ❦

His parents had promised him ice cream that day, and ice cream was the sole reason he even agreed to leave the house with them in the first place. This would explain how ever since the Kim family acquired an additional member, dentist appointments had become a recurring feature of life. As said, children, man. So when they parked in front of an unfamiliar lot and informed him they were actually there to meet the new neighbors, he felt the full weight of deception settle on his tiny pale shoulders. It really would be your own parents.

The betrayal occupied most of his attention at first. He made the walk to the front door in a kind of sulky procession, nursing his disappointment and contemplating, in exquisite detail, a future in which no adult ever earned his trust again. Juhoon considered them peculiar, forever insisting their children to be honest while reserving for themselves a more inventive relationship with the truth. But the neighbors opened the door, and unfortunately for his argument, they were lovely. 

Juhoon doesn’t remember exactly what he thought when he first saw you. He was only six, after all. Whatever revelation struck him was probably less conceivable than history would like to suggest. Still, memories can be very selective. 

Looking back, he still remembers that little girl standing in the doorway hiding behind her parents’ legs with dirt on her shoes. You looked both curious and prepared to run away. He remembers staring, too. Cute, he thought. Pretty, maybe. Whatever word a toddler would have used for something like that.

“What’s your name?” Juhoon asks you first, surprisingly. He’s known for not talking at all. . 

All you did was disappear back into the house, and Juhoon felt bewildered at first. Until now, every significant development in his life worked on this simple principle: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, or whatever that book said. Apparently, Juhoon was now discovering a more humiliating variation of the rule, which was that you could also miss the ones you did take. 

He and his parents were ushered inside. Tea appeared somewhere in the conversation, as tea always seemed to when the grown ups gathered in one place for long enough. Juhoon took his place beside his mother on the couch, but his attention kept slipping loose and wandering through the house in search of you. 

His ears perk at the one mention, ‘our daughter’, he was sure you were what they were referring to. And one particular phrase was caught in the inside of his ear. Our daughter’s been having seizures lately.

Juhoon knew what a seizure was. A bit vaguely, but he did. His parents were physicians after all, so in their house, illness was never a mystery for long. His mother fixed children. His father fixed brains. At six years old, this was more or less how he understood medicine. The result was that he knew very little, but what he knew, he knew absolutely. 

Seizures were very bad. 

The realization made him twist uncomfortably in his seat until it sorted itself out, though not as heavily. A seed weighs almost nothing. 

So the first thing he learned about you was that something inside you occasionally misfired. The second would take much longer. Juhoon finds you later after he goes to the bathroom. You’re peeking out of a door and looking at him intently as if you’ve never seen another kid before. 

“I’m Juhoon.” He offered his hand. You looked at it for a moment, then stepped out and took it. 

“Aren’t you gonna tell me your name?”

You let go and looked down. “I’m Y/n.” 

“I heard you’re sick.”

Your little shoulders lifted a bit. “The scary man calls it a… mech–... mechanical imbalance.”

“Chemical imbalance.” Juhoon corrected. 

“Yes. That’s right.” 

He considered this for a few seconds, then said, very seriously, 

“You look pretty balanced to me.”

You smiled, small and surprised. “Thanks.”

It was, in hindsight, an unremarkable beginning. But in the moment, it felt like the first loose thread of something he wouldn’t learn how to stop holding onto. That was the day Kim Juhoon met you. Maybe years later, when memory had sanded the edges off entire seasons of his life, he would have become several different men in turn. Still, he’ll remember this part and live long enough to tell the rest. 

──────── .✦

At nine, you were still the sort of child who could be persuaded by an idea. 

Juhoon had learned this about you early: if someone said let’s make something, you were likely to stay. If someone said draw this, fold that, stack these higher, and with just a few strings, a pencil, and paper, you would lean in with serious concentration as though you were the tiniest engineer to exist. 

That afternoon, the playground had turned into a temporary workshop. School had ended, but not so much the day. The in-between hours belonged to the children and their improvised industries. Pale blue sheets of paper lay everywhere, wrinkled by eager fingers, while the two of you and a few others tried to convert them into boats, or hats, or something that could float. 

You had been humming to yourself, and Juhoon watched your hands, which were always moving faster than everyone else’s. You taught a girl to flatten a crease with her thumb and announced, very confidently, that hers was wrong. 

Juhoon folded his paper back the way you had shown him and held it out for inspection. 

“Like this?” he asked.

You nodded and reached for the edge, your fingers nudging his dusted with pencil lead and the dry ghost-smell of grainy paper. “Now fold it here.”

Juhoon tried and tried, but the paper kept turning into the wrong shape in his hands. He made several attempts. Each one took him farther from whatever it was supposed to become at that point. Eventually, there was nothing left of his little stack of paper. 

He patted your shoulder, quick and careful. “I’m gonna get some more paper.” Then went off toward the nearest classroom to ask for the ones that had color in them. 

When he pattered his way back, he heard a loud laugh floating across the playground from the direction he had just left. 

“Haha! She’s moving like a fish!” 

A fish? That sounded interesting. Juhoon followed the sound of laughter toward its source, weaving through the little crowd as the circle kept growing. When he reached the front, he went very still.

A fish, they said. 

Juhoon imagined flapping arms. somebody making faces, maybe a new game. A few minutes ago, they had all been sitting about on the sand. Children had spent the better part of an hour arguing over their toys and whether a boat could still be called a boat if it sank immediately. 

“When is she gonna stop?” He hears someone ask from the crowd.

I don’t know.

The paper boats are everywhere now, strewn in every direction, some flattened and some untouched. You are on the ground in their midst, shaking violently. Those bright blue bits, the laughter he thought sounded fine just moments ago, they’d gone all wrong in his ears. It was a sour and awful tingling, and Juhoon wanted to throw up when he noticed your eyes were rolled back into your skull, and there’s–

“Spit!” Someone says, cheerfully. 

Yes, spit. You were salivating beyond control, and Juhoon calls your name because names are handles, aren’t they? He didn’t know what to do with his hands either, only that they had begun to tremble with an ugly little life of their own. 

Your hand claws at your chest just below the collarbone, gripping fabric, searching, pressing inward like something inside is trying to escape. Juhoon thinks, your heart has become a frightened animal, and it is trying to leave you.

He thinks a little more; stay with me. Hold it in, hold it in, hold it in. 

A boy steps forward, laughing under his breath as he prods at your shoulder, and Juhoon’s eyes flick over the others, only to confirm what he already feared. 

The papers fall from Juhoon’s arms as he pushes the boy out of the way in a burst of anger. He hears the scream of pain after, though it does nothing to pull him back from the rush in his head. 

“Y/n?” He crouched beside you and took hold of your shaking shoulders. Your eyes lifted to his face and caught there for one brief moment before they slid away again. Still, he could tell you were not entirely elsewhere. In the middle of all that he could not yet understand, he could only think of miracles. 

Eventually, the teacher came and took you away. But first she had to wrestle Juhoon loose from you one finger at a time, a task akin to separating two pages that’d gotten wet and dried together. The fibers protested, and so did he. When she succeeded, though, the world had never felt colder to him than it was. 

He could say he was but a child. At least that was the excuse available to him. Children are allowed impossible convictions. That the moon followed them home, or that they had the power to make it happen. But it wouldn’t make sense either to question the mass of this far-fetched thing, bright as a pin and stubborn as a weed splitting rock. It grew despite fear, and people might call it hope. Hope, but at just nine years old Juhoon knew that wouldn’t save anyone.

Later that week, Juhoon would find himself in the principal’s office for the very first time. His parents sat behind him on one side of the room. Across from them posed the boy he had shoved, a fresh white bandage wrapped around his forehead, and his parents stationed firmly at his side. He’d receive the sermon of his lifetime the second they went home, and knows it would be every bit as lengthy as promised. But there, trapped in that painful wooden chair, he would just have to take the blame. He wasn’t sorry, but he figured his sentiments, like all valuable things, would obviously have to cost something. 

That day marked the first time Juhoon witnessed it with his own eyes: the terrible fact that your body was capable of occasionally betraying you. So it was true. Hope served no use to him, at least not more than the stubbornness of his belief that your body belonged to you first. And for as long as Juhoon took his breaths, he would refuse to accept anything else. 

──────── .✦

“So like, just for the summer right?” 

You and Juhoon had taken the long way home, the road sunlit and mellow beneath the heat of early afternoon. Class had ended ahead of schedule because of some faculty meeting, and at first it had seemed like the sort of lucky interruption one ought to appreciate. With time, it was just one more small detour to the day. 

Juhoon walked beside you with his hands in his pockets, his uniform sleeves rolled up just enough you could see the tan line he’d been developing from all the hours of basketball practice under the sun. 

“For sure,” he said. “My dad said it’s for his start-up, so I guess we’ll be back right before school starts. 

You made a face at that. “Well, you better. Next school year is a fuck-up, I heard.”

Juhoon turned his head toward you. “Don’t curse like that.”

“We’re already twelve.” You pointed your finger at him then back at you. “And no one’s around. We’ll be fine.”

“The point is we still got time. Imagine being a senior.”

You made a thoughtful noise, squinting up at the sky and then hissing. “Feels surreal to think about. Hell, you think I’ll still be alive by then?” You shot off a little laugh and shook your head. 

“Hey.”

You looked at him innocently. “What?”

His pace slowed just a little, and so did yours, the two of you nearly stopping in the middle of the sidewalk as the wind brushed hot and lazy through the roadside trees.

“You good?” he had asked then.

You clicked your tongue and looked away. “Here we go again.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know,” you said a little too quickly and then softened with a shrug. “I’m fine Juhoon. Seriously. Take a joke.”

He huffed out a laugh despite his willingness to prod a little further, and more so to the way he wasn’t entirely convinced of that. 

“When did you get so sassy?”

“You never noticed?” You shot back, grinning now, the sound of it sending weightlessness to his chest enough to chase away the density that’d been growing on it. 

You both leaned a little closer to each other as you walked, the promise of a popsicle and a piggyback ride if your legs got tired still waiting somewhere ahead. And for the rest of that walk, it was easy to believe this was the summer that would never end for them. 

Before long, Juhoon swung open the little fence at the front of your house and held it aside for you. You both climbed the porch steps side by side, the wood creaking softly under your shoes, and by the time you reached the door, the smell of food had already found its way out of the kitchen and into the hall.

Inside, your mother looked from where she stood near the stove as you bent down to tug off your shoes while Juhoon did the same a step behind you. 

“Smells good over there, Auntie.” Juhoon peeked toward the kitchen with that careful sweetness everyone liked to eat up. 

Your mother smiled, though not fully turning away from her cooking. “You’re sweet Juhoon. Come eat, both of you.”

“Maybe a little later ma. I gotta make Ju help me with homework before he tries to escape.”

“You know I never do that.”

Your mother waved a hand from the kitchen as if to send you both on your way. “You kids go ahead, but come down when you’re hungry, yeah?”

“Okay mom!” You called back, and you sounded so okay that Juhoon let himself believe you were. 

Juhoon ended up doing your homework while you sat cross-legged beside him on the bed, busy with a pile of rubber bands and one of those little plastic looms that’d become the latest obsession at school. He wrote carefully, and when he concentrated a little more than usual, you’d notice how his brow furrowed too much and scrunch it back into place with your thumb.

Every few minutes, Juhoon would glance over and see another bright bracelet taking shape between your fingers in strange colors and neat loops. Good with your hands as always, he thought. In just a week after you started, you had made so many bracelets that Juhoon’s wrists were practically becoming a gallery for them. 

“Ju.”

“Yeah?” he answered, head bent over the worksheet in front of him.

“Made you something.”

Juhoon lifted his head, and there you were holding one of those little looms out toward him. This one was blue and orange. He noticed you always made him different ones. They’d never be the same colors twice, nor the same pattern. And when he asked why, you told him it was because no two things about Juhoon should ever be exactly the same, and you liked that about him. 

Before he could take it from you, you caught his arm on instinct and slid the bracelet over his hand yourself. The elastic tugged lightly against his skin before settling into place, and you held his hand up to inspect your work. You looked at the bracelet, then at Juhoon, only to find him already looking back. 

Juhoon blinked. “What?”

“Look at the bracelet, dumbass.”

So he does. He lowers his gaze, obedient more than anything. Looks at the bracelet, then back at you. “Looks pretty.”

The corner of your mouth lifted, and you gave him a sing-song ‘thank you’; then you let go of his arm and looked away. 

Juhoon let out the quietest and shakiest breath, and when you looked at him you saw that he had turned his face away too. The faint pressure of your fingers where you had held him hung around for just as long as the bracelet on his wrist did. So with a little more effort, he bent back over your homework and kept writing. 

You were almost asleep when you heard Juhoon call your name from behind you. You rolled over on the bed and found him sitting there with an orange in his hands, peeling it carefully over a scrap of tissue so the juice wouldn’t drip. 

“Want one?” he asked. 

Your eyes narrowed a little. “You got another?”

He lifted the fruit slightly, still working at the skin. “You can have this one. It’s almost unpeeled.”

You snorted and propped yourself up on one elbow. “I can peel my own oranges, y’know.”

“I know that.” He glanced up at you for a second, then back down at the orange. “Just let me peel it for you.”

“You’re always doing things for me, Ju.”

“I bet you like that, huh?” 

You don’t remember the first time you began to need Juhoon. He was so perfect to you. So steady and kind, that being cared for by him felt a little like making a wish at a shrine. So did you like it? Somewhat. But somewhere closer to the surface, in a place far less noble than the root, you wished he would stop. It was humiliating. 

Whether his concern came from pity or something else, you could never separate it from the shame that bloomed every time he was there to witness you as a flaw of nature. 

You wanted him close. You wanted him gone. Tragic that both of those wishes always came from the same place. 

“Not really.” It was a lie in the open.

“Ah.” Even then, Juhoon finished peeling the orange and held it out to you in neat little segments, and you took them. 

“Sorry,” he said next. Still, he fed you fruit. He’d tuck a slice between your lips and wipe the juice from the corners of your mouth. You didn’t answer, even after you both had gone downstairs to eat. There was nothing to be sorry for.

You’ll never know why you’re like this, and you would have preferred a better explanation. If there was anything else to blame besides the clinical little claim that it was simply in your brain chemistry, you would’ve taken it. But there isn’t. So you were left with the bitter knowledge that you were simply built to buckle under the pressure of being alive. 

The strangest part is that you’re aware of it all. The numbness is there. Your emotions have never been particularly obedient things. Your mind could spend days trapped inside a single unpleasant thought before losing the ability to focus on anything at all. 

Sleep doesn’t help either. People speak about it as though it were a repair mechanism, and eight hours of unconsciousness ought to return you to your factory settings. But it doesn’t. And food is either too much or not enough. There are sudden headaches, nausea, and an appetite that shifts with the tides of your mood. Sometimes you think your body and brain are conducting separate experiments on you. 

And a lot of the time, you’ll think of doing very bad things. Things you believe won’t leave you regretful. You don’t want them, and you don’t agree with them. You know better. There really was no villain to point at other than yourself.

Worst of all, you’d get these manic attacks. Those really ticked you. 

You try to find a pattern in them. A reason or a warning sign, some rule you can learn and obey to keep them away. But when they come, there is nothing to be done except wait. You really can’t explain how they feel. You’re twelve, for Christ’s sake. You’re not supposed to. 

But things can be normal, and you hold onto them for as long as they last. Like now, with nearly seven in the evening slipping by and Juhoon still not at his house. The television buzzes softly in the living room, the new Batman movie still playing to no one in particular while the two of you have long since sunk into the couch and dozed off. 

Your eyes are closed when Juhoon’s parents come by later to pick him up. You don’t open them then either, only feel the hush of movement near you, the brush of breath against your eyelids, and then the brief touch of a kiss pressed to your hair.

“See you in a month,” comes his voice. You hadn’t answered back then and pretended to be asleep still, because he’ll be back anyway. You were as certain as tomorrow. 

But you never really did see him after a month. Not in two months, or three. By the time the school year had begun to turn over into its second half, Juhoon still didn’t come back. 

You asked about him only after a good while of pretending not to care, and your parents told you his family’s stay had been extended. Something about his father’s startup doing better than expected. Later, you learned he’d been sent up north to some polished boarding school. You thought to yourself jokingly that perhaps he need not come back at all. Boarding school boys, after all, were a plague. 

Growing up without Juhoon for the first year and a half of it felt like trying to get around with a missing limb. He had filled so many roles in your life, as young as you both were. Something like a parent, something like a best friend, and something like an embarrassing little crush. 

Now it would be your girl friends sitting cross-legged across your bed painting each other’s nails in colors too bright, instead of Juhoon hunched there tuning his guitar like he had all the time in the world. It would be your parents, not him, who would talk you out of pursuing all those complicated thoughts. And later on, it would be some boy named Nicholas on your phone, someone not especially remarkable, just available, and you would call that enough for a while. You knew he was neither kind nor good. But you were young, and people like you are so often willing to stitch romance out of whatever flimsy scraps are nearest to hands. It made your life feel, for a little while, a little less bland.

You liked to think you were doing well for yourself. Whether that was true depended on the day. But you were still here, and at that age it felt like a miracle. You went to school. You remembered birthdays. You made plans for next week. From a distance, you looked pretty normal. The doctors seemed to think so, anyway. 

4 years have passed since then.

“So you just don’t care? At all?”

Hyein’s voice crackles faintly through the phone in disbelief, and you let your head sink back against the mattress, equally in disbelief at the little fan doing its useless work overhead. The room is so warm you’ve been nudging at your neckline for some relief. 

“He’s done me dirty more times than I can count, Hyein. I genuinely can’t bring myself to give a fuck anymore.”

Truthfully, you wished you had more backbone in this situation. But whether Nicholas was in fact flirting with some other girl behind your back, and this wouldn’t even be the first time, you couldn’t seem to coax yourself into feeling much of anything at all. He wasn’t your boyfriend anyway. Something adjacent to that maybe, but not that. 

“Why do you always take him back though?”

You let out a laugh with no joy in it. “It’s so boring out here, can’t you see? There is nothing to live for.”

“Jesus–okay, whatever. None of my business anyway. I’m just telling you.” You hear her sigh hard and run a hand through her hair. “And she saw them all touchy when you left too.”

You turn your face a little into the pillow, as if that might help you heart this any less clearly. “Thought you said it was none of your business.”

“Shit, sorry.”

Your mother appears in the doorway of your room and carefully peeps in. 

“Y/n dear, it’s time to come down. People are starting to come in.”

You’re still half-sprawled on your bed, phone in hand, one leg handing off the side, when you nod and wave her off. 

“Got it ma.”

When she leaves, you place your phone even closer to your ear. “Hey, I gotta go. The neighbors are coming in.”

“Got any cute ones? Phone then my way.”

You snort, pulling a face even though she couldn’t see it. “Absolutely none. Bye, I’ll talk to you later.”

You head downstairs and are met by faces you knew well enough to wave at. Midyear gatherings like this are customary in this neighborhood, the dinner of the year where everyone suddenly discovers they have time to spare and opinions to share. That used to be your cue to disappear upstairs while the adults settled into their long and complicated plans. But you’re old enough now to sit through it. Socialize, your mother told you. You try, really. It’s only that no one in the room feels quite close enough to your age to make the effort feel less like wandering. 

The last of the plates have just been set on the long table when you hear a loud knock on the door, accompanied by your mother’s call. 

“Y/n could you bring them in?”

You quickly wipe your hands and fix your top. “Alright.”

Scurrying through the hallway, you weave around children playing tag between grown-up legs, smile politely at the neighbors who stop you to ask how school has been, and answer each question with the same well-practiced kindness. Good. Busy. It’s been fine. By the time you reach the entrance, your expression’s set as you expect another familiar face. And when you open the door, you get one. Kind of. 

Kim Juhoon stands on the porch. The bastard actually came back. 

For a long moment, you can only stare. At him, most certainly. The little boy you knew had been stretched into someone much taller, broader, angular. His eyes are the same, but everything else isn’t. 

He smiles first, small and tentative. 

“Hey there.”

You don’t really speak for a while so Juhoon takes it to mean you probably don’t recognize him.

“Uhm, see I don’t know if you remember me but I was—“

“No—I remember you, yeah.” You shake your head and try to catch yourself. “Juhoon, right?”

Something in his face loosens, like he’s been holding his breath this whole time. He blinks once, and if he was smiling now, this time he’s showing teeth. 

“That’s me.”

All the years that’ve gone by stand awkwardly between you, hands in their pockets pretending not to exist. Before either of you can think of what comes next though, another pair of footsteps climb onto the porch. 

“There you are!” 

His parents appear beside him a moment later, just as bright as you remember them. Before you can even think to say hello, his mother has already crossed the distance, wrapping you in a hug so immediate your body freezes from the contact. You return it on instinct, stiff for a second before your shoulders start to soften. When she finally lets go, both hands stay on your arms. 

“My goodness.” She breathes out as eyes you all over. “Look at you. You’ve grown so much, my love!”

Beside her, Juhoon rubs a hand down his face.

“Ma,” he says, reaching over to gently steer back by the shoulder. “You’re getting a little too close.”

“What?” She protests, swatting his hand away. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Then she looks between the two of you. “What’s with those faces? You two used to live in each other’s rooms. Now you’re standing here acting like strangers.” 

Well that certainly made things more awkward. Juhoon turns away and squeezes his eyes shut as the color climbs up the back of his neck in slow, undeniable surrender. You can’t help the small laugh that slips out of you. Not at him, but for him. From the corner of his eye, you catch him noticing. His shoulders loosen, if only a little. 

Your mother calls from somewhere deeper inside the house. “Y/n? Are they there?”

You answer with a quick “Yeah” and hope it travels farther than your embarrassment. At last, whatever strange little performance had taken over the doorway dissolves. You usher them inside one by one, taking coats as they’re shrugged off and hanging them on the coat rack. It gives your fingers something to do besides fidget.

You avoid looking at Juhoon. Or rather, you at least try. Your gaze would stop just short of him, catching instead on the line of his jaw, the open collar of his shirt, his hands busy undoing the buttons of his coat. Every time your eyes threaten to climb higher they think better of themselves. 

At the table, the two of you end up across from one another by some small and evil conspiracy. You keep your hands busy though. Your fork, your napkin, the little glass of water sweating in your palm. It gives you something to do with the terrible electricity in your chest. Anything to keep from looking up too often. 

Meanwhile, Juhoon doesn’t even seem like he’s trying. He has at least enough shame to look away every once a while, but in the end his eyes return to you with the stubborn rhythm of a tide. He catches your mouth when you answer a question, takes note of what you said, notices when your hand reaches for your glass, or the small shifts of your expression whenever someone says anything funny. 

You’ve changed. Of course you have. Juhoon reads them in pieces whenever he looks at you. Your hair’s different. Your shoulders too. Then it’s the way you sit, the way you lift food to your mouth, the way your throat moves when you turn your head to listen. It’s the little things that add up. And the near-smiles. They come and go, but Juhoon takes note of the way they look. Nothing about you has become any less you, yet every glance he’s stolen so far has left him a little less rational than before. 

It’s not long before you finally look up to see him staring right back at you. He turns away immediately, but not before the smallest betraying color climbs his neck. He clears his throat and stabs at his food with unnecessary concentration, and you have to look down fast. Because if you keep looking any longer you’ll start to grin, and that would be a disaster of its own, wouldn’t it?

“Could somebody please get the dog to stop making that sound?” Your mother exclaims in the middle of dinner. You stood up at once, glad for the excuse to leave the table. Your family dog had been whining by the front yard for the better part of thirty minutes already, pacing in little frustrated circles and throwing itself against the fence. You slipped outside with a muttered promise to your mother that you’d handle it. 

“You’re so dramatic.” You told her in a whisper as you rubbed her ears to make her calm down. Behind you, the screen door opened with a quiet scrape.

“She wasn’t always this loud.”

You turn your head around, and just as you feared, Juhoon stands by the front door with his hands in his pockets, looking somehow both the same and not at all. Four years could do that. You glance back at the dog. 

“She’s grown now. Couldn’t obey if you told her anything.” 

His mouth twitched. “Sounds about right.” 

You climb onto the porch and settle on the top step where the dog can still keep you in sight. That is apparently all she wanted before folding onto the grass with a long, satisfied sigh, lowering her head between her paws, content that you hadn’t disappeared yet. Behind you, footsteps. Juhoon comes to stand beside the railing until he’s only an arm’s length away now. Between what space was left hung the accumulated ghosts of years worth of memories. From six, ten, and the exact age you’d both been when he left. 

He leaned one shoulder against the porch railing and looked out at the yard, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to stand beside you again.

“It’s been a minute,” he said. 

“A minute? Try four years.”

He winced and glanced at you from the corner of his eye.  “Yikes. Could you maybe let the grudge go.

“I’m not holding a grudge.”

“C’mon, I know you better than that.” The words slip out and come a little bit unnatural because they’re a few years out of date. Nonetheless, Juhoon reached into his pocket and held out a stick of gum as a peace offering. “Gum?”

You eyed it, then him. “No thanks.” 

“Suit yourself.” 

He unwrapped it with his teeth and popped it into his mouth, then glanced at you again a little more carefully this time. 

“How’ve you been?” 

Such an ordinary question, it ought to have an ordinary answer. Instead, your mind turns over itself looking for one.

“Good. Great? Dunno, as good a life as this.”

“High praise.”

You snorted. “Did you want a more tragic answer?”

Juhoon shook his head and looked down at his feet, smiling to himself. “Maybe a more specific one. Still in the same school?”

“It’s the only school we got in this town.”

“Right, right. Forgot I used to live in the middle of nowhere.”

The dog, offended by how little either of you has been paying attention to her, wanders over and folds herself on the step across your shoes with a dramatic huff. You bend down and scratch absentmindedly behind her ears. 

“How ‘bout you? Good so far?” You finally dared to look at him and told yourself, yeah, he looked nice. Really nice, actually. This was the kind of cute neighbor Hyein wanted you to ‘phone her way’ you thought. 

Juhoon shrugged. “Yeah, I mean I got out of boarding school so that’s something.”

“I heard about that. Boarding school boys.”

He looks over, one side of his canine peaking. “Yeah?”

“Eugh.”

That pulled a quiet laugh from him. “Hey, that's rude. I came out of there pretty much the same.”

“Don’t even lie. I know that place turned you into some secret freak. You probably got secret societies. Your weird little rituals. Who knows? Maybe even a cult.”

“Jesus, Y/n.” He dragged a hand over his face with an exaggerated groan.  “Again with being so paranoid.”

“You know I can’t help it.” A soft smile forms in your face as you turn to look at him, and Juhoon stares. He can’t help himself. He’s spent the better part of the evening pulling himself away from you by the neck, reminding his eyes where they ought to go. He’s supposed to be respectful, for god’s sake.

Juhoon’s exhausted four years with things stacked behind his gums. There were so many things he wanted to say folded neat and sharp, that if he ever found you again, he could unfold them one by one and prove that he’d kept himself waiting for a moment as large as this. And here it was. 

He opened his mouth to start.

Closed it.

Opened it again and settled for a mere question. 

“Are you not gonna be mad at me?”

You blinked. “For what?”

“For leaving so suddenly.”

You looked down at the dog who thumped her tail a few times against the step, then back at him. “I wouldn’t be mad about something that wasn’t your choice to make, Ju.”

Juhoon let out a breath through his nose, relieved by that dear old nickname and in some ways grieving. He rolled the gum around in his mouth once, then pinched it out with two fingers and stuck it to the side of the step. 

“Still,” he said, quieter now. “If I were you, I think I’d be pretty mad.”

You gave him a small and helpless sigh. “Good thing you aren’t me.”

And thank God for that. Juhoon wasn’t anything at all like you. 

You picked at the edge of the porch step with your thumb while the dog shifted at your feet. “What’s the plan?”

“We moved back to the house. So after summer ends, it’s back to that school too. Back to normal.”

“Was it not normal up north?”

“I could argue against. For one, I couldn’t see–” Juhoon had to stop himself quickly and retaliate. “Yeah, it wasn’t normal at all.”

For the rest of summer break, you saw Juhoon more than once. A week later, your mother sent you over with a basket of fruit for his parents. Juhoon answered the door before either of them could and, after a brief greeting, led you upstairs to his room. It was there that you realized just how much he had changed.

His little kid bed had been replaced with a much larger bed frame, save for the growth spurt he’ll be undergoing for the next 3 years. His walls, the way you remembered them, were so plain and blue before. Now, you could barely see the paint through the posters and vinyls and–

“Oh, you play the drums now?” 

There was a whole drum set in the corner, tucked beside a very expensive-looking record player he had set up nearby. 

“Yeah. I took up drumming for a marching band.” 

“Cool.” 

While Juhoon knelt to search beneath his bed, you let yourself take another look around. He had started to resemble one of those 90s British rock boys. Could play the part with his seemingly newfound hobbies, too. 

“So why’d you take me up here?”

Juhoon stood up with a cardboard shoebox in his hand and crossed the room toward you. 

“Wanted to give you something.”

When he held it out, you leaned in to peek inside. Tapes. All tapes. 

“Tapes?”

Juhoon gave the box a little shake and let out an awkward grin. “It’s just some songs I put on tape a while back when I first heard them. You really need to listen to more music Y/n.”

You took the box from him and turned it over in your hands. The labels were written in his neat, slightly slanted handwriting. Song titles were lined up on the edges. A few artists you recognized. A few you didn’t.

“I’m perfectly fine with peace and quiet, but thank you.”

Juhoon let out a laugh and leaned back against his desk, folding his arms. “That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I didn’t even know you were capable of this kind of epiphany. What, watched too much MTV?” 

“Music feeds the soul, dude. Y’know what old Willie said about it? If music be the food of life, play on.” 

You took a seat on his bed and laughed at the likeness he had to a man delivering wisdom from a mountaintop. “You mean William Shakespeare? That man’s a sham.” 

“Y/n, have you gone mad? That is one big disrespect to the arts.” 

“The disrespect was for you. Like you’ve ever even read a single Shakespeare piece. I bet you got that quote from CliffsNotes.” 

He scoffed and pressed a hand to his forehead. “Maybe I’m the sham. Thou sodden witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows–”  

You choked on a laugh and hurled the pillow that struck Juhoon square in his face. The tape box lurched in your lap. And Juhoon caught himself against the desk before he could fall off. After that, the two of you collapsed into breathless, useless wheezing, enough to forget about this one misdeed of a life. 

──────── .✦

By the time school started, things were a little different.

You and Juhoon still lived in separate worlds most days. Different tables. Different people. DIfferent collections of inside jokes and complaints and things to do with your afternoons. Oddly enough, you found this distance quite comforting. Neither of you were children anymore, and time had begun to show itself to you in its ways. 

Juhoon, especially, seemed to have entered astoundingly into his state of adolescence. His clothes fit differently now. His features were sharper. His voice had dropped low enough that it sometimes startled you when he laughed. And there was something new in the way he paid attention to things. To people, passing remarks, you. 

And God help you, he had learned how to flirt. 

Or at least, he thought that making you flustered made for nice entertainment. He’d try it on you sometimes. And though you never gave him the satisfaction he so obviously wanted, you felt it. Every time. And in each of those times, you did your best to hide the fact that it reached farther in you than you wanted it to. 

Like today. 

“Can’t say I don’t miss this,” 

“Yeah, well you used to carry my bag back then, though. What happened?”

“Do you want me to carry your bag?”

“Chivalrous as ever.”

Juhoon had texted you the night before asking if you wanted to walk to school with him. You weren’t sure why. For one, he took his car with his friends every day going there. For one, he usually drove. Ever since getting his student license, he’d become inseparable from the little convoy of those loud boys who’d cause a ruckus in the parking lot each morning. For another, the two of you were old enough now to take the bus on your own. 

But perhaps he was feeling nostalgic. Or maybe the memories had gotten to him in one of its moods. Either way, you said yes. The morning air still carried some cool residue, and patches of sidewalk remained dark where the sprinklers had overreached in the early hours. Somewhere, a dog barked at nothing in particular, and as you walked with Juhoon down the steps of your porch, you could almost believe you were nine again. In the pale half-light, the distance between childhood and adulthood seemed almost like a trick of perspective. 

“I sometimes see you walking to school.’+” He said after a while. “You don’t take the bus anymore?”

“I do take the bus.” You nudged a pebble with the toe of your shoe, watching it skip ahead of you. “And sometimes I miss the bus. So I walk.”

Juhoon’s eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “Y’know I could just drive you, right? I take the car most days.”

“And have to sit through your rowdy band friends?” you scoffed. “I’m good Ju.”

“They’re not all that bad.”

“I’m sure they aren’t.”

Juhoon shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “It’s funny. Did you know Hyeon used to have a crush on you?”

You stare at him. “Who?”

“Eom Seonghyeon. He’s like a year below us. One of the guys. He said he thought you were pretty.” Juhoon understands. You are pretty, and Seonghyeon simply couldn’t help himself. Hyeon doesn’t know how Juhoon’s been living with that thought for longer than he can remember. 

“Yeah? What else did he say?”

His smile grew a bit strange. Smaller. “Said he stopped because you looked like you’d never talk to him. And that you always seemed a little sad.”

“Kid’s got a basic eye.” Juhoon laughs, but only because you did.

By the time you reach school, the sun’s fully out. Shoes scuff across the pavement, voices carry in bright, careless bursts, and people are either laughing to each other or scrambling to their lockers. Nicholas finds you first. 

“Y/n, come over here.”

You turn at the sound of your name and there he is, leaning through a little know of people. He looks well enough, annoyingly so. Juhoon hears the sound as well and turns his gaze leftward. 

“Nico.” You clicked your tongue as you got closer. “You look well. New hair? Is that why Jiah’s always got her hands on it?”

His expression shifts from offense to smug in the blink of an eye. “Hey you know she’s just a buddy. Listen, you got that math homework?”

You’re about to answer when another voice slides into the conversation, dry and amused. 

“Persistent as can be,” Juhoon says.

Nicholas turns toward the sound. It takes him less than a second to find Juhoon right beside you, and when he does, his smile frows thin.

“Kim Juhoon. Y’know, you used to be a whole lot shorter. I see you’ve changed.”

“And I see you haven’t. How’s that forehead?” 

The grin Nicholas has been wearing starts to crack as his eyebrows become more pinched. His jaw tightens.

“It’s been years. It’s fine.”

“A shame. Scars look cool, y’know. Gives you that cartoonish little high school jock look. Very Disney. I thought that was kind of your style.” 

Before either of them got any more escalated, you stepped in between the two. “Stop it you animals.” 

You look at Nicholas, who’s looking at Juhoon with fury. Then you look at Juhoon, who’s looking at you with a smirk and a look that could mean to ask you if whatever he said was funny. 

The smile you give him is small enough to deny later, but it finds him all the same. His own threatens to widen before he reins it in.

“I’ll see you around Ju. Good luck on that History test.” Then, you turn away with Nicholas.

Juhoon helplessly watches you go and arrives, against all reason, at a fascinating conclusion. Maybe he’s been doing this all wrong. Nicholas seems to be doing wonderfully with only half a conscience, so perhaps ego really is the nutrient of romance. Maybe Juhoon ought to start shoving freshmen into lockers, wear sunglasses and backward caps indoors, and become one of those aggressively symmetrical Disney jock prototypes he so loathed just to get you. 

Before he turns to leave, he laughs under his breath. No way in hell. 

—

At lunch, you both would seem like strangers.

From where you sat with your own group of friends, Juhoon sat three tables behind with his own. It’s look like you were two people whose lives had only briefly overlapped. You wouldn’t look at each other either. Not once. It is, frankly, an Oscar-worthy performance. 

But it would be so often where your phone would vibrate, and you’d hide it under the table on your lap to take a peek.

JuJu with no beat: is it just me or are the potatoes so damn dry today

12:08 P.M.

You: it’s just u. mine slap

12:09 P.M.

JuJu with no beat: shucks 

JuJu with no beat: pass me a couple ? 

12:10 P.M.

You: fuck no how would i even do that 

You: want me to frisbee some across the cafeteria? 

You: heads up

12:12 P.M.

JuJu with no beat: DO NOT no don’t even think abt it

JuJu with no beat: u could just come over and sit next to me

You: at this point just ask me to feed u some while ur at it

JuJu with no beat: could you?

You: no id rather eat drywall. leave me alone

12:14 P.M. 

JuJu with no beat: ok cuz i see ur boyfriend’s probably cracking the funniest jokes rn. glad to know he’s keeping u entertained

JuJu with no beat: maybe u should stop texting me and listen to him 

You: u talked to me first and nico is NOT my boyfriend

You: im not resorting to that kind of torture

JuJu with no beat: if hes not ur boyfriend why u always w him

JuJu with no beat: he’s always buggin ya

You: idk its complicated

You: u wouldnt get it

JuJu with no beat: hell yea i wouldnt

JuJu with no beat: the guy doesnt like me n everyone likes me

You: eat ur dry potatoes and fuck off my cell brah 

“Y/n?” Nicholas snaps his fingers once in front of your face. “Are you listening or what?”

You turn away from your phone and blink. “Hm?”

“I’ve been talking to you for, like, two whole minutes.”

“My sincerest apologies.” You tilt your head. “Which girl’s ass were we discussing again.

He lets out an exaggerated groan. “C’mon Y/n, don’t be like that. You know yours is my favorite, right?”

You snorted bitterly. Did he think that was romantic? “Really? I was worried I’d fallen in the rankings.” 

He watches you for another second before the grin returns, slower this time. “Hey. I heard the underside of the bleachers are empty this time of the day.”

“So what?”

His eyebrows lift. “You know what.”

 It seemed a fair exchange, all things considered. Besides, there were worse things than being believed in by a fool. 

You sigh through your nose. There’s no annoyance left in you anymore, because that requires an element of surprise, and Nicholas has long since exhausted that resource. You stood up, and Nicholas followed suit. Fine. You’ll let him have the illusion. You’ll borrow the comfort of this however cheaply it was purchased, and he’ll borrow whatever he thinks he’s touching. It seemed a fair exchange, all things considered. Besides, there were worse things than being believed in by a fool. 

His hand settles against the small of your back the entire way out, and you don’t stop him, no matter how much you want to pull it away. Across the cafeteria, Juhoon looked up just in time to see the gesture and almost spat out his food.  It left a sour taste in his mouth as the texture turned awful. 

No shade to Nicholas, but he could be everything a person ought to be. He could be generous and patient and funny and good. He could volunteer at shelters and call his mother every day, rescue drowning children, hell, achieve sainthood. And Juhoon, with all the pettiness you had made him capable of, would still think: Not enough. Never enough. Not for her. I knew her first. 

He couldn’t really intervene, though. You told him not to. So he chewed down his rice and prayed that all the things you said about that guy were true. And once he convinced himself enough, he gulped down the rest of his juice and got out. 

──────── .✦

You could make the argument that parties terrified you, which was true. You felt like a startled deer, and loud noises had a way of turning your bones inside out. But you liked going to them because everyone thought to collectively agree that for one night, homework and the next school year were concerns for another day. And with the right people to stand beside and exchange the occasional ‘can you believe this shit?’, you could pretend for just a few hours. 

It was nearing the end of another school year, and the field had transformed into its annual imitation of joy. Booths lined the walkways, things were being put up for sale, and there were enough sugary drinks to go around. But what everyone was really looking forward to was the music. 

And what better way to send the year off than with Juhoon behind the drums beneath the stage lights, sleeves rolled up, sweating up a storm and smiling like an idiot? Nothing. And evidently so, given you were witness to half the female student population erupting in screams every time he twirled his drumsticks. 

“That’s my boyfriend!” Someone screamed from behind you.

“That’s not your boyfriend.”

“Not with that attitude!” 

You had only meant to get drinks and come back. That was the plan. Then you turned back, and Hyein was gone. 

“Hyein?” you called, craning your neck. “Where’d you go?” No answer. 

The crowd had closed around you in the meantime with the motion of a dangerous trap. Shoulders struck shoulders. Hands brushed where they weren’t meant to. Someone’s breath found the back of your neck and the next second against the skin of your ear. Too many bodies, too little air. 

Your skin prickled as your thoughts went thin. You tried to force your way out, but there was no out to find. The crowd seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction, and every time you thought you’d found an opening, another person would step into it. 

Oh no. 

Oh no, no, no, no

“Hyein!” You called again, much louder this time, and heard the panic in your own voice. Where the fuck had she gone? 

A pair of hands settled on your shoulders from behind, and your body reacted in panic. Your mind was half gone by then, and you were already convinced you were one more breath away from peeling yourself out of your own skin, so you spun around and started swinging your arms.

“Whoa–hey, watch the hair! It’s me!” 

A voice came out laughing, and those same hands caught your wrists before you could accidentally hit something or someone. There stood Juhoon, flushed from the stage and still glowing, shirt damp at the collar, looking exactly like he had a few minutes ago when you’d managed to tear your eyes away from him. Your breathing, as well as your thumping chest, began to drag itself back into place. 

“You okay?” he asked, and his eyes flicked over your face, taking in the color in your cheeks with his palms. If anything, the gesture made you even more red. “You’re flushed.”

“Duh. Your performance got the whole set of girls flushed,” you say, and even you can hear how flimsy the joke is. 

Juhoon drops his hands from your face and squints. “You really mean that?”

You shook your head. “Of course not. I need an out, Ju. Right now.” 

“We can pass backstage,” he says at once, already angling his body toward the edge of the crowd. “C’mon.”

The backstage route turned out to be a secret passage smelling faintly of dust and the exhausted spirit of school-sanctioned cheer. Juhoon told you to hold onto his hand and not let go, glancing over his shoulder every few steps to make sure you were still there, which was funny because the deathly grip he had on your palm should have made it obvious to him. 

It was impossible not to feel a little giddy about it, being shepherded along by Juhoon with his ridiculous hair and stupidly nice-looking face. The classroom they ended up using as a lounge had been decorated to look like somebody’s idea of a good time. There were paper lanterns, bent streamers, and a whiteboard covered in names and doodles. One corner had a speaker set up for karaoke, another had a ring of chairs pushed into a circle, and the rest of the room was a collision of snack wrappers and soda bottles. 

You found a few of your friends there, though not Hyein. You still didn’t know where she’d gone. A few others from Juhoon’s orbit had claimed the back row for an argument. Juhoon was greeted, naturally. 

“Look who decided to grace us with his presence. Everybody act natural!” Martin yelled.

“Show-off!” Keonho retorted.

“Semantics semantics.” 

Juhoon lifted both hands in surrender, the picture of false innocence. “I have no idea what you’re all talking about.” 

You hear Hyein before you see her. 

“Found you,” she said, appearing at your side and looking like she’d run a mile. Her gaze skimmed over you from head to toe, quick and assessing. Then she shoved a plastic cup into your hand filled with water. 

“Where’d you go? I looked back and you were gone.”

Hyein’s brows shot up. “What do you mean, where did I go? I went to look for you I swear I almost had a panic attack.” 

“I almost had a panic attack! You and your little side quests.” 

Juhoon was still at your shoulder, close enough that you could feel the heat of him through the quarter inch of space between you. He smiled a small smile.

“That was supposed to be my good deed for the night.”

You glance at him and squint. “Making a lot of assumptions about your good deeds.” 

Before he can think of a comeback, someone from the back of the room lifts a deck of cards into the air. 

“Now that more people actually decided to come, we can play some competitive Go Fish!” 

“You do realize we already played Go Fish for an hour,” someone said. “An hour straight. You wanna do it again?”

“That’s a children’s game, isn’t it?”

“Oh fuck all of you.” Woojin said, wounded by the room’s lack of appreciation. 

“Just go home, man.”

“No. We still haven’t done Karaoke.” 

Juhoon tipped his head toward you, speaking low enough to be heard by your ears alone. 

“Better?”

You gave him a smile that could only be seen by him in return. “Back to normal.” 

Across the room, Woojin is still fighting for his life over the merits of his Go Fish idea when somebody snatched the microphone and started threatening him with it. Another person had climbed up onto a desk to announce, for reasons unknown, that if nobody kissed anybody before graduation, it would be a waste of youth. 

That naturally piqued everyone’s interest. 

“Gross,” Hyein muttered.

“Okay, but if we’re doing stupid shit, we should do them properly. Hey we got a bottle and some Truth or Dare cards. Spin the bottle, anyone?” 

The reactions were a variety of Yes, No, Absolutely not. But before anyone could agree to disagree in any meaningful way, chairs were already scraping across the floor, and people were starting to crowd into a circle. You stayed unnervingly still for a bit with a mind spaced out. 

“You coming?” Juhoon called out for you.

“Yeah yeah. Give me a minute.” 

And with the first spin of the bottle, everyone knew this was fucked. The game, as it turned out, was as indecent as can be, 

The first victim was Hyein, who was instructed to text her ex a haiku. She argued that she hadn’t written a poem since elementary school, to which someone said today might as well be her comeback. Woojin, somehow faring even worse, was sentenced to serenading Mr. Choi in the hallway. Then came Seonghyeon, who had his card saying he had to kiss the prettiest person in the room. Like a goddamn movie stereotype. 

“Ohoho careful Y/n. Y’know he used to have the biggest crush on y–” Martin was briefly cut off by Seonghyeon’s hand on his face.

“Shut up–piece of shit.”

Martin’s voice came out as little more than muffled suffering. “Mmph–”

“Die quietly.” He turned to you and immediately gave an apologetic bow. “Sorry Y/n.”

You couldn’t help but laugh and wave him off. “It’s all good.” 

Seonghyeon got up. “I’ll take the punishment.”

“Aww,” Keonho cooed. “Can’t find anyone pretty enough Sean?”

“Yeah. Hideous, hideous, hideous.” He pointed to three of his friends as he said it. 

Throughout the night, the bottle kept spinning. Truths became dares, dares became crimes. It was admittedly a fantastic time. The room wasn’t as loud as the field outside, and you haven’t been given any obnoxious dares yet. 

That is until Woojin picked up another card, and his expression seemed to change. That smile looked more evil than sincere.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will be witnessing a seven minutes in heaven tonight.” 

Half the group cheered, the other half booed, and one girl started praying. For it to be her or not, you weren’t sure. 

“That is entrapment! No way in hell am I doing that with any of you monsters. I’m out.” Seonghyeon shoved himself to his feet in a dramatic outrage that made the rest of you laugh harder. Keonho had apparently latched onto his leg, and Seonghyeon had to pry him off before he could make his way out the door. 

“I pray it’s you Y/n. This bottle really seems to hate you.” Hyein says.

“You’d be dead wrong.”

You really should’ve held your breath back there, because Hyein had been dead right.

“Fuck.” You groaned under your breath. “Smells like feet in here.” 

“Yours or mine?” 

“Definetely not mine.”

Before you knew it, you and Juhoon had been shoved into the smallest supply closet as the final consequence of your losses. Keonho and Woojin could’ve picked a better spot. This was the cliche of all cliches. 

Juhoon shifted first, planting one hand against the shelf beside your head. “Wanna talk? We got 7 minutes.”

“Not really.” 

“So you wanna do something else?” Before he could lean any closer and tease further, you grabbed a handful of his hair and started pulling. “Ah—quit it! I was kidding!”

“You should be.” You say, laughing despite yourself as you let go and lean back against the wall. THe plastic shelf gives a little under your shoulder. “We can talk.”

“Alright, I’ll go first.” He rubs the back of his head and shifts from where he stands. “Be honest with me alright? And don’t think too much about it.”

“Can’t say that made any sense, but I’ll try. Shoot.” 

“Do you find Seonghyeon handsome?”

The silence that followed was absolute.

“What kind of a dumbass question is that?” You lifted a brow. 

“… A dumbass kind of question, I guess?”

You fold your arms and stare at the darkness with all the patience you can fake. After a bit of thought, you had come to a conclusion. “Conventionally, yeah Seonghyeon is handsome. Everyone else would think that.”

Juhoon squinted at you, then pushed himself off the shelf, adjusting his stance so he’s much closer. “Okay let me rephrase the question. So do you think Seonghyeon, who you think is handsome, is a date-able person by any means?”

You frowned and tilted your head. “Which means specifically Ju?”

“Your means.”

“That’s a kid.” You snort out. “Listen I don’t know how this question even came to you, but being aware of the fact that Seonghyeon used to have a crush on me and the other fact that I think he’s conventionally attractive isn’t gonna change the most important fact that I will probably never look at him that way.”

Juhoon let out a long breath and nodded, satisfied for reasons only he understood. “Alright. Good to know.”

“You prod too much man.”

“Let me ask another question.”

“Last question you’re gonna get tonight so you better think it through.”

He ignored the warning entirely. “Is Nicholas a date-able person by your means then?”

You wished he could see the disbelief in your eyes when he said that. “Are you serious?” No! God no.”

He makes a helpless little face. “I’m just saying—why are you two like, always paired up like that?”

“Nicholas is kind of dumb, Ju. No, seriously—he’s really dumb. He thinks he’s using me but he’s living a lie too.” Juhoon’s mouth twitches. He doesn’t know whether to be happy about it or not. At least he’s being given some clarity now. It’s a win in his books. 

“I’ve always wanted to explore the dating scene. Romance just looks so nice in the movies, doesn't it? So I figured if I was gonna mess around with anyone, it might as well be with some insincere guy I could use for the experience.” 

You continue, a lot quieter now. “I know he doesn’t really like me, and I don’t exactly like him either. But at least it feels less bad to waste time with someone who isn’t genuine than with someone who is. I mean if we stopped talking now, it wouldn’t mean anything.” 

Juhoon wants so badly to tell you he’s right here. That if wasting your time on someone genuine is what scares you, then let it be him. He’s willing. 

Instead, all that climbs out of his mouth is, “Ah, I see.” 

You study him for a second, finding the glowing reflection of eyes in the dark. “Why are you asking me this?”

Because it’s really about me.

“Just thought you’d pick up on a few things.” He waved the topic off. “Nevermind.”

“Sometimes you just sound… crazy to me.” 

“A minute left. You’re literally breathing down my neck.” 

“This supply closet’s so–” You kick on the door, “Tiny. I think I’m missing an eyelash.”

Juhoon tilts his head and hunches over. “Plucked it all out while we were in here?”

“No, my falsies dumbass.” 

“Oh.” A beat. “Let me have a look.” 

“In the dark? Be my guest.”

Juhoon took the challenge as though it could be won, but this might just be the dumbest possible excuse he’s made to stand far too close to you again. This time, in the dark. And you could feel him before you could properly see him. How warm he was, the faint hitch in his breathing, the small hesitation that came from one motion and the next. 

Inch by inch, closer by degrees, and the hand that found your jaw was warm. His thumb settles beneath your chin while the other hand cups your cheek, angling your face toward the thin strip of hallway light slipping under the door. He’d forgotten he was supposed to be looking for an eyelash. 

“I think,” He was close enough now that you could feel his breath fanning your face when he spoke. “I think it might be easier if you looked up.” 

Your eyes met his instead. “You seem very focused. On my eyelash, was it?”

A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “On the general vicinity, mmh.” 

Before either of you could react, the closet door shook violently beneath a barrage of fists. 

“7 minutes is up! Stop kissing in 3 2 1–” 

When the door opened, Juhoon jerked back so fast he nearly collided with the shelf, his hand falling away from your face like he’d been burned by the fact of having touched you. 

Everyone was outside looking, curious, expectant. You merely rolled your eyes and stepped out. 

“You wish. We were just talking.” You said as you shoved Woojin aside. 

“Oh yeah? Why’s Ju so red then?”

“Because it’s hot as balls in there.” He replied quickly, dragging a hand down his face looking horrified. 

“A shame.” 

Neither of you ever spoke of it again. And you certainly never mentioned how, in the sliver of light that reflected in his eyes back there, you caught them wandering just a little too far downward. RIght above your chin, just below your philtrum. 

──────── .✦

The first summer you spent with Juhoon after he returned was a busy one. He insisted you take him to every new place and landmark that had popped up in town while he was gone. When you asked him why it mattered so much, since he’d already seen them with his friends from school, he told you that seeing them with you would be an all new experience altogether. 

You didn’t really have much to argue after that. Your face, however, had plenty to say for itself. All those words painted red. 

You took him to a festival that afternoon, and in doing so, rode in his pickup for the first time. Juhoon looked unfairly nice behind the wheel, one hand lazily resting on it and the other tapping along to whatever song the radio had decided to butcher. Sometimes, it startled you how much he’d grown up. 

The festival had taken over the town square and spilled into the streets surrounding it. Colorful banners hung overhead in uneven rows, fluttering lazily beneath the June sun. Paper lanterns swayed gently above stalls selling skewers of grilled meat, candied fruit, and cups overflowing with shaved ice. Children chased bubbles around the fountain, armed with plastic swords and paper hats. Teenagers clustered around games with impossible prizes. And there was laughter everywhere. Juhoon took it all in one look and grinned. 

You both got shaved ice first, and after that Juhoon pulled you toward a tossing game, intent on proving that all those years of basketball had been good for something. He rolled up his sleeves, talked up his god-tier hand to eye coordination, and then missed the first two shots so badly you had to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing. 

At least the third one went in. The man at the booth looked put out, in contrast with Juhoon’s smug expression. 

“God. Like I said.”

“That was one shot.” 

Juhoon tipped his chin up a little, still riding the high of his own victory. “One shot’s all it takes.”

The booth attendant finally handed over the prize: a giant stuffed dolphin, absurdly blue and far too big. Juhoon took it with both hands, gave the man a quick bow, and then immediately shoved it toward you. 

“For you.” 

You stared at him. “For me?”

He shrugged, trying for casualness. “I fuckin’ hate Dolphins. Devils of the deep, that’s what they all are.”

By the time the sun began to set, you and Juhoon had set off on his pickup toward a hill overlooking the town. He motioned for you to climb into the back where he’d spread out a blanket for the two of you to lie on and watch the rest of the sunset from. So you did, settling in with the giant dolphin as a pillow, while Juhoon finished the last of his shaved ice and the sky slowly bled into the night. 

“So how’s it going? Y’know, with the whole…”

“Huh?” You turned your head. “Oh you mean–?”

“Yeah, that.” Juhoon picked idly at the spoon in his hand. “You haven’t really been as open about it with me ever since I came back.” 

“You’ve become too cool, Juhoon. Agh, you and your suave band friends.” You snorted, and waved vaguely. “What’ll their drummer think of me once I tell him my doctor’s visits have never stopped at all?” 

“Stop bullshitting me man.” He sighed and sat up a little, resting his elbows on the edge of the truck bed. 

You turned away from him to look back up at the sky. “I’m fine. The doctors said I’m as stable as can be.”

It was weird to you, how persistent he was. So much so that sometimes you fear that one day he'll look at you too closely and discover everything that lay there. The slipping gears, the tiny teeth grinding where they shouldn’t. And maybe then, after he looked enough, he’d decide it was hideous.

No matter what he told you, you knew he’d changed. He was cooler now, more out of reach. Taller somehow, even when he was sitting down. You wanted to be known by him all over again so badly it was an illness of its own. And then there were other days where you wished he’d just leave again. 

You supposed you had always been a little in love with Juhoon, and a little embarrassed by it too. Because of this, you knew you were completely ruined. He was my ruins witness and my witness to ruin. Worse still, he never seemed to recoil from the sight. He touched you. He cared. Well, he said he did. As though these things were so easy, and that you hadn’t given him every reason not to. 

“You sure? You don’t seem too happy about that.” 

“Sure I am.” 

“Liar. But it’s ok. I know you well enough.”

You looked over and gave him a once over. “Want a ribbon for that?”

“No. And I know that whenever you say ‘I’m fine’ in that voice it either means you’re lying or you’re stalling.”

“Helpful.”

“And again, I know that if I keep pushing you'll get pissed at me.”

“Very helpful.”

“And I know,” you could hear the sound of a smile when he said it, which should have been impossible, “that you’ll tell me eventually.”

You picked at the seam of the stuffed dolphin fin and looked away from him. “You have better things to worry about, Ju.”

“No I don’t. What is it huh? You don’t like school? You need a makeover? Do you not feel like yourse–” 

‘It’s not that, Ju, it’s–” You cut him off and shove your face into your hands with a groan. 

The hill had gone dark, and the festival below had become a scatter of lights, warm and blurred from the distance. The fireworks would crack soon, so to tell him, it’d have to be now. 

“I want to be okay with who I am, Really. And sure, I’m scared of her. Shit, sometimes I think nobody's more afraid of me than me.” Beside you, Juhoon said nothing. He’d turned onto his side at some point, and you wanted to hide from the feeling of him looking. 

“But this is all I’ve got, right?” You shrugged. “This is the person I have to spend the rest of my life with.”

You swallowed a choke. “If I fake it, and people like what they see… then they don’t like me at all. That’s so scary to think about.” 

You pushed yourself up from the blanket and stared out into nothing in particular. The wind shifted. You could smell the grass. Sugar. Summer. 

“But nothing’s scarier than being me, Ju.” You smiled a little, though there wasn’t much humor in it. “Nothing.” 

He was quiet long enough that you began regretting having said anything at all. With the residual drops of courage in your body, you pushed out the last of the truths that'd been gnawing at you all your life. 

“Sometimes I wish my brain just worked the way it was supposed to. Like, if I didn’t have these chemical defects I wouldn’t even think about half the things I do. Isn’t that crazy? I wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

“What are you talking about?” 

No seriously, what was she talking about? And of course Juhoon knew in theory what you were talking about, but if he spoke now you probably would have brushed it off and told him not to worry, or that you didn’t want to hear any of it. 

But fine. You don’t want what ordinary people have to say? Let’s consult the so-called Gods, starting with Aristotle himself. His idea of being good had less to do with being perfect and more to do with customs and choices. Then being good must be like a muscle, right? Use it enough, and it’ll remember. Then the existentialists came along and preached that people are made by what they do with what they’re given.. You are what you choose, they’d insist, even if the choosing hurts. And you’ve got someone like Nietzsche who made a career out of asking this one question: “Well, what if suffering isn’t ‘the ’sign that you’ve failed?”

You don’t like the Gods? Fair enough. Then look to the dead. Van Gogh spent much of his life miserable and gave the world stars. Sylvia Plath left behind poems that people would only learn to weep over decades later. John Nash spent years fighting his own mind and still changed mathematics. 

Perhaps that was the common thread tying together Gods and ghosts alike. Aristotle with his mores. The existentialists with their freedom to insist. Nietzsche forever defying the universal morals. Van Gogh with his sunflowers. Plath with her bell jars. Though separated by centuries and burdened by vastly different tragedies to reach their conclusions, they all seemed to stumble toward the same end, and it was one of the few things Juhoon had managed to take away from them. That these things: righteousness, suffering, beauty, all of them began from the materials already at hand rather than some imaginary set one had been cheated out of. 

Which was why he found your fear so heartbreaking. There has never been another you waiting behind a curtain, Y/n. There is only this one. 

And not one among these figures had managed to produce evidence of a perfect blueprint for a human being no matter how revered they became. There was no original version unchanged by grief or loneliness. Not the philosophers, not the gods, not the poets, nor the dead. These were people. And what they left behind were lives that were anything but simple, with no suggestions of a pristine hidden self. Only the self itself. Super strange, yeah. But no less real for it. No less deserving of being lived. 

Before you could answer, it was his turn to cut you off. 

“Don’t do that.” He said. It didn’t sound all that angry. He seemed more sad, if ever. 

Suddenly, a loud bang split the air. A moment later, a bloom of color. Fireworks rose over the hill in splashes of red, blue, and gold spilling themselves across the sky, and when Juhoon turned at the sound of your gasp, you were looking up. He caught the colors in your eyes, and your mouth, so lately full of those terrible little verdicts, parted in wonder. 

Ah, Juhoon’s brain goes off, would it be so bad to want to kiss you under all this? Will we still have each other?

When the fireworks had finally died down and the sky settled back into darkness, your yawns grew harder and harder to disguise. Juhoon took the hint. So he folded up the blanket and tossed it into the backseat, banishing the stuffed dolphin alongside it despite your half-hearted protests. Then he ushered you to the passenger seat and drove home in easy silence. His playlist hummed through the stereo, and when Juhoon glanced over, he found you sitting with the window rolled down, chin resting against your hand. The wind played with your hair and streetlights came and went over your face like passing thoughts. 

Juhoon hopes the songs in the car can stand in for all the things he couldn’t find the right moment to say earlier. He hopes that, despite the wind rushing in through the open window, you could still hear it.

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

“Does it scare you? When I… y’know.”

The question catches him off guard that he has to steal a brief glance in your direction before returning his attention to the road, though the answer had already reached him by then. 

“No.”

“Do I scare you?”

“You never scare me.”

You make me sad sometimes. You make me angry. But never scared. Never you. 

And Juhoon never second-guessed the thought. Not once in his life did he think he ever would. 

By the time Juhoon turned onto your street, the conversation had long since died out. The radio had become little more than another engine humming somewhere beneath the quiet. He glanced over when the car rolled to a stop outside your gate, and you were asleep. Your cheek had fallen against the window sometime during the drive home, leaving the faintest fog blooming and disappearing with each breath. He reached across and unbuckled your seatbelt carefully, before unbuckling his as well. Then, he stepped out into the cool air, rounded the hood, and opened your door as slowly as the hinges would allow.

With one arm behind your knees and the other around your back, he lifted you from the seat. You stirred immediately, and his heart launched into his throat. The walk to your front door felt considerably longer than usual. He slipped his shoes off by the entrance before carrying you upstairs one impossible careful step at a time. WHen he slipped across your room without a hitch, he could finally breathe properly again.

Juhoon crossed your bed and lowered you onto the mattress, and it was only when you barely stirred at all did his heart finally rest easy knowing you were fast asleep.  Now, standing in the quiet of a familiar bedroom, he looks down at the girl who had become the measure by which he’d learned every other kind of missing. The smile he lets himself have is small and hopeless.

So much, he whispered, barely louder than your breathing. You have absolutely no idea.

Then because he needed to leave, Juhoon turned off the bedside lamp, pulled the blanket a little higher over your shoulder, and let himself disappear as quietly as he’d come.

──────── .✦

Geez, did it hurt. 

The bulb above the mirror is dying. It flashes every few intervals, and you make a mental note to tell your dad he ought to replace it. But besides that, you sit on the cold tile floor holding the side of your stomach, and sitting on the floor with you is a lighter, a little blade, and some plaster. 

The flickering was horrible, but did you know what was worse? Hospital lights. Those things were fucking obscene. Too bright. Too white. Like being interrogated by the moon. Everytime you looked at yourself from a reflective surface you could see every pore and every line. You used to think they made them that way so there would be nothing to hide from the doctors. But tonight, you weren’t going to the hospital. At least not for another week. 

A few hours ago, you had gone through one of those seizures again. For what reason, you could only guess it was a biological one. Your parents, after holding you through it, said it might have been caused by changing hormones or sleep deprivation to your condition, but you didn’t care. You just wanted it to stop. To be rid of that terrible out-of-body feeling you could never get used to. And you wished you could abandon this coping mechanism entirely, but the method had proven itself somewhat effective at times. 

No matter how many times you resort to this, you only grew more convinced that nobody should have to do it. Nobody should be brave enough, or as desperate. Least of all you. 

Just then, your phone’s ringing got you out of your trance. You quickly finished applying the rest of the bandages and got up to answer the phone. When you saw the caller ID, it was Juhoon. 

“W’dya want?” You said as you put the phone to your ear, slowly bending down to tidy up your mess.

“I want you to meet me outside your front door in 30 minutes. Maybe pack some extra clothes while you’re at it.” 

“What? Why? Where are we going?”

“The lake. And no I’m not taking no for an answer if you’re wondering. Bye-bye.” 

“Ju wai–”

Before you could protest, Juhoon hung up. Once the line went dead, and after confirming that there were no suspicious remnants of your earlier misery clinging to you, you made a mad dash for your room. The next half hour was spent with a valiant effort to look at least marginally better than you did some minutes ago. 

When you got downstairs and saw Juhoon’s pick-up roll around at the perfect moment, you bid your mom goodbye and hurried out. 

“30 minutes? You fucking serious?” You climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door. “Now I know you don’t get girls because then you’d know a girl could never get ready in 30 minutes.”

“You still made it didn’t you?” Juhoon shot back immediately, one hand on the wheel. “And you look great, so I’d say my estimate was pretty accurate.”

“Just shut up.”

“How can I when the Beatles are on?” He gave you a sheepish grin and turned the volume up before hitting gear. “Oh hey Jude, don’t make it bad! Take a sad song–!”.

For the rest of the drive, all you could do was laugh while Juhoon shouted every lyric from the radio, and you laughed so hard your stomach hurt.

“You know what? McCartney would’ve admired this passion.”

You laughed even harder. “McCartney would’ve hit you with his bass. 

The town rolled by outside the window, washed in afternoon light and a familiar feeling. A convenience store. The old pharmacy. Mrs. Han walking her terrifying Pomeranian. And all the while, your laugh kept bouncing around in Juhoon’s head. Clearer than the radio, softer than the road.. A real one. Now, Juhoon knows every version of your laugh. He lived long enough to witness them all. The fake one. The polite one. This was the one you’d save for him. 

By the time he pulled up near the lake, the pick-up slowed into a quiet little opening by the trees. It was a place that looked like it had been waiting all day for someone to find it. Juhoon barely turned off the engine before he was out, shutting the door behind him and jogging toward the dock. You were right behind him a second later, laughing already, your sandals half untied and your steps quick over the grass. 

The dock creaked under both of you when you reached it, old wood warm from the sun and rough beneath your feet. THe lake stretched out ahead, still in some places and glittering in others, the surface broken only by the occasional ripple from a fish or a breeze that found its way down through the trees. WIthout warning, Juhoon crouched and started yanking at his shoes.  

“Damn. You’re not even gonna sit first?” You asked.

He looked up at you from where he was bent. “Do you want to sit first?”

“Yeah.”

Seeing you teetering at the edge, he lunged for you at once. You shrieked, stumbling back in surprise, and nearly went over your own feet before he caught your wrist and steadied you with an easy reflex. His hand was warm against yours. His grip was light. His thumb stroked once over your skin as he looked at you, and you wanted him with a helpless ache. 

“Careful,” he said smiling.

You narrowed your eyes and hit on the side of his chest. “You almost pushed me over!”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

With a snark and a cheeky grin that should have warned him, you flipped both your positions around and shoved Juhoon right off the dock. He let out a startled yelp before the water swallowed him whole, and you sat down triumphantly, laughing so hard your shoulders shook as your feet skimmed above the lake. . You should have been more wary though, because the moment Juhoon resurfaced, he grabbed both your legs and yanked hard enough to drag you tumbling in after him. 

He smiled that terrible, beautiful smile of his and pointed at the water behind you. “There’s a fish.” 

You flinched without thinking, and Juhoon took the opening at once, splashing at you while you groaned and shoved at his shoulder. He laughed louder, then caught your wrist before you could push him away. His hand was warm even through all the cold water, and really, you’ve always thought of yourself as a practical person. Inept with the ability to put mind over body. But the body is often more honest than the mind. The body knows which hands to lean toward. And Juhoon’s are warm. 

The sun’s light had softened by the time you both decided to climb out of the water. Your clothes clung to you in dripping layers, your hair darkened and plastered to every patch of skin reachable. Juhoon shook himself off like a wet dog the moment he clambered back onto the dock with you. 

“C’mon.” He said, jerking his chin toward the bank. “There’s shade.”

The two of you crossed the grass with wet footprints trailing behind you. The ground was warm where the sun still reached it, but under the tree near the docks the air was cool and still. Its branches hung low enough to gather the last of the breeze, and the roots had made a small rise in the earth beneath it. Juhoon collapsed there first, leaning back against the trunk with a long sigh before you dropped down beside him too, knees brushing and dripping. 

You tipped your head back against the bark and turned to him. “I’ve probably already asked this a million times this summer,” you said, picking at the damp edge of your sleeve, “But why’d you bring me here?” 

Juhoon was stretched out beside you, one knee bent and an arm thrown over it. He cracked one eye open to look at you. “Dunno. I had a feeling you might have needed it. Heard your mom calling the house earlier. Said you had another rough moment.” 

It was a strong feeling alright. Juhoon always had an unsettling for looking at you and knowing, enough to make you suspect he was some kind of witch. Apparently, years apart had done nothing to cure him of that. 

You groaned and tipped your face upward again, staring through the leaves. “God, I don’t even wanna think about it. Makes my skin crawl.” 

“We don’t have to. Not right now.” He said, quieter now. “In the meantime, why don’t you tell me why I saw Nicholas pacing around your house the other day?”

“You saw that? You should’ve called the cops on him.”

“What’s up with that?”

You huffed and looked back out at the lake. “I haven’t been texting him all summer. I don’t even know why he’s being nosy about it.” A snort escaped you. “One of my friends said he’s been hanging around some other girl for, like, almost a month now, so I don’t know what he wants. I’m not even his girlfriend.”

“So, you’re not hanging around him anymore? Ever?”

“I wouldn’t say ever. Maybe by the end of next year when we graduate I’ll finally drop him.”

“Why do you do this to yourself, Y/n? Seriously.”

“What? I already told you the reason.” 

“Yeah, it doesn’t make it any less horrible to hear.” 

You glanced at him with a straight face. “I thought you hated Nicholas.”

“I could care less about Nicholas. He’s a jerk with the personality of a wet turd, and all he cares about is girls and ass. It’s you.” When he said it, your smile faded. “This. You let that be somewhat enough.”

“It’s not enough, Ju.” You swallowed. “Nicholas is a shallow person and I know that I feel too much, I know that too—christ! Of course it’s not enough.” You rubbed a hand over your face, frustrated with yourself all over again. 

“Then why do you stick with him?” The answer was simple enough in the ugliest way possible. Simple enough to embarrass you.

“Because it’s easier,” you said finally, “For my conscience, I mean. It’s easier to fake it if I only have to get a little bit of something out of it. Intimacy? Closeness? Those things. I don’t know.”

Juhoon’s expression changed in tiny, almost invisible ways as you spoke. He was more hurt for you than at you. 

“You don’t want something real?” he asked. 

You let out a breath through your nose and looked away from him. “Where am I gonna find that?”

Juhoon hesitated, because the answer ought to have been obvious. When he finally answered, his voice was gentle. 

“WIth me.”

You went still as your chest took a leap too far, and Juhoon rushed on, words suddenly tripping over each other in a way that was very unlike him.

“I mean, I’ve—Y/n I’ve been here for ages. You know that. I’m not saying it like I woke up one day and decided I could just fix everything. I know that’s not how any of this works. But… I’m here. If you wanted something real, you could have it.” 

The lake breeze moved between the leaves overhead. A bird cried out somewhere farther down the bank. Your damp hair stuck to your cheek and you hated how suddenly close to tears you felt. Juhoon reached over then, slow enough that you could’ve stopped him, and brushed the wet strands out of your face. 

“I’m a mess, Juhoon. I can't do that to you.” You said. 

“What’s the worst you can do?”

A whole lot, you think.

More than he can possibly understand. Poor Juhoon, standing there with his hands empty and his heart carried so openly it almost hurt to look at. 

Imagine spring as something stolen from beneath the stomach of a drought. Imagine the water isn’t actually imagined. Picture yourself a dry shell, and picture the water real. There is nothing to become but an animal. You wanted to do too much, you were a compass hand with nowhere to face but north, a pilgrim who wants a shrine to deem it holy and die reaching. Because once you touch it, you will remember how desperately you wanted to want to live. God, how badly you wanted to be made forward-facing by the world instead of always braced against it. 

So you’ll mess it up. You know you will. This wasn’t a self-pitying thought as much as it was just the truth. And then what? 

The old world again? Or maybe the pyre version of it. You’re either back to where you started or, in your particular case, halfway down in the fire. You wish this were easier to explain to people who have never lived with the sense that the self is, at best, always a little provisional. 

So when Juhoon asks you again with a face so earnest, what’s the worst you can do? You think, rather bleakly, that the worst thing you can do is the thing you’ve always been doing. 

You pose a new question in your mind: why the hell would it matter then?

And so you lean closer and tell him, brace yourself, I know I’m fucking terrible at this, before grabbing him by the collar and kissing him into the grass. Into seventeen years of pain and wishes. And when Juhoon kisses you back the way you feared, you decide then and there that if you were to burn, you might as well do so facing a beautiful sun. 

──────── .✦

Kissing Juhoon felt, for some reason, a little too much like what you’d always imagined it would be. You had spent enough time wondering about it in the small dead spaces of a day. Yes, you did imagine it. You’re just a girl and Juhoon’s a good looking guy, how could you not? The only problem was Juhoon himself, who seemed to have discovered the experience with all the greed of a starving mammal. He was eager, and it would’ve been funny to you if it weren’t also making you a little hazy. 

It was late into the night. Juhoon had stayed over after you begged him to help you with your homework again, and he had, to his credit, actually helped. Weeks worth of it actually. It was just that at some point he leaned in too close while explaining something, his shoulder brushing yours, his mouth barely a breath away from the side of your face. One thing had led to another, as these things tend to, and now…

“Ju–” You start pushing at his shoulders as he tries to lean in like he’s not already been given enough, now merely testing the boundaries of generosity. “Slow down man.” 

That gets him to pull back at once, all at once, like he’s been jerked by a wire. His hands hover uselessly for a second before he drags them away from you, looking properly concerned now, the easy grin gone off his face like someone snuffed it. 

“Did I hurt you?”

You’re still catching your breath, your pulse feels ridiculous, and your mouth tastes faintly of him and the room and the stupid fact of having been kissed at all. “No, I’m fine.”

He searches your face anyway, eyes flicking over you with a kind of panic that’s almost sweeter than the kiss itself. Your hair’s been knocked loose from where it was once held back, and one side of it has fallen half into your face. Looking at you now, Juhoon straightens a little and says, with a breathless sort of pride, 

“I’m pretty good, huh?”

“Fuck off.”

“You want me to fuck off now?” He asks in disbelief. “After what you did to me and my hair?” 

“It was ruined when you got here,” you tell him, still trying not to smile too hard. “I don’t know what bone you have to pick with me.”

“Lots.”

Juhoon goes to sit back up in the desk chair and turns toward your table, gathering the scattered papers into a neater little stack in concentration. The top sheets keep slipping under his palm, so he smooths them flat, then another, his fingers moving with patience. You watch him through all of it, and apparently too obviously, because after a few seconds he glances over his shoulder with one brow lifted.

“You want somethin’?”

There’s a little crease still in his shirt from where you’d grabbed it earlier. His hair is worse than before, if that was even possible. You lean back against your pillows and pretend not to think about it. “Pretty sure I’ve taken too much from you already.”

He huffs a quiet laugh and turns the last page over. “That’s right. My brain cells, my paper, a kiss or two—actually, that was a whole thirty minutes, wasn’t it? Wow–”

“Shut up!” You throw a pillow at his face before he can keep going, and Juhoon catches it easily, one hand closing around the case before it can hit him. He looks at you like you’ve just declared war. 

“Oh, it’s like that?” He gets up with the pillow in hand and lunges for you before you can shriek anything useful. You scramble farther back on the bed already laughing, but he’s too quick and too pleased with himself, and in the next second he has you pinned in the most harmless way possible, pressing the pillow down over your face until you’re wheezing. He finally lets up just enough for you to yank the pillow from his hands and shove him back by the shoulder. Somehow that only makes the both of you laugh harder, until the two of you end up in a useless heap across your bed, one of his knees pressed against the mattress next to yours. 

“It’s fine,” he says breathlessly.. “Seriously. Pretty girls deserve pretty things.”

You turn your head just enough to look at him. “Is that your life’s philosophy?” 

“Hell yeah. Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.” He stares back, waiting. 

 “Did you just quote Shakespeare on me?”

“Yes...” He shrugs one shoulder, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Why? You’re supposed to swoon.”

“I would. I just thought we were above that sorta thing.”

“Aw, who says so?” Juhoon pushes himself up with his elbows.

“Says everyone.”

He makes a contemplating face before leaning back on one hand.

“Yknow, you spend enough time around businessmen and politicians, and then believe the only worthwhile things are practical.” He shrugs. “That must be a miserable way to live.”

Juhoon looks at you more carefully now, really looks. His hand lifts almost absentmindedly, and he catches your chin with one finger, tipping your face up for you to stay there long enough to hear him. 

“Art isn’t practical. Music isn’t practical. Love certainly isn’t practical. Neither’s standing around watching sunsets. We fall in love with songs that don’t feed us and stories that don’t save us. Why do you think that is?”

Blinking in confusion, you try to give an honest answer. “... Because we’re human and to be human is to be stupid?”

Not quite the answer he had in mind. Still, Juhoon points at you like you’ve won some sort of argument.

“Correct. So forgive me,” he says, leaning a little closer again. “for being a common stupid human quoting Shakespeare. This stupid human’s got his sights on one thing.”

“Yeah?” You ask, all before your mouth goes completely dry. 

He tilts his head, as if to challenge you, because the answer is so obviously there. Before he leans in for another kiss, he whispers,

“Mmh. Quite a beautiful one, if I do say so myself.” 

──────── .✦

The doctor had been careful with her words. That was the first thing you noticed. 

You sat on the edge of a chair with your parents behind you, your hands clasped so tightly in your lap that your knuckles had gone white. The paper gown they made you change into kept snagging at your thighs whenever you moved.

Your mother, to the left of your backside, put one hand firmly on your shoulder like maybe she could keep you in place by the force of love alone. Beside her, your father sat rigidly with both hands braced on his lap, posture too straight and trying not to look too afraid. Across from you, the doctor had laid out your chart and kept tapping a tablet against her fingers whenever she thought no one was watching, But you were paying too much attention. 

To the doctor’s mouth, to the small pause before she spoke, to the careful way her eyes flicked to your parents before returning to you. It felt as though she was measuring how much of the truth you were able to take at once. 

“I’ve looked through all your results, tests, your sheets.” she said gently. “Taking into account the frequency increase in seizures, as well as your recent episodes, combined with the scans and the history we already have, these all suggest that your brain is under more strain than we’d like.”

Your father frowned. “Under strain, how?” 

The doctor continued, an explanation you didn’t want to have to hear yourself. “When the brain is under prolonged strain, the balance of signaling chemicals can become very disrupted. In people with MDD, the monoamine systems are more vulnerable than most. When you add her seizures, and possibly the lack of sleep, the whole thing can become harder to stabilize.” 

You couldn’t seem to feel much of anything at the moment. Maybe it was the medicine they had given you earlier dulling everything down to a numb, distant blur. Still, you kept thinking about your parents having to sit through all this and listen to every awful word. Your poor mother. Your exhausted father.

The doctor folded her hands. “That doesn’t mean your symptoms are imaginary. The brain and body are affecting each other in very real ways, Y/n. This isn’t just some sadness. MDD can change the way the nervous system regulates itself. It can affect the HPA axis, the thing that controls your stress hormones. And that can keep the body stuck in a state of exhaustion, over-alertness, or worst case, a shutdown.” 

Your mother cleared her throat. “So what does this mean for her?”

The doctor gave you all a sympathetic look. “It means we need to reduce the load on her system. Right now, she’s still able to manage in short bursts, but she won’t be able to sustain herself. All that’s been happening is taking a greater toll on her body, which tells us she’s been under more distress than she may have been able to communicate.” 

Us, us, us. You wondered who exactly she thought she was speaking for. She was the only doctor in the room, after all. But she sounded kind, and for that you were grateful. 

“So we’re recommending that after her senior year, she be admitted into a facility for a period of stabilization and monitoring.”

Your mother made a small sound beside you, and you could hear your father shift uncontrollably. When you looked at him from the reflective glass to your front, his face changed the way you never liked seeing. He wasn’t angry. Worse. He was scared. 

“For how long?” He asked.

“That depends on how she responds.” The doctor said, “A few months, possibly longer. At this stage, I’m concerned that if she’s sent directly into college without a period of stabilization, she may just deteriorate further.” 

You had been holding onto that so stubbornly. Graduation had been the thing on the horizon. The invisible lever to which your life could be flung forward. The idea that maybe, after the caps and photos and the questions of what you were gonna do next, you would get to go somewhere else and begin again. But there was no beginning again. Not soon. Though you had hope, and if you were being honest, you weren’t sure you had the strength for any of it anyway.

Your father spoke carefully. “Will she still be able to finish school?”

“Yes, graduation first. We wouldn’t interrupt that unless we had to. But after that, I would strongly recommend admission. This is the safest way to prevent any more risks of deterioration.”

The doctor must have noticed your face crumpled a little, and with a voice so steady, reassured you something she could. “I know this is a lot to take in right now, but the goal of treatment isn’t to isolate you. It’s to help bring these destabilized systems back into a range where you can function without having to constantly fight yourself. We can work with new medication, sleep regulation, and therapy to lower the risk. Your brain isn’t broken beyond repair, okay? But it’s asking for more support than you can give it alone right now.” 

You appreciated what little comfort she managed to give you, but besides that, you bit back your tears and remained quiet. Your father finally spoke. “What happens next?”

The doctor exhaled. “We’ll coordinate with her neurologist, finalize the admission plan, and make sure everything is in place whenever you’re ready. Until then, we’ll keep monitoring her activity. If anything happens, do contact us immediately.” 

After your parents spoke with the doctor a little longer, it was finally time to go home. The drive was quiet on the way back, but you kept catching their eyes in the rearview mirror. They looked terrified, more than you had ever seen them, and you understood that too. What were you supposed to do with the dreadful fact that this body which should have borne you onward had turned, instead, into the weight at your ankles? 

And when you got home, your mother went into your room with you, as she couldn’t bear to leave you alone. She looked at you then, her only child, her whole life’s work, and there was in her face the heavy, aching work of learning you anew. 

“Baby,” she whispered as you pulled the sheets up to your body. Her voice cracked on the word. “You didn’t tell us it was this bad.” 

You thought, with a grief so embarrassingly childish, Mama, take me back. Swallow me up and make me again. Return me to the dark. Nine months, one more time. Build me differently, Shuffle the compounds. Rearrange the stars. When I come into the world, I’ll remember to come out right. And when you look at me this time, you won’t have to be so sad. 

“I’m not…” You stopped. Started again. “I’m not trying to be difficult.” 

It was all in the room with you then. The guilt, the fear, and love itself, vast and helpless and with nowhere else to go. Your mother wept quietly by the bed, your father stood in the doorway and held himself still, and you drifted to sleep at last, carrying fear and shame and relief knotted so tightly together they might as well have been one thing. 

──────── .✦

By now, you had become something of an unwilling chemist.

Not a very good one, mind you. You just swallowed your pills with increasingly concerning names and hoped your brain would stop trying to kill your morale. The problem with introducing new medication was always that the body was at least a few steps behind. 

Which was how, at a quarter to twelve on a Wednesday morning, while your teacher was halfway through explaining something in Algebra class, you suddenly became intimately aware of your own stomach. 

There were signs: the dizziness, the metallic taste, the strange underwater feeling behind your eyes. But you’d grown so used to your body issuing threats it had no intention of carrying out that you just ignored it.

That was until you couldn’t. One second you were staring blankly at the chalkboard. Next, you vomited. 

“Oh my God.”

“Y/n!”

“Miss–”

“Someone help me carry her to the nurse!”

Before your vision blurred, you stared at the mess in front of you and, for reasons beyond your understanding, burst into tears. There were worse things in the world, surely. But humiliation made no distinction between the life-threatening and the merely unbearable. At that moment, with your stomach empty and your dignity somewhere near your shoes, you thought you’d rather die than endure this particular shame twice. 

The nurse’s office smelled much more homey than the hospital. By then, the nausea had passed. The school nurse handed you crackers and water and spoke in her soft voice.

“New medication?”

You nodded.

“Are you taking it with food?”

“Sometimes.”

“Young lady.”

“Well, not most of the time.”

She sighed. “Your body’s adjusting, alright? These things happen.”

You wanted to tell her that your body seemed to do a lot of things, but she already had enough problems. By one in the afternoon, you were back home after your parents picked you up. Your father had no choice but to go back to work. Your mother insisted on soup. You had insisted on instant death, but neither of you got what you wanted. Instead, you got ginger tea. Cruel world. 

Your mother left you alone to rest, but sleep was proving difficult as you buried yourself beneath your blankets replaying the scene for the nth time. Maybe twenty people had seen. Maybe thirty. Maybe by tomorrow there’d be rumors. Maybe  they’d say you were pregnant. Teenagers, after all, possessed the imagination of Renaissance painters, albeit their morals measuring adjacently to that of a raccoon’s. You groaned and shoved your face deeper into the pillow, and eventually fell asleep. 

Around four in the afternoon, you awoke to your blanket on the floor and the sound of someone calling you from the doorway. You rolled over and there was Juhoon, standing just outside your room in a T-shirt and still in his school slacks, two convenience store bags hanging from his hands. The sight of him looked so absurdly ordinary against the misery of your day that you almost thought you were dreaming. 

“I heard you died.” He said.

“What?”

“Minji cornered me during lunch. Said you threw up and got sent home.”

You groaned some more. “Jesus Christ.”

“Relax. You know how news spreads around here. People were saying you exploded.”

“Can I explode now?”

“No. I brought you some stuff. Gatorade. Some bread. Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

He stepped inside and set the bags down on your bedside table, then placed the back of his hand against your forehead. His palm was warm, and you closed your eyes. 

“Ju, I’m so cold.” 

There was earnestness in his expression, all traces of teasing gone. He dropped his backpack beside your desk, walked over to the window and rolled your blinds down. You watched him through half-lidded eyes as he came back to your bed and reached for the blanket on the floor, tucking it around your side carefully and snug. 

“Much better?” He asked quietly. You let out a soft mmh and nodded. 

He lowered himself onto the floor beside your bed and rested his head against the mattress, his face only a few inches from yours. From there he could see everything you wished he wouldn’t. The shadows beneath your eyes. The strange emptiness in your gaze, fixed somewhere far beyond the ceiling and the walls. 

Quietly, he shifted to retrieve his backpack. There was a rustle of notebooks and loose papers before he fished something round and bright from the depths. An orange, because some habits die hard. 

“You’re always bringing me those. Can’t you get, like, apples next time?” You watched him work open the peel. Thumb beneath the skin. Twist. Tear. Never rushing, and never making a mess if he could help it. 

“What’s the fun in eating something so hard? I can barely get a bite out of an apple.” 

“Is this like the Kim Juhoon motif then? Oranges?”

He smiled to himself as he carefully removed another strip of peel. “It’s more yours than mine.”

“Huh? 

Juhoon held up a section triumphantly. “I’ll tell you a little something about oranges. Read some stuff in a brochure once.”

The orange released another burst of fragrance as he split the skin. Sunlight and sugar and memories of elementary school lunches. 

“It’s a migrant fruit, did you know? Carried from South China and arrived in Europe by way of caliphates, then travelled west through Persia, and then the Arab horticulture straight into the Mediterranean. At the time, fresh fruit in a European winter was almost unheard of. So they took these fruits from under the sun and sold them in the marketplaces during December. This was like a luxury to them.”

He handed you a slice, and as you popped it into your mouth, he continued. “These were fruits born of subtropical light becoming symbols of Christmas, by the way. Weird right? ‘ 

His hands had gone slower now. “And in whatever century that was, a whole Dutch dynasty took its name from them. They became little seasonal miracles, these guys. And the peel…the peel’s part of it too. It protects the sweet parts. Makes you work for the center.” 

Juhoon looked down at the orange resting in his hands. At the bright pieces arranged like small half suns. And he smiled. “So to peel an orange like this is to participate in an old history of transport, and theft, and then preservation. And when it’s peeled, the sweetness may come with acid and all, but it's worth it because it tastes so good.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?”

“I’m talking about you.”

“You’re seriously comparing me to a fruit?” 

He laughed softly. “Something like that.” He peeled away the last stubborn thread of white and handed another piece to you. 

“That even if they’ve been uprooted, or spend their whole lives being carried too far from home, none of that makes them any less sweet. People used to wait a whole year for these things. To them, and to me now, these were the original golden gifts.”

You blinked. “What are you trying to say?” 

Juhoon leaned his cheek against the mattress again, brushing a hair from off your face as his eyes met yours. “I’m saying you were my golden gift, Y/n. 10 years ago, in this same house just a room or two away, I found mine. And it was you.” 

Outside, cars passed, birds sang, and the wind pulled leaves off their branches. But here, with the smell of citrus in the air and Juhoon seated beside your bed, orange peels piled carelessly on his lap, you found yourself wishing for something small and preposterous. Please. One day, let me forgive myself for all the things I am not. 

You envied narcissists sometimes. You know they weren’t the only people capable of loving themselves, surely they weren’t, but they can do something you can’t. To admire themselves with such conviction. To inhabit their skins so fittingly. 

How could you ever do that? Your soul can never yearn for another soul shaped like its own. So Juhoon saying that undid something in you. You kept thinking there must be a better narrative of yourself waiting just beyond the next day, but Juhoon kept trying to convince you that the better narrative was never the point. 

“What would I do without you?”

“Plenty of things.” He shrugged, “Trust me.”

“I don’t think I can even do one thing. I just want to sleep. Forever and ever and ever.”

He reached up and absentmindedly smoothed the blanket where it bunched around your shoulder. “Take a rest. Sleep. Not forever, but just for another eight hours. Okay?”

“Okay.” 

“And Y/n?”

You made a small sound. “Hmm?”

Juhoon swallowed once, and let the words scrap out of him. “Promise me you’ll keep on trying, yeah?” 

He placed a hand and rubbed the underside of your chin, lulling you almost to sleep. “Please–please Y/n. There are… there are things you haven’t done yet. There’s light you haven’t felt and dreams that haven’t crossed your mind, things I’ve yet to tell you about, more you’ve yet to know. Please let me.” 

You stared at him for a long time. How many times had he thought of this and never thought to let them out until now, you’ll never know. 

“I will. I promise.”

──────── .✦

“Get a grip, man. What’s wrong with you today?” 

Juhoon knew exactly what was wrong with him. He could’ve named it on the spot if his mouth hadn’t gone dry every time he tried. He’d missed so many beats over the last hour he’s surprised Martin and the others had ignored it for this long. 

He let out a long breath and dropped his sticks into his lap. “Nothing.” he muttered, rubbing both hands over his face.  

“Ya sure?” Keonho asked.

Seonghyeon snorted beside him. “You think he is?” 

Juhoon’s knee bounced beneath the drum stool, and his shirt clung damply to the small of his back. The gym felt too warm, the amps buzzed too loud, sweat had gathered in all the gross places, and he had that stupid bouquet of flowers shoved in his bag as well as a letter, folded and refolded so many times the corners barely held shape. 

Despite what it might’ve looked like, you still weren’t his girlfriend. You hadn’t given him a clear go-ahead yet, even if that first kiss had been more than enough to leave him privately optimistic. He respected that, tried not to push, told himself he’ll bring it up one day. Today was gonna be that day. He was going to ask you to homecoming, and if he had any luck left at all, maybe ask you to be his girlfriend right after. 

The only problem is he waited until there were only 2 days left before homecoming to do it. Idiot. 

“Let’s go again.” He shakes his head and lifts his sticks.

Martin whistles lowly. “Look who’s talking.” 

He didn’t know if you already had a date. You didn’t mention anyone, not even Nicholas, though Juhoon supposed it made sense. Nicholas was hanging out with a completely different crowd now. Still, the thought occasionally returned to bother him. What if somebody had already asked you? What if you said yes?

But enough of that. He shoved the lingering thoughts into a deep corner in his brain, spun a drumstick once between his fingers, and settled back into the stool. 3, 2, 1. 

—

When Juhoon spotted you at lunch, he almost didn’t recognize you. It wasn’t because you looked different, but because you were laughing. Not the polite sort or the little huff through your nose. This one reached him from three tables away. There was a looseness to you he’d never seen, and he should have just been happy for you. He was, mostly. 

You even came over to him on your way out of lunch and held out your leftover burger for him. 

Juhoon blinked at it. “You never give this stuff away.” And you never approach me at lunch, either. 

You shrugged, still smiling. “I can’t eat this in class, y’know.”

He took it from you slowly. “You can eat it later then.”

“You can,” you corrected, waving him off. “Wanna go home together?”

That startled him more than the burger did. He looked at you for a second too long until he finally replied,

“Uh–yeah. Yeah, I’ll wait outside your classroom.”

“Good.” You said, and then you were already backing away toward your next class, as bright and effortless as a thing he might not have the right to keep looking at if he kept staring like that. But Juhoon watched you go anyway. The burger sat heavy and warm in his hand. He looked down at it, then back up at the hallway where you had disappeared, and felt something in him settle into place. God. How had he forgotten you smiled with your eyes first?

People didn’t owe explanations for joy. Whatever had placed that brightness inside you belonged to you alone. Juhoon found, to his own surprise, that he didn’t need to understand it to be grateful for it. You looked alive and well, and that was enough.

Even the walk home felt different. You talked more than usual and filled the spaces between your footsteps. Mrs. Choi’s impossible homework, Martin getting detention for reasons both of you weren’t entirely surprised about, chemistry. Juhoon laughed in all the right places. By the time your gate came into view, his heartbeat skyrocketed.

Now. He’d do it now. Just ask. 

There’s something I wanted to tell you– No. Too dramatic.

Can I tell you something? Worse.

He opened his mouth. Now. Say it.

“...Hey.”

You looked over immediately. “Yeah?”

He froze. Every word he’d spent the entire walk arranging abandoned him without so much as a goodbye. Instead, what came out was:

“...Can I come over tomorrow?”

You blinked. Confusion crossed your face so briefly it almost escaped him. Then you smiled.

“Since when do you ask?”

Juhoon rubbed the back of his neck. “Since now.”

You nudged his shoulder as you stepped backward through the gate. “Must be something important.” He laughed at that. If only you knew. 

Before disappearing into your house, you turn back to look at him. “I’ll see you then!”

Juhoon stood there for another few seconds after the door shut. Coward. 

But he still has tomorrow. Tomorrow will come, and surely, by then, he’d have enough courage to ask you one last time. 

The question might be begged if one were inclined toward such things: why does he love her? What’s the pull, the proof, the sign? How many reasons does he need?

The truth is that he doesn’t need anything. No one does in the grand and strange scheme of love. Matter of fact, the truth is simple. 

That the sun will continue its fusion, the Earth will turn under the laws that hold it in place. That atoms will keep exchanging energy and matter will forever redistribute itself into new and temporary forms. Life will persist in these structures, the division of cells, lungs drawing breaths, tides answering the moon, and the universe expanding according to rules indifferent to man. Just how things should be. 

That maybe 2 days from now, Juhoon will appear at your front door in a neat suit and take you out to homecoming. Then to the theatre if ever the two of you get bored, and later to his car, where he knows his neat shirt will have been disheveled after a few secret kisses. By the end of it, the two of you will be fast asleep in your little twin bed. And Juhoon, half-dreaming even then, will promise himself he’ll wake first just to grant himself an hour of watching you breathe. 

Just how things should be. 

──────── .✦

The bathroom had that same awful light bulb again. It's funny, I used to think I'd have already let dad replace it right about now. It made everything look sick and yellow. But this time, standing beneath that same ugly light I felt something I hadn't felt in so long. I was as good as free. 

Relief. Or something close enough to fool me. 

I’m not religious by any means. Even then, I spent the majority of my life believing some ‘maker’ had followed an unfortunate set of instructions. There was maybe one point where I’d even gone looking for God myself to get some answers. I saw a poster of it on the street: “In the face of it all, turn to God.” So I did. And when I prayed, I had no idea who to address. A god, yes. But which one? There were too many to choose from, too many heavens, though none that seemed willing to answer by the time I tried. 

I really did beg to be saved. At the end of it all, when prayer had turned thin and ragged in my mouth, I might have been shouting at some spoiled and rotting angel instead. I don’t know. I only know I tried. A star burns its fiercest just before it explodes. I have always wondered whether stars knew they were beautiful. Or if, like so many things, they had undervalued their burning for something bad. 

The floor is so, so cold and filthy against my skin, but just beyond the edge of it, something bright seemed to be waiting. I saw it. It may not have been heaven but it was miracle enough. 

I am somebody’s daughter. Before I am anything else, I am that. I feel like it too. I know I am something dearly made. That is the first truth, and it hurts to know I am still my parents’ child. They loved me first, and I loved them all my life, in all the ugly, ordinary, necessary pieces that make a person. So I will take this feeling with me, in this life and the next. 

Juhoon. 

Dearest, poorest Juhoon. My obstinate swallow, you patient animal. You carry me so often at some point I forgot how heavy I must have felt to the world. You take all my acid and bitterness. You make me sweet, and I can never still quite believe my luck. What would I have done without you? 

At eighteen, I can now say I had made a somewhat significant realization. That my life has been held together by small and untrustworthy things. I could be hopeful and terrified in the same breath, tired and restless in the same hour, certain of one thing and then ashamed of being certain at all. This heart would start learning new hungers as my mind set traps or itself, and I lived inside all these shifting contradictions. 

Threaded through all that decay, there was a boy I’ve known since I was six. Juhoon looked, from an outward perspective, like just a breathing, walking, human thing. But he was harder to dismiss than the force of this planet that held us so. And whatever I felt for him didn’t grind itself against my ribs the way the rest of my feelings did. It was lit from within, a subterranean current threading through the bedrock of a world I’ve wanted to abandon for years. And as erosion continues its course, that'll be my narrow vein of truth. 

At eighteen, I was both the fulfillment and failure of every prediction ever made about myself. And when so much in me was sick with fear, what I felt for him seemed to be the purest mineral in my body. 

I want to thank them all. Perhaps they were the brightest things about me.

The pain went thin, and I must be drowning in a dream. I saw stars. then a scatter of pale dots, then nothing at all. People say there is fear at the end. I might have believed them once, but I had already spent eighteen years afraid of my own mind, and eternity seemed too large a thing to waste on the same old terror. 

It’s so often that people who brush up against death come away with a sharpened appreciation for life. It makes you wiser and more grateful. I wish I could claim that kind of transformation happened to me, but all I had was a very simple and honest thought on my way there: thank the gods. 

A punishment to some, a gift to others, and to many a favor. Seneca, oh Seneca, who once framed it so, which did you think this was for me? 

Surely, surely, I’d have counted for something.

──────── .✦

When Juhoon knocks thrice on the front door, it is your mother who gets there first. 

“Juhoon!” She greets him as bright as a flare. “Did you walk all the way here?”

“I’m just a few blocks away so I’m fine Auntie.” He resembles ‘fine’, but he’s not fine at all. Juhoon is actually very nervous. 

“Well Y/n’s upstairs if you wanted to see her.”

She doesn’t seem to notice his jittering. But if she did, she simply chose not to interfere with them. At least that was what Juhoon assumed. 

“Oh, and Juhoon?”

He turns to her as he’s halfway up the staircase. “Yes Auntie?”

“Good luck.” 

He goes still for a second too long and lets out a small, awkward laugh. His gaze drops to the flowers in his hands that have slowly wilted while in his car. They were 50 bucks, pretty expensive for a bouquet. 50 bucks worth of attempted language. 50 bucks of I thought about this. He looks composed enough too, hair straightened and all, clothes ironed. Effort, his father had said, women think the hottest thing you can be is a man with effort. How do you think I bagged your mom, huh?

He looks back at your mother again and gives a small nod in thanks, acknowledging her little blessing. And weirdly enough, he feels a slight upward pressure in his chest. He believed it to be the improbable sensation that the world has just tilted very slightly in his favor. 

When he reaches the upstairs landing, he hears music drifting from your room, like it’s been playing itself into space for a while now. Juhoon gathers a small amount of courage before barging in. He expects you, but you aren’t there. Instead, a player sits on your desk turning over a tape. Beside it, a box of cassettes resting half-open. He recognizes it as the box of tapes he handed you a few days after he came back to town, and the way he pretended it didn’t mean any more than it was. 

“Y/n?”

Juhoon sets the flowers down on your bed carefully then turns on his heel to leave. His eyes drift to the balcony first. That’s usually where you are. Book in hand and legs hanging off the edge of the railing. But the balcony was empty too, so he stepped back inside. He continues moving past familiar corners until he reaches the bathroom door. 

“Y/n?”

He knocks twice, then thrice. No answer. Whether he was allowed to or not, he twists the knob and pushes. 

“Y/n?”

You’re on the bathroom floor, your eyes have gone half-shut and strange, there’s a pill bottle that’s scattered on the tiles, and Juhoon prays with so much primal desperation that what’s coming out of your mouth isn’t foam. 

He thinks it over and over while he kneels down and drags you into his arms as your head goes heavy in his hands. Your skin has never been so cold. When he presses his ear to your chest, there is nothing but the sound of his own blood rushing. Nothing else. What have you done? 

“Hey–Y/n? Get up, please. This isn’t funny–hey–” 

He gathers you closer and shakes you with all the force he can muster up, but your head does nothing but loll in his hands. Juhoon presses himself against every part of you he can find. Your wrist against his fingers. His forehead against yours. His cheek against your mouth. His ear against your chest. A small proof, a pulse, a tremor or an accident. And what a hateful thing the silence was.

“You promised me something–oh, god, wake up!”

Juhoon screams for your mother with a tone so torn-up it barely sounded human. His breath comes wrong, ragged and uneven. When he finally lets go of the back of your head, there is red on his hand, a thin stain of blood. His heart is unbearable in his chest, hammering and hammering and beating itself raw as if it might still find another body to save.

God, if you have any decency left, he thought, be useful. There are flowers for her in her room. She has somewhere to go tomorrow. Her parents are right here, just down the hall. She’s 18. Only 18. She’s yet to actually live. 

God I know you invented miracles. I’m not asking for anything original. Just make another.

The rest of it is a blur, and Juhoon will remember it that way. Your mother’s footsteps hurrying up the stairs, her voice calling your name before she reaches the bathroom, ordinary and unsuspecting. It makes his stomach turn. THen the door swings open, and the sound she makes doesn’t resemble a scream so much as something being torn clean through. He thinks that he’s sorry. Sorry that she has to find you like this. Sorry that your father has to come running after her. A while later, your father appears, and it’s the first time Juhoon’s ever heard him stutter. 

He felt like he was nine again, looking back to the day where he’d first saw you in a state back in that playground. You’d been shaking then, except now, as he’s being pried off of you once more, you were completely still. 

At eighteen years old, Juhoon experiences his second betrayal, and promised it would be the last.

——

Juhoon makes it home with a patch of blood on his shirt and more blood in the lines of his hands, both of which have already dried. He crosses the bathroom in one unthinking line and reaches for the toilet just in time. When the lid is down, he bends over the bowl and vomits. He vomits until the first chewed up mush is gone, then the next, and the next. His hands slip on the seat and leave red where they touch, and he’s still bent over as he shakes and starts crying in short, useless bursts that don’t relieve much. So he tears the towel off the rack and shoves it into his mouth, bites down, and screams into it. 

He stands over the sink now with the towel balled in one fist and his mouth tasting of bile and something faintly sour. The water runs too long before he remembers to turn it off. When he does, it’s silent. Juhoon looks at himself in the mirror and doesn’t recognize anything noble in what is left. His face is blotched, his eyes too wide, and there’s red under his nails. He scrubs at one thumb and watches the smear stretch, thin as paint. 

What did I miss?

It’s cruel enough to imagine that just one ceiling below you, your mother was probably deciding whether there was enough rice left for dinner, or if the laundry could wait another day. Your father might already have been pulling into the driveway just as Juhoon had finally collected enough courage to ask you. But if I had asked you just a day earlier. 

How much of a life can one conversation postpone? He sinks into the floor and rests his elbows on his knees. His hands hang between them, dirty in the cracks where the skin folds. Juhoon stares at them until they become only hands again, only tools. Ones that proved useless just about an hour ago. He knows, with a kind of sick clarity, that you didn’t do this to him. No amount of wishing could make this sort of thing come from choice. But what have you done, Y/n? 

He prayed his parents hadn’t woken up from all this. So that tomorrow, when the news came down to him in somebody else’s mouth, he could be surprised in a much cleaner shirt and pretend the ache had only just arrived, because maybe that would delay his response. He could pull the shell tight over the soft parts and keep the noise in until night came again. Tonight, though, he has no shell. 

The next day, Juhoon doesn’t go to homecoming. He’ll imagine the gymnasium filling, yes. His phone spends the entire afternoon vibrating itself tired against the bedside table. Every few minutes, another name, another photograph, another question of where he’s gone. He doesn’t think to look. He’s showered twice, scrubbed until his skin stung. Somehow, the smell remains. 

The last thing he does that day is curl himself into the blanket, turn toward the wall and wonder of the possibility of becoming a ghost before evening. One that could evaporate for a month or two until he’s found some balance again. 

In the end he thinks nothing of the party. He didn’t have a partner to go with, after all. 

——

Today, Juhoon wears white. Everyone does. Your parents had requested it, and said black would have felt too gloomy. Still, everyone weeps. The change in color doesn’t do much, nor does the beautiful weather. Your friends are sitting together at the front holding each other. The rest of your classmates who came out of obligation, affection, confusion, or some indistinguishable mixture of the three remain quietly at the back, each pretending to have discovered something intensely interesting about the ground beneath their shoes. 

Juhoon sits right in the middle of James and his parents. He dons a porcelain suit that fits him too well, and he’s sweating balls underneath it. He hasn’t said much in the days leading up to this, not even when James would pat a hand on his back every once in a while. He offers Juhoon some hope, ‘it’ll be okay’. He doesn’t believe it, but nods each time anyway

After the funeral, Juhoon finds your mother crying in the corner, her grief turned inward and wearing her down. She is upset at the whole obscenity of this, but more than that, she’s haunted by the missing clothes from that night. The same ones you wore when they found you, ones she could no longer find after the mortuary visit. Juhoon sits with her. He pats her back while she cries onto his shoulder, and keeps one sinful secret to himself. Those clothes are gone, and he took them.

She doesn’t have to know. And if she ever does, he thinks he might run with them. Or maybe he’d cut them up into such small pieces that he’d be able to swallow them down one by one.  

She also won’t have to know that after that, on the nights when he is alone and brittle with feeling, he takes out those clothes from a box, holds them up to his face like some pathetic, feral thing, and breathes until the smell gets into him. He presses them against his skin. He lets them cover him. It’s disgusting, he knows that. It makes him feel like something hunched and wrong and creeping in the dark. He feels fucking insane with it. Hollowed clean through. So full of grief it’s become his own rotting organ. Though the scent keeps him from splitting open, the memory inside it even more so. 

But while Juhoon will busy himself with drowning in what little of you all this fabric still holds, there is a corpse feeding the same hunger to the things that have found their way through the cracks. 

The earth will come for you with its impatient mouths and nameless appetites. The little bugs will slip through the seams, into your sleeves, beneath your nails, expecting meat and nothing more. But there will be something else. An aftertaste they won’t know how to water down. It’ll be the residue of all the ways you’ve turned yourself inside out, and underneath it, him. Juhoon. Like a splinter in the radicle. The things in the ground would get their teeth into that first. They’d take one mouthful of Juhoon and suffocate. 

You were always never entirely yourself down there. In all the years you lived, you made sure of that.

And perhaps that’s what will drive them back. What you had taken with you to that wooden box was never something that could be broken down and therefore would’ve been too hard to chew. The bugs might weep, the moss will want to grow over you in envy. But whether it’s love or the ghost-shape of Juhoon’s soul in your bones, whichever it is, this world won’t be able to devour it. 

──────── .✦

A YEAR AND A HALF LATER…

At long last, Juhoon could breathe.

This was due to several factors. First, the term paper from hell had finally been submitted. Second, his shitty roommate (Martin) went home, something Juhoon regarded with the same gratitude ancient civilizations reserved for their successful harvests. Basically, he was fucking ecstatic. 

He’s in college now. One of the big leagues, whoop whoop. But being a college student to him sounded more like an incurable condition he’s come to find out. Most days were spent studying, panicking about studying, or recovering from the consequences of studying. Occasionally, Juhoon entertained the idea that he should’ve gone to a community College instead. Perhaps he would’ve slept more. Maybe he’d even develop new hobbies. 

Then again, moments like this made the thought difficult to hold onto. The semester was over. His grades were good. Martin washed his dishes before he left. Most importantly, Juhoon was going home. 

By the time he stepped off the plane, the airport was particularly crowded. Full of reunions, delays, and people dragging their entire worldly possessions behind them on wheels. Juhoon did the same after claiming his suitcase from the baggage area, and got a call from his dad saying he was parked by the north entrance. 

“Grew any taller?” His father said it the moment Juhoon emerged from the gate. He reached over to ruffle Juhoon's hair, then relieved him of one of his bags to put it in the trunk.

“Maybe.” Juhoon shoved his own suitcase in before slamming the door shut. “Or perhaps you’re just shrinking. That’s pretty common at your age, huh? Spine compression.” 

His father barked out a laugh. “Two years in that school and you’re suddenly a doctor?”

“Nope. Just observant.”

“Observant with my tuition money.”

“Technically, your tuition money made me observant.”

“See?” His father pointed at him with a grin as they both got in the front. “Smart mouth. That’s what I’m paying for.”

On the drive home, Juhoon’s father updated him on the latest developments in town. His mom’s new flower shop was thriving. The old school had been renovated. One of his cousins got married. Most importantly, his father acquired a massage chair. Juhoon quietly fistbumped the air at that last news. Then, his father asks him why he hasn’t been visiting much in the last year. 

“I’m really busy dad. I’m a sophomore now so it’s like purgatory. Next year? Hell.” There were other reasons. Reasons with a name and a face and memories attached to them. He isn’t particularly interested in discussing or even thinking about it. 

“Well, at least you're home. Welcome back, kid.” As they pull up to the driveway, Juhoon thinks, welcome back, kid. 

The house has changed very little, which could either be comforting or depressing depending on how Juhoon chooses to look at it. His room, especially. All his things are the way he left them: His drum set he couldn’t bring, the posters he’d been too nervous to peel off the walls for fear of tearing, his fancy record player, the picture frames. It gave him a small, embarrassing rush of nostalgia. Enough, apparently, to make him text his friends and plan something for the afternoon. 

——

“Alright 8 ball Messiah, eat my shit.” The thirteen sat near the corner pocket with an almost insulting angle. Martin lined it up, took two quick taps fo the cue, and sent it into the pocket. One. The twelve followed. Ten the fifteen.

 Keonho let out a low whistle. “Show off.” 

The pool hall was lively at this hour, but not so crowded that they had to shout over one another. The five of them had claimed a table in the far corner, with pizza boxes perched on a chair and the lazy, companionable gravity of friends who had come together mostly to watch one another fail. Company, for another. 

“Watch this,” Martin said, and chalked his cue again, too aggressively, the blue dust gathering on his fingers. 

“No,” Keonho said. “I don’t think I will.” Martin ignored him and lined up for a shot at the nine. He took his time, exaggeratedly so, and the ball rolled. It kissed the pocket, then, with almost malicious tenderness, spun back and settled right on the lip. There was a beat of silence before Seonghyeon folded over in a fit of laughter. 

“Ju,” Keonho said, jabbing him lightly with the cue. “You playing or just brooding?” Juhoon looked up from the green felt and the small universe of striped and solid balls laid out under the low, amber light. He gave Keonho a lazy shake of the head.

“I’m getting drinks,” he said. “Be right back.” He set his cue aside and crossed the hall toward the bar, weaving through the warm noise of the place. The bar itself was sticky at the elbows and dim at the edges, and when he ordered first, he took a seat and waited there. He was just starting to wonder if he should’ve asked for water instead when a familiar voice slid in beside him.

“Been a while,” James said, leaning against the bar.. “I’m sure you've been pretending it hasn’t..”

“It’s only been, what, a year?”

“Pretty long, don’t you think?”

“Doesn’t feel like it when the semester’s eating your ass off.”

“Gross. But back to that, Martin says you always try to spend your free weeks there. And then you were abroad for Christmas, so that was another no-show.”

Juhoon shrugged. “Plane tickets in this economy, dude.”

“Don’t lie to me.” James replied. “Your dad’s basically made of money.”

To which Juhoon snorted, but James didn’t let it go. He asked again, quieter. “Have you… visited? At all?”

“No.”

“Not once after the funeral?”

Juhoon’s jaw tightened. “No.”

James watched him for a second. He expected that answer but still hated being right. “You should go. At least once, y’know? Just to… figure your shit out. It’ll help.” 

Juhoon kept his eyes on the drinks, on the slant of condensation gathering along the cups, and the useless shine of cold glass. “I know.”

It was just his luck when he got home that evening too, though his mother looked a bit too hesitant to say it.

“I visited Ms. L/n’s house this afternoon.” She said, “They have a bakery now, did you know?”

He leaned back against his chair, still half in the night and half out of it. “I didn’t. How’ve they been?” 

“Good.” She glanced at him, then away, as though trying not to make a performance of this. “I told them you’d just come back from college, and they said if you’re ever free tomorrow, they need help getting some stuff out of the house.” 

When Juhoon's head lifted, her expression was gentle. “Only if you want to, honey.”

Juhoon looked down at his plate, then out the window. The evening had gone blue at the bounds. For reasons he knew all too well, and perhaps out of some old, stubborn loyalty to the past, he agreed. Tomorrow, then. And tomorrow, he would go.

“Tell them I’ll be there.”

Juhoon couldn’t sleep that night. He turned over in bed until the sheets felt worked raw, got up again and again for no reason at all except that lying down had become unbearable. This restlessness could usually be attributed to the long, feverish aftermath of studying too hard. Tonight though, it was fear. Plain and unhelpful. 

——

Juhoon had thought of this house in fragments over the course of the two years since he left, and it was smaller than he remembered. The windows were still clean. The paint on the siding had been redone in a shade warmer than before. When he stepped past the gate, the front yard filled itself with more flowers. Their colors crowded the narrow path in soft, overfull bunches, brushing against one another as if they were sharing secrets of Juhoon's arrival. It was still the same house, and it wasn’t. 

He made it up the porch steps, swallowed around the dry little knot in his throat, and rubbed his hands against his jeans before ringing the doorbell. Then he waited, breathing in small careful increments, until at last the door opened and a familiar face greeted him.

“Juhoon!” Ms. L/n was as sweet as he remembered. She went ahead and gave him a little hug, and Juhoon couldn’t help but hug back. “Come in, come in. You can keep your shoes on dear.”

“My husband's at work right now, so thank you for stopping by. I know you just came back from university and you must be tired.”

“It’s no problem Auntie. Glad to be back.”

“I hope you’re not too homesick over there.” 

Leave it to the past to keep these seed-shaped instincts intact. The stairs were familiar beneath his feet, worn smooth by all the times he’d gone up them before and all the earlier selves he’s dragged along. He’d done this a hundred times over, maybe even more, and the way up became its own haunting of all the other times he’d come here always bearing a gift. Always something to give. 

The hallway they cross is prosaic enough to make his chest tighten, all up until Ms. L/n stops at a door he remembers too well. When she opens it with careful hands, she glances back at Juhoon, who has to take in the sight of it all at once and do his best not to choke on the feeling. 

“I couldn’t bring myself to change her room for a long time.” She said quietly. “I was obsessed with keeping everything exactly as it was. If I didn’t, it felt like I was giving up on her.”

She smiled faintly, though it did not reach far. “My husband and I did couples therapy. They said it was especially helpful for parents who had lost a child. At one point, the therapist told us we were keeping too many of her things that we might need to let some of it go. I remember thinking that sounded a little absurd.” 

Her voice lowered a little as she continued. “But we've come to terms with that. They were right. It wasn’t helping either of us to hold on to everything.”

When she glanced back at Juhoon, her intent almost seemed apologetic. Less to herself, more to him. “When I heard from your mother that you’d just come back from college, I thought… well, you were a dear friend of Y/n’s. The closest we know. I figured you’d be the first person we’d let look around. See if there’s anything you’d like to keep for yourself before we go through the rest. Who knows, you might find some closure in there.” 

Juhoon stood very still for a moment, then dipped his head, polite as ever, even though his chest had gone tight in that miserable, familiar way. “Thank you, Auntie.”

“I’ll be down in the kitchen whenever you’re done here.” she said, already turning toward the door. “Take your time.” 

When the door closes behind him at last, he is finally left to face it. Juhoon can’t decide what’s worse: that everything looks exactly as it did before, or the fact that he remembers it all so well he was able to make that observation in the first place.  Everything's stuck in place so much so that he could have drawn this scene in the dark.

Juhoon's first stop was your desk with a cardboard box he recognizes sitting atop. The tapes were still inside waiting uselessly, but he didn’t touch them. They were never his to reclaim, though only his to make, and he made them for you. Even if you were no longer here to hear them, they remain as the little relics they always were. And he wished helplessly that you had listened to every single one. That you had worried them to pieces in your mind when you had the chance, overthought them into strange shapes, loved them until they became excruciating to hear, the way he felt when he chose them one by one. To be wounded by them, if only a little. To have heard him. 

He walks over to your closet next, and when he opens it, is struck by the sense that he’s wandered into something private. A few of your clothes have been taken out already, he notices. Though one particular lavender dress remains untouched. It hangs by itself, suspended in the middle of all that newfound space. He stares at it as his memory leans in to whisper. Back then, you told him your homecoming dress would be this exact color. The dots connect themselves, and he realizes this must be the one you were referring to. 

Juhoon slips the dress carefully from its hanger. It’s lighter than he expected. The fabric gathers over his forearms, and his thumb wanders over the seams. Then he lifts it closer, and inhales. The scent has mostly gone. It smells of cotton and cedar from the closet. But beneath all that, perhaps imagined, there is something so unmistakably of you. Shampoo. Laundry detergent. Soap. Juhoon closes his eyes and lets himself imagine. 

You, standing in front of your bedroom mirror, turning once just to see how the skirt moved. Asking your mother if the earrings were too much. Wondering if lavender made you look washed out. Wondering, because you always wondered. He had been so certain the color would suit you. He imagined telling you so after pretending to think about it first. He rehearses these possibilities, then stops himself right on his tracks. 

He sets the dress down on the bed. As he does, something farther inside the closet catches his eye. A bouquet. The petals are now brittle and have long surrendered most of their color. They curl and warp until they resemble paper, but the wrapping remains intact. Juhoon doesn’t have to wonder where it came from because he remembers leaving them on your bed that night.

God, I need to fucking leave. Juhoon can only stand being in this room for so long before his memory starts to become persuasive, and he might eventually turn psycho. As of now, it takes the lavender dress and supplies the girl who ought to have been wearing it. It sets flowers into your hands and watches you fuss over a vase. It has you kneeling beside that box of tapes, smiling to yourself after discovering he hadn’t labeled any of them. The future is extravagant that way, and maybe that was the true scale of loss. It contains infinitely more than the past ever managed in all its time. Juhoon knows he’s lost a long time ago, but apparently that wasn’t the end of it. 

He spends the next hour performing an examination of a once ordinary life. There are polaroids that catch it in fractions of a millisecond, journals filled with futures written in present tense, novels with ticket stubs left between their pages because you had every intention of coming back to them. At one point, almost without thinking, he brings the sleeve of your sweater to his face. Smell is the sense most resistant to time, which is why albeit embarrassingly, he tries to search for something. Nothing. When he reaches the door, his knees give out before the rest of him does, and so Juhoon slides down until he’s sitting on the floor, back pressed against the wood. 

Missing you can’t be the entire answer. People miss each other every day and still go on with their lives. Long distance relationships, military deployments, immigration, death. Human beings possess an alarming talent for adapting, so why this? 

Juhoon doesn’t understand, and perhaps he might never understand until he seeks out the source. 

When he turns to leave the room, he takes nothing. It felt like the right thing to do. They mean one thing here, but they'd mean another in his house or his dorm. Context matters, and it's changing. A clay pot displayed beneath museum glass tells a different story than one found in the earth where it broke. And Juhoon can’t bear to excavate you, so he leaves empty-handed and accepts that having witnessed this place as it was is the only keepsake he’ll ever need.  

Downstairs, your mother looks up when he approaches, her expression still carrying that careful apology from earlier. “Anything worth taking?”

There wasn’t anything I could take, Juhoon thinks to answer. Instead, he gives her the warmest smile he can manage.

“More than I expected.” 

Her shoulders ease a fraction, though her eyes remain tired.

“I need to go and think some things through.” he says after a moment. 

“What things?”

“... I’m still figuring that out.” He lets out a small breath, and gives her a sure look. “Thank you again, Auntie. I’ll visit soon.” This time, the promise didn’t hurt to make.

Juhoon steps outside, and the sun’s holding steady just as much as the day keeps on, moving itself toward whatever infinity waits at its far edge. He goes through the familiar with a heaviness he can’t quite set down. A pathwalk he knows by heart. A few blocks. An opening in the land that seems, at first, too small to be called a clearing at all. He passes the graves one by one and bows as he goes, respect given in the simplest language he has. 

And then, at last, there’s a little break in the field tucked away at the corner of everything. He knows this place. He knows it even with the absurdity of having been here only once, even with the certainty he had carried away from it then that he wouldn’t return. But he’s here now proving himself wrong, and it felt good. 

To track back a little, once upon a time that was a year and a half ago to be specific, you were buried at the ragged edge of spring, when the last scraps of snow still clung desperately to the earth, dissolving by slow degrees into the dark soil of this very garden your mother loved enough to kneel in for hours without noticing the ache in her joints. By the next morning, the world had gone on being beautiful again. The birds returned, the sun lay warm across the house, and your room was exactly as you left it. Unbeknownst to anyone, it would stay that way for the rest of time up until now. 

Juhoon knows, though you only told him once, that you hated spring. Your puppy from your childhood died in spring as well, and you called it a badly timed season for grief. The air was warming just as the house was thawing itself out. In the garden, flowers kept opening their throats until the scent turned syrup-thick and mocking. Even now, the smell needles at him. You would’ve hated going among these buds, pretty or not. 

He wondered if you had gone the same way you lived. Sad, or maybe sadder. People always reach for reasons after that fact, don’t they? How dumb. 

Against all reason, he hopes he’s wrong about everything. He hopes the last moment didn’t resemble the thousands that came before it. He hopes whatever waited beyond that impossible decision was kinder than the life that delivered you there. That, if the act itself couldn’t be called kind, it was at least merciful. That something inside you wound so tightly for so long finally let loose. He hopes you looked behind yourself and found that your life had been full after all. Hope, despite his disbelief in its usefulness, and despite his attempts to rip it out of its roots. Hope, hope, hope. The damned word, the only one left to him now, and there is nothing left to do with it except keep it alive. 

When Juhoon glances to the side, he finds a tree your mother told him about earlier, one you had insisted she planted a while ago. Until now, it has kept watch over you. It gathered rain before it could reach your stone, lent its shade to the midday rays, and every so often surrendered a handful of leaves to the wind. Only when he looks closer does he notice the fruit. Small suns suspended among the branches. Oranges. 

How funny. You couldn’t let me have one visit without getting the last word. Is this how you haunt people? 

He’s strangely amused at this dramatic sense of symbolism. So this is where you’ve been hiding all your little metaphors. Juhoon lowers his head and laughs before he can help it, then shakes it off with a small helpless motion and looks back up at the tree. He steps closer, and the bark scrapes under his palm when he reaches for the fruit, twists it loose from the branch, and holds it in his hand for one brief second before the peel starts to come away beneath his thumbs. He does it the way he’s always done it over the years. For himself, for you, for no real difference at all. Rind curling down in strips, white thread clinging to his fingers, and the smell of citrus opening in the air like something alive. By the time he gets to the flesh, he bites hard, juice spilling at once over his mouth.

It’s kind of humiliating, being this primitive over a fruit. Juhoon understands what he’s doing, and it’s to possess in the oldest possible sense. Now he’s not especially hungry, but touch has never been enough for some kinds of wanting, and taste is the only thing he thinks of. So he bites down hard enough and feels he’s crossed a border. He hates the shame of the impulse. Hates the animal part of it. Hates that it resembles love, and most of all, how much relief it gives him. 

The fruits of your labor. He thinks you wouldn’t mind, not after all the things he’s only just learned to see.

Live your life. Live it angrily, live it not wanting to live, live out of spite. It doesn’t matter. Live just to live. Live because you can live. Live because you spend time, and live because you can never save it. Live because in the end and as the beginning, there is nothing you have done but that. A life, in the grand scheme of all lives, has never needed to be justified to be worth the trouble of having, just as the love that brought all lives into being was never justified by anything beyond the fact that it was love. 

Isn’t it astonishing, every now and then, to wake up inside yourself? Does it not make you happy to think that you are conclusively free? You may be bound by physics, morality, and the ordinary maintenance required by your body. But your actions are hinges, and your dreams can change the course of a day or a year, or the world as we know it. You are free. As free as not merely having the privilege of choosing, but holding the burden and ecstasy of understanding that your choices matter too. And no matter how often people like to say they are being carried forward by time, you are, albeit small, actually carrying every last bit of it with you. 

And what a peculiar leverage to entrust to creatures who forget their keys and cry over ballads, and do all these horrible things. 

What a strange privilege. What a terrible, beautiful freedom. 

You tell a person you love them. You board a train and leave. You say yes and, every so often, you say no. You loosen your grip. You permit yourself to change. You awaken, and you rest, both never for long because this has always been such restless work. It means you are also a force of your own. It’s frightening to discover just how wonderful that is. 

You have to understand that these are, in the end, just different names for that same magnificent act of being alive. 

So Juhoon thinks, calmly and surely, that he will carry on. In spite of everything, and in spite of himself, he knows he still has his time. So he will spend it all down to the edge, the seam, and the thin shining end of the brightest nickel in his pocket. And when his account’s finally come due and he’s bidded home at last, he’ll look over his shoulder and find the conclusion’s much simpler than he fears: Some achievements, a handful of proofs that he was once a man named Juhoon, you, and a small number of others. The rest can keep to themselves. 

It’s a small tally, and it is enough. 

A life is fortunate if it asks for nothing more. A room, a body, a few names, and a hand to hold. As Juhoon walks on home once more, leftover fruit peels in his pocket and a restful smile on his face, he thinks, finally, that maybe he could live with that. 

_________

i finally made a perm taglist guys are you proud of me (pls lmk if u wanna be added!): @reysblr @schatjze @pinkiwinkiminki @marsgirltyshi @hyuneskkami @nayamk6 @ava-io @itsredxctedstan @jjuhyeons

you were perched on the kitchen counter watching him make tea. not helping, just watching. 

“you know,” martin said while rummaging through your cabinets above the stove looking for something, “most people would at least pretend to assist.” you let your legs swing idly off the counter. “i am assisting.”

he glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow lifting. “how exactly?”

“moral support?”

“right.” he snorted softly. “vital.”

you smiled to yourself as he turned back to the cabinet, still mumbling something under his breath. martin always liked acting like he hated being observed, but you knew better by now. if he genuinely wanted space, he’d take it. instead, he stayed close enough for your knee to keep bumping against his side every time he crossed your section of the kitchen.

the water bubbled quietly as the kettle heated on the stove.

you watched him move around the room with sleepy familiarity, grabbing mugs without looking, nudging drawers shut with his hip, brushing blonde strands of hair out of his face with the back of his wrist. there was something strangely intimate about evenings like this. no work. no stress. no pressure to be interesting. 

just martin. 

“you’re staring,” he said suddenly. 

“is that a problem?”

“it depends. should i be worried?”

you laugh softly, leaning back on your palms. “i don't know.”

“there you go,” he muttered. “you’re doing that thing again.”

“what thing?”

“where you go all quiet and just…” he gestured vaguely towards you with the tea bag still in hand. “just look at me.”

“oh, im sorry for liking my boyfriend.”

“i didn't say stop.” the response came too quickly, almost like he didn’t mean to say it aloud. martin blinked once after realizing it, immediately turning back towards to counter to hide the faint pink creeping into face while you tried not to smile too hard.

the kettle started whistling before either of you could say anything else. martin pulled it off the stove with a quiet sigh, pouring hot water into the mugs carefully while steam curled around his hands.

you kept watching him.

you couldn't help it sometimes.

loving martin felt woven into tiny moments more than grand ones. 

the way he handed you things automatically without asking. the way he checks if your tea is too hot before giving it to you. the way he’d quietly lean against your shoulder whenever he got tired without realizing he was doing it.

he passed you one of the mugs.

“careful,” he said while leaning back against the counter beside you. “it’s hot.”

“thank you.”

for a while, neither of you talked much. you stayed sitting on the counter, drinking tea, while martin scrolled aimlessly on his phone, occasionally showing you things that made no sense what-so-ever. a stupid meme that you tried to make something out of while he giggled at his screen. a blurry picture of juhoon sent in a group chat. internet drama he randomly got himself invested in. 

the conversation wandered from the latest internet drama, to what you both wanted to eat for breakfast tomorrow, to martin recounting something that happed earlier during practice.

"—and then he looked me dead in the eyes," martin said, trying to keep a straight face, "and asked if penguins have knees."

you blinked.

"they don’t… do they?" martin stared at you.

"...you're joking." "no?" you frowned. "wait, do they?"

he set his mug down, already smiling. "you can't be serious. penguins have knees, love.” martin looked at you.

"martin, i have literally never thought about a penguin's knees before."

he looked at you for another second before the smile finally broke.

a laugh escaped him. real and unrestrained this time, head tipping back slightly as he covered his face with one hand. it wasn’t loud. just warm enough to make his eyes disappear into crescents, his shoulders shaking as he tried, yet failed, to pull himself back together. 

you found yourself smiling before you even realized you were.

you’ve heard martin laugh hundreds of times before. around friends, in voice messages, on call. but this laugh was different.

he was still chuckling to himself when he noticed you’d gone quiet.

“...what?”

before you could stop yourself, you said quietly, “i really like your laugh.”

martin froze, actually froze.

“what?”

your face warmed almost immediately, but it was too late now. 

“youre laugh,” you repeated, suddenly shy. “i like it.”

he stared at you for a second too long.

“that’s…huh.” he blinked, looking away with a small, almost disbelieving smile. “no one's ever said that to me before.”

“well..” you smiled. “i guess i’m the first then.”

martin looked at you for a long moment before letting out another quiet laugh, instantly looking away like he regretted it the second it happened. a faint blush crept up his cheeks and shook his head, smiling to himself.

“now you’re making me self-conscious,” he murmured. 

you reached over, brushing your thumb gently along his knuckles. “i just like hearing you laugh. that's all,” you laughed softly. 

his expression softened completely. 

“come here,” he said quietly. 

he stepped between your legs where you sat on the counter, one hand settling lightly at your waist as he leaned in. his forehead brushes yours for a second, still smiling and still shy, before he closed the small space between you.

the kiss was slow and unhurried, like he didn’t need to rush it anywhere.

his hand tightened just slightly at your wasit, steadying you as he leaned closer, and you felt him exhale through his nose like he was finally letting go of all the embarrassment at once. 

it was warm, familiar, like he’d done it a hundred times before but still meant it every time.

when he pulled back, he lingered close enough that your noses almost touched. his smile is still there, softer now.

for a second, neither of you moved.

his thumb gave a small absentminded press at your waist, like he wasn’t fully ready to step away yet. you could still feel the warmth of his breath and see that faint blush that hadn’t quite faded from his cheeks.

then he let out a quiet breathy laugh again, smaller this time, like it slipped out before he could stop.

you smiled immediately.

“what now?”

“you laughed again.”

“don’t start.” martin looked down, shaking his head to himself with another embarrassed breath of laughter.

and even now, after everything, hearing it still made your chest feel warm.

The words still rang in his ears as he walked away from your porch, the door slamming shut between him and your father's scowling face.

He couldn't blame the man, really. Martin knew what kind of person he was: a teenage delinquent that only gets himself into trouble, and would likely drag you straight into it sooner or later.

He himself still couldn't quite understand what about him had actually managed to win you over initially. You were everything he was not: a rule follower, an academic, someone with a much more promising future than the one Martin possessed. So how you found him to be anything other than a walking red flag was a mystery that kept him up at night.

He remembered the first time you'd spoken to him behind the gym in your second year of high school, his knuckles were bloody and his temper was still running hot. You'd appeared out of nowhere, holding out a crumpled napkin from the cafeteria.

"You're bleeding," you'd said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Not your problem," he'd muttered, trying to brush past you.

But you'd grabbed his wrist before he could fully turn the corner and pressed the napkin into his palm. "Just clean it up," you'd said. "You'll get blood on your shirt."

You then walked away, leaving him standing there with a bloody napkin and a strange feeling in his chest that he'd never quite managed to shake.

Martin had tried to push you away at first. He knew what people said about him: the troublemaker, the burnout, the kid who'd end up in juvie before graduation. He'd heard your father's warnings from across the street, loud enough to carry, "Stay away from that boy, Y/N. He's nothing but trouble."

Despite all of that you kept appearing.

You showed up at the diner where he worked, sitting in his section and ordering coffee you barely touched, just so you could talk to him during his break. You showed up at the auto shop, claiming your car needed an oil change, even though it was perfectly fine. You showed up at his apartment after he got suspended the second time, bringing takeout and a stubborn expression that said you wouldn’t leave under any circumstance.

"Why?" He’d finally asked you, exhausted and confused. "Why do you keep doing this? You know what I am. You've heard what everyone says."

You'd looked at him then, really looked, and said, "I see something they don't."

"What?"

"Someone who's trying."

And that was it. That was the moment Martin knew he was a goner.

It hadn't taken long for your father to work out that you had ignored all his prior warnings, though truly he should have realised it sooner.

You had been staying out much later than before, coming home with an almost lovesick grin. Your father knew you were in love—that wasn't hard to tell. Just in his own mind, the thought of you falling in love with the one boy he had forbidden you from even talking to was a concept so foreign, so utterly incomprehensible, that he simply refused to entertain it.

But the signs were all there. You'd rush through dinner just to get to your room and stare at your phone, waiting for a message whilst also deflecting his questions about your day with vague answers and quick subject changes.

It was only when your father found the crumpled napkin in your laundry with Martin's name scrawled on it in your handwriting, surrounded by tiny hearts, that the truth finally crashed down on him.

He'd confronted you that night, voice shaking with barely contained fury.

"Are you seeing that Martin boy?"

You'd looked at him, and for a moment, he only saw defiance in your gaze. "Yes," you'd said quietly. "I am."

The argument that followed was the worst you'd ever had. Your father had shouted until his voice went hoarse, listing every reason why Martin was wrong for you: his record, his reputation, his lack of prospects. You'd shouted back, defending him with a passion that only made your father angrier.

"He's not who you think he is, Dad. He's trying so hard. He's working two jobs, he's studying for school as best he can, he's—"

"He's a delinquent, Y/N. He's always been a delinquent, and he always will be. I won't let you throw your life away for someone like him."

"He's not a delinquent. He's just... he's just someone who never had anyone believe in him. Until me."

Your father had gone silent at that. Not because he agreed, but because he realised something crucial: you were in too deep. No amount of arguing would change your mind.

So he'd done the only thing he could think of. He'd banned you from seeing Martin, forbade you from leaving the house except for school and work, and took your phone, your laptop, everything that connected you to the outside world.

For a few weeks, it seemed to work. You and Martin had never shared a class at school, so he didn’t need to worry about that. Additionally, with so much surveillance surrounding you, you had practically given up even thinking of trying to find a way around it.

That was until one night a few weeks later when you were laying under the covers of your bed, staring at the ceiling with not a thought on your mind when the sound of something knocking on your window echoed through the room.

You sat up, heart pounding, and stared at the window. The blinds were drawn, but through the slats, you could make out a familiar silhouette you knew all too well crouched on the fire escape.

You scrambled out of bed, nearly tripping over the blanket tangled around your ankles, and yanked the blinds open. There he was—grinning like an idiot, dirt smudged on his cheek, a small bag of takeout dangling from one hand. He was wearing that worn leather jacket you loved with the torn sleeve he refused to sew back together.

"Hey, princess," he whispered through the glass. "You miss me?"

You fumbled with the lock, pushing the window open as quietly as you could. Cold night air rushed in, carrying the scent of rain and city streets.

"What are you doing here?" You hissed. "My dad could hear you!"

"Your dad's probably knocked out asleep right now." He climbed through the window with practiced ease, landing silently on your bedroom floor. 

You threw your arms around him, burying your face in his jacket. "I thought I'd never see you again," you whispered, your voice cracking.

"Hey." He pulled back, cupping your face in his hands. "I told you. Nothing's keeping me away from you. Not your dad, not the cops, not anyone."

"Martin—"

"Three weeks, Y/N. I spent three weeks without you and I was going insane." He pressed his forehead against yours, his voice dropping to something raw and vulnerable. "I thought about calling your house, but I knew your dad would just make it worse. I had to wait until I could figure out a way to see you."

"You figured out the fire escape."

"I figured out the fire escape." He grinned, but there was something softer underneath it. "Took me two days to find the right route. Nearly fell off the third-floor landing, but hey—" He shrugged. "Worth it."

You laughed, a wet, shaky sound. "You're insane."

"Only for you." He pressed a kiss to your forehead, then pulled back to hold up the takeout bag. "I brought food. Your favourite dumpling place with the spicy sauce you like. Figured you probably haven't been eating much."

You hadn't. The past three weeks had been a blur of forced dinners and silent meals, your father's disapproving gaze boring into you from across the table. You'd lost weight, and Martin had noticed it the moment he climbed through your window. 

"You're too good to me," you said.

"Not possible." He set the bag on your desk and pulled you over to sit on the bed. "Now eat. I'll keep watch."

You sat together in the darkness, sharing dumplings and whispered conversations. 

"One day," he said, "I'm going to have a real place with a good job and be something your dad can't complain about."

"I don't care about any of that."

"I know." He smiled, but there was something serious in his eyes. "That's why I want to give it to you anyway. You deserve the world, Y/N. I'm going to figure out how to give it to you."

"I just want you," you said softly.

"Good." He leaned in, his lips brushing yours. "Because you've got me. For as long as you want me."

It was reckless and dangerous and every time you heard a floorboard creak, your heart stopped. But as you sat there in the dark, wrapped in Martin's arms, you couldn't bring yourself to care.

Your father never caught the two of you, and gradually he granted you back your privileges, though that also stemmed from your absolute refusal to even look at him until he did so.

A part of you secretly knew that your father had probably worked out you were still seeing Martin. He wasn't stupid—he'd raised you, after all. He knew the stubborn set of your jaw, the defiant glint in your eyes when you were hiding something. He'd seen the way you'd started leaving your window unlocked again, the way you'd come downstairs with pillow creases on your cheek and a sleepy smile that had nothing to do with a good night's rest.

But he never said anything and you remained in this strange stalemate situation for the following couple of years.

It was an unspoken agreement, really. Your father pretended not to notice the faint smell of motor oil that sometimes clung to your clothes in the morning. He pretended not to hear the soft thud of footsteps on the fire escape at midnight. He pretended not to see the way your eyes lit up whenever your phone buzzed. And you, in turn, pretended not to notice the way your father started leaving the back door unlocked, or the way he'd conveniently be in the living room with the TV turned up too loud whenever Martin was climbing the fire escape.

It was a strange kind of peace. Fragile, particularly tenuous. But it was peace nonetheless.

Then, finally, graduation day arrived.

You walked across the stage in your cap and gown, your father watching from the front row with a carefully neutral expression. Martin was a few students behind you, wearing his best clothes underneath the gown that you had bought for his birthday, his grin so wide it looked like it might split his face.

After the ceremony, you found him in the parking lot, still in your gown, your diploma clutched in your hands.

"We did it," you said, laughing. "We actually did it."

"We did." He pulled you into his arms, spinning you around. "High school graduates. Can you believe it?"

"I can't believe you didn't drop out."

"Me neither." He set you down, his hands still on your waist. "But I had a good reason to stay."

"And what was that?"

He leaned in, his lips brushing your ear. "You."

You and Martin had separated before your father emerged between the cars with the promise of seeing each other tomorrow, however you failed to fully notice the strange glint in Martin’s eyes as he parted with you

The next morning, Martin showed up at your door, his hands shaking as he knocked.

You answered, still in your pajamas, your hair a mess. "Martin? What are you—"

"I'm here to ask your father for permission to marry you."

You stared at him for a few seconds. "Now? At eight in the morning?"

"Time's ticking." He tried to smile, but it came out nervous. "I've waited long enough. Three years. I'm not waiting anymore."

Your father appeared behind you, coffee mug in hand. He looked at Martin, then at the suit, then at the determined set of Martin's jaw.

"Y/N, go to your room," he said, his voice flat as you gave Martin a wary look before retreating, "you again."

"Yes, sir." Martin straightened his spine, watching you disappear into the background. "I'm here to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage."

Your father set down his coffee mug, and for a long moment he just looked at Martin. "You must be out of your damn mind," he said slowly, "if you think I'd let you marry my daughter."

"Sir, I know I'm not what you wanted for her. I know I've made mistakes. I know I don't have much—"

"You've barely got a diploma, an unsecure job at an auto shop, and a reputation that makes me want to lock my daughter in her room until she's thirty-five."

"I know, sir. But I love her. I've loved her since I was fifteen, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life taking care of her."

"You think that's enough?" Your father's voice was rising. "You think love is enough? You have no future, no prospects, no—"

"I'm going to marry her anyway."

Your father stopped mid-sentence. "What?"

"I said I'm going to marry her anyway." Martin lifted his chin, his voice steady. "With or without your blessing. With or without your approval. I love her, and she loves me, and we're getting married. I'm just sorry you won't be there to see it."

"Get out." Your father's voice was ice. "Get out of my house before I call the cops."

Martin nodded slowly. He'd expected this. He'd prepared for this. It still stung. He turned and walked down the steps, the door slamming behind him.

Five hours later, Martin stood in front of you at the courthouse, him having snuck you out of your room through the very window he had spent years crawling through.

You'd changed into a simple white dress that you had worn a few times in the summer. Martin was in his navy suit from the graduation, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

"Dearly beloved," the officiant droned, "we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony..."

Martin barely heard the words. He was too busy memorising the way you were looking at him like he was the only person in the world.

"Martin," you whispered, "you're crying."

"Am not."

"You totally are."

"It's allergies."

"You're such a liar."

He laughed, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Fine, maybe I'm a little emotional. You're marrying me, Y/N. Me. The guy who couldn't even pass English without your help."

"I think you're pretty great," you said softly. "I always have."

The officiant cleared his throat. "The rings?"

Martin fumbled in his pocket, pulling out the simple silver bands he'd saved up for. He slid one onto your finger—it was a little too big, but you didn't seem to care, you just stared at it like it was the most expensive piece of jewelry in the world.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

Martin’s lips were on yours before you could fully process the words.

He kissed you like he was drowning and you were air. He was savouring the reality of this, you in his arms finally calling yourself his. Gradually it deepened, the years of longing and wanting pouring into every second your mouth remained on his.

When he pulled back, you were both breathless and grinning like idiots.

"I love you," he whispered, his voice rough and cracking. "I know I don't say it enough, but I do. I love you more than anything. More than I ever thought I could love anyone."

You cupped his face in your hands, your thumbs tracing the sharp lines of his jaw. "I love you too. Even though you're insane."

A wet laugh escaped him, his shoulders shaking. "Especially because I'm insane?"

"Especially then." You smiled, soft and radiant. 

He kissed you again, softer this time, because he felt he had all the time in the world, and, really, he did. Nothing else mattered to him except the way your lips moved against his, the way your fingers tangled in his hair, the way your heartbeat matched his own.

When he finally pulled back, he was grinning like an idiot, tears still tracking down his cheeks. "Mrs. Edwards," he said, testing the words. "That has a nice ring to it."

You laughed, bright and beautiful. "Mr. L/N. That would have an even nicer ring to it."

"Hey." He poked your side. "I proposed first, that means you take my name."

"Fine." You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling. "But only because I love you."

"That's the only reason I need."

The courthouse was small and dingy, the officiant was already shuffling papers, clearly eager to leave, the neon sign outside flickered and buzzed. It wasn't the wedding either of you had dreamed of. There were no flowers, no guests, no white dress with a long train.

But it was yours.

And as Martin pulled you into his arms, his lips pressed against your temple, he knew he'd never regret a single moment of it. "I'm going to give you everything," he whispered against your skin. "I don't have much now, but I will. A home, a future, a life you can be proud of. I promise."

"I already have everything I need," you whispered back. "I have you."

He pulled back, just enough to look at you. His eyes were red-rimmed, his smile shaky, his heart laid bare on his sleeve. "You really mean that?"

"Every word."

He kissed you one last time: deep, slow, full of all the promises he'd spend the rest of his life keeping.

Your father was going to be absolutely livid when he found out, though Martin didn't care.

You hear him before you see him. The soft click of the door, the quiet shuffle of shoes, the familiar sigh he always lets out because he's relieved he's home.

You're cooking when his arms slide around your waist from behind.

"Hi love," he murmurs, voice warm and tired.

You lean back into him "Hi."

He rests his chin on your shoulder, gently swaying you side to side. He always gets clingy after long days.

He starts to kiss your cheek. then your jaw. then the side of your neck.

then he stops.

his hands tighten slightly around your waist.

"..what's that?" he asks quietly.

you keep chopping the vegtables. "what's what?"

he doesn't answer right away. you feel him shift, trying to get a better look at the faint mark you blended onto your skin. his breath catches a little.

"did you.. hurt yourself?" he asks, voice loe. "or.. is that from someone?"

he says it gently, like he's afraid of what you might say.

you turn to face him. his expression is calm, but his eyes are searching yours, steady and serious.

'it's nothing," you say.

he reaches up and lightly grabs your jaw, brushing his thumb over the mark. his touch is light, almost hesitant.

"it doesn't look like nothing," he says softly.

his thumb stays on the mark, barely touching it, like as if he's afraid that if he touches it one of his worst fears would come true.

"did anyone come over when i was gone?"

you hum, keeping your face neutral. "no?"

he goes still, "are you sure, you know if someone touched you like that.. i'd wanna know."

you swallow a laugh "why?"

he hesitates, only for a second, "because i care, and i would want to know if my partner was cheating on me."

"james im not," you say, turning back to the counter.

he watches you for a moment. then steps closer, his hand resting lightly on your hip.

"okay," he says quietly. "i trust you"

you hear the tiniest bit of uncertainty in his voice.

he kisses your cheek again, but its a bit different, as if he's reassuring himself you're still his.

then he burshes your hair aside to look at the mark again.

his thumb presses a little more firmly.

it smudges.

he freezes.

"..wait."

uh oh.

you bite your lip, trying not to laugh.

he wipes his finger across the mark. it fades.

he stares at his thumb, then at your neck, then at you.

"you've gotta be kidding me," he whispers

you grin. "surprise!"

James closes his eyes, smiling as he lets out the a soft exhausted laugh.

"i was actually worried," he mutters, leaning his forehead against your shoulder. "you're evil."

you turn to face him. "you fell for it."

he lifts his head, cheeks warm and eyes soft.

"well yeah, it looked real!"

you smile. "guess that means i should be a makeup artist huh?"

he hums, brushing your hair back again, thumb tracing the now faded spot.

"you know.. if you ever want something like that," he says, voice low but gentle, "you don't need makeup."

you raise a brow. "oh?"

he trails slow kisses down you neck. "yeah, i can give you one." he murmurs against your skin, "or more than one."

"where's james?" you ask keonho, eyes still wandering the whole room—not finding his existence.

"he went to buy a cake for hyeon. you can wait here, i'm gonna grab some candles." keonho leads you to sit on a couch in the living room and rushes back to the kitchen.

the party is simple. they only invite someone who's really close to seonghyeon since the boy's very shy around others and they don't want to make him uncomfortable on his birthday. a few balloons sit randomly on each corner of the room. there's a banner on the wall that says "happy birthday, seonghyeon" with his photo on it.

not so long after that, you hear the clicking sound on the front door and see james holding paper bags in his left hand and a box of cake in the right. "cake's coming!" james yells. you approach him immediately and try to help him.

"babe!" james' eyes lighten and he smiles so brightly at your presence. "i thought you wouldn't come! i was so sad today." he kisses the corner of your lips before the two of you bring all the stuff to the living room.

"i decided to come since keonho wouldn't stop texting me while i am at work." james stops for a while, hoping he had misheard what you said. "my phone keeps buzzing all day, you know."

"why would keonho text you?" james squints his eyes in suspicion.

"he texted about preparing hyeon's birthday. he thinks i'm going to like this party." you answer absentmindedly while putting the cake on the table.

james shrugs off his shoulders, thinking it was no big deal. he doesn't need to be jealous. it's just keonho, right?

"here are the candles." keonho comes with a few candles in his hand. "hyung! you're home." he grins. james answers him with a quick smile before putting pink whipped cream on seonghyeon's cake.

"i wanna do it too!" you exclaim and ask james for the whipped cream. he lends you the whipped cream and settles behind you on the couch, absentmindedly pulling you back until you're comfortably sitting between his legs.

keonho sits right next to james' left foot—making him unintentionally sits right next to you. "do you think seonghyeon would like this party?" he asks you.

"definitely! why wouldn't he?" you shoot him a little smile and continue to put whipped cream on seonghyeon's cake.

"i know, right?" keonho nods. the three of you remain silent for a while before keonho interrupts again. "do you think hyeon would prefer green candles or blue ones?"

"i think green would suit his vibes more."

"that's exactly what i thought! that's why i brought mostly the green ones." he smiles brightly at you, and you answer with a nod.

5 minutes later, keonho asks you again. "would i look good in blonde hair? just like martin hyung."

"ask martin." james mumbles.

"you would! oh my god, it would be exciting don't you think, james?" you look at james—signaling him to agree with you.

"i don't know no james." james stares at you. who's james? where are baby, babe, honey and all the sweet nicknames going?

"okay, babe. it would be exciting, right?" you emphasize the word babe and squeeze james' thigh—forcing him to nod at your question.

"oh, i'm not hearing this." keonho closes his ears with both hands, causing you to laugh at his reaction.

15 minutes later, seonghyeon, martin, and juhoon come through the front door from the studio. everything went as planned and seonghyeon was so happy.

"you're coming! thank you so much!" seonghyeon gives you a brief hug and accepts your gift. "a ps5 for me? thank you! hyung is so lucky to have you." seonghyeon giggles and james just rolls his eyes.

the night is getting late. james drinks a cup of soda on the couch. martin plays an acoustic guitar and rumbles random melodies. seonghyeon and keonho play with the ps5 you just gave him. and you play chess with juhoon. "hey, that's cheating!" your voice heard— making james looks directly at your way.

"no, it's not." juhoon answered calmly. "you're not gonna win if you keep playing that old tactic, you know?"

"you know what? i always won back then using this 'old tactic'."

"that's why i called it old."

the two of you laugh and james' definitely not having it. he clears his throat and proceeds to stand. "i'm gonna get some rest. once again, happy birthday hyeon." he taps seonghyeon's shoulder before walking to his bedroom.

your eyes dart towards him until his figure disappears behind the door. you excuse yourself to the boys and quickly follow james. you knock his door, "can i come in?"

after he said yes, you come in and see he is curling in his white blanket—his back faces you. you close the door and hug him from the back. "hi handsome." you smile and kiss his exposed cheek. "you look so handsome today." your compliment makes his cheek blushed but he tries so hard not to smile.

he clears his throat. "thanks. you don't look bad either."

you mumble and play with his dark brown hair. "what happened, baby?"

"nothing."

"it seems like a thing." you answer him back calmly— still playing with his strands. he remains silent.

"are you jealous?" you bite your lips, trying not to laugh at this very serious situation.

james' eyes widened and he immediately turns around to face you. "what? me? jealous? no. absolutely not. why would i?"

you smile at his reaction and kiss his cheek. "you're looking extremely handsome today. what's with the glasses? i love it." you ignore his answer and touch his glasses.

"it's called fashion."

"i know, and you're looking too good with it." you pout.

"...okay, yeah. i'm jealous. but just a little. are you satisfied?"

to james, seeing you acting all pouty and clingy around him makes his stomach full of butterflies, just like how he met you for the first time. he loves you THAT much.

"i knew it!" you celebrate after his confession. "you could've just told me!" you cling your arms around his waist and rest your chin on his chest—looking up directly to meet his eyes.

"i don't wanna ruin hyeon's birthday." he looks to the other side—or basically anywhere as long as he doesn't have to meet your puppy eyes, because he would genuinely become a jelly right now.

"aww," you pinch his cheek. "you know you're the only person i love for these past 2 years. out of everyone in that room, i've been looking for you since i stepped in this dorm today."

"you're literally the sexiest man alive and i'm not planning to let you go that easily." you smirk at him.

"stop, it's getting cringe."

"but you love it when i compliment you, though."

"you're right," he smiles and wraps your body in his embrace. "i love whatever you do."

you stay at your position for a while. "if you have to choose, would you pick me or the boys?" he suddenly asks.

"you." you look up at him, finding he's already staring at you. "really?" his eyes brighten.

"no."

"BABE." james looks at you in disbelief.

"of course i choose you, you silly." you kiss his lips briefly. before he could kiss you back, you were already breaking the kiss. so he decided to chase after your lips, making it the sweetest kiss you had after a long day.

"hyung, did you see my—" juhoon's voice was heard with the sound of the door opening. "i didn't see anything!" juhoon left right after he saw the two of you.

james lets out a loud sigh and you laugh. "we need to lock the door next time."

you knew this would happen the moment he casually mentioned, three days ago, that his jaw had been "a little sore."

a little sore turned into him chewing only on one side. then it turned into him holding an ice pack to his face and pretending he was fine. and now it had turned into you standing in the doorway of his room, arms crossed, staring at your six foot three boyfriend who was very clearly trying to negotiate with fate.

"martin, put your shoes on," you say, your voice firm but calm, standing there with your bag already slung over your shoulder. you tilt your head at him, eyebrows raised, silently daring him to argue.

he looks up at you from his bed, one hand pressed dramatically to his cheek. "i think it's getting better actually," he mutters, his words slightly slurred from the swelling, though he tries to hide it by sitting up straighter.

you stare at him for full five seconds. "do you know what you look like right now? you look like you stored a golf ball in there for later. you cried at three in the morning," you remind him, your tone flat, but your eyes soften at the memory of him pacing around the room and whispering that his face felt possessed.

he scowls, defensive and embarrassed. "no i didn't," he insists, rubbing his jaw again, his shoulders tense.

"you absolutely did," you reply, stepping forward and tossing his sneakers onto his lap. "you said you were dying."

he groans at that, dragging a hand down his face. "okay, but that was different. it was three in the morning. everything feels worse at three in the morning," he argues, but starts sliding his feet into his shoes, defeated.

you grab his arm and physically pull him to his feet. he's tall and broad and stubborn, and he leans back dramatically, trying to make himself heavier on purpose.

"this is ridiculous," you huff, digging your heels into the floor as you tug him toward the door. dragging him feels less romantic boyfriend moment and more farm work. "you're built to survive an apocalypse but you're scared of a dentist?"

he shuffles behind you, half resisting, half following. "they use drills," he mumbles darkly, eyes narrowing as if you invented dental equipment. "drills should not be anywhere near my face."

"they're not building furniture in your mouth," you shoot back, tightening your grip on his wrist. "they're removing a tooth."

he exhales sharply, annoyed but unable to stop walking because you're relentless. "that's worse," he says quietly, his voice lowering with genuine dread now that you're actually outside.

by the time you get to the clinic, he's fallen silent.

the automatic doors slide open and the scent of antiseptic greets you. the waiting area is bright and painfully clean, soft instrumental music playing overhead. you check him in while he stands beside you like you're his appointed guardian. he towers over you, yet somehow manages to look ten years old when faced with medical equipment.

you can feel his glare burning into the side of your head. the receptionist laughs softly, clearly used to this exact scenario. martin shifts his weight from foot to foot, jaw clenched.

once you sit down, that's when the real fidgeting starts.

he bounces his knee. he rubs his palms together. he presses his tongue carefully against the aching side of his mouth and winces.

"stop moving," you murmur, glancing at him from your seat beside him. your hand gently presses down on his knee to steady it, your thumb brushing back and forth in slow strokes.

he leans closer to you, lowering his voice. "what if they mess up?" he whispers, his usual confident tone replaced with something quieter, almost boyish.

you turn your body toward him fully, giving him your complete attention. "they do this every day," you say softly, searching his face. "you think you're their first dramatic patient?"

he narrows his eyes at that. "i'm not dramatic," he mutters, crossing his arms, though his fingers continue tapping anxiously against his sleeve.

you raise a brow. "you made me google jaw cancer last night."

he freezes, blinking. "okay, that was a low point," he admits under his breath, glancing away in embarrassment.

you reach up and smooth down his hoodie, giving him a reassuring pat on the chest. "you're going to sit in the chair. they're going to numb you. you won't feel anything except pressure. then you get ice cream."

his eyes flicker at that. "what kind of ice cream?" he asks cautiously, suspicion and hope mixing together.

you fight a smile. "whatever you want."

he studies you for a second, jaw tight. "double scoop," he says finally, trying to regain control of something in this situation.

"triple if you don't run out of the building," you counter, squeezing his hand.

he laces his fingers with yours immediately, gripping tighter than usual. his palm is slightly sweaty. "if i die in there—" he begins, his voice low and serious, though you can see the exaggeration forming.

you cut him off instantly. "you're not dying," you say firmly, giving his hand a sharp squeeze. "you're getting a tooth removed. people do this at sixteen."

he exhales through his nose, leaning his head back against the wall. "i hate that you're calm," he mutters, staring up at the ceiling tiles.

you shift closer until your shoulder presses against his side. "i'll be right here the whole time," you say quietly, your voice softer now, meant only for him. "and when you're done, i'll drive you home and listen to you complain for the rest of the day."

he turns his head toward you slowly. there is something vulnerable in his expression now, the bravado gone. "you're not going to laugh at me?"

you hesitate for half a second. "only a little," you admit, your lips curving despite yourself.

he huffs, offended, but his thumb brushes over your knuckles in a grateful motion. "you're evil."

the dental assistant steps out and calls his name.

you feel his entire body tense beside you.

he looks at you with wide eyes, swallowing carefully. "tell them to be gentle," he pleads, nerves finally winning over pride.

you stand up with him, smoothing a hand down his arm. "go, brave soldier," you whisper, your tone teasing.

he squares his shoulders, inhaling once as if preparing for battle. then he leans down slightly so only you can hear him.

"if i come out different," he murmurs, his eyes soft despite the fear, "you still have to be with me."

"i'm literally the one who dragged you here," you reply, pushing him lightly toward the hallway. "i'm not abandoning you now."

he nods once, then reluctantly follows the assistant down the corridor, glancing back at you twice before disappearing behind the door.

you sink back into the lobby chair, already preparing to film whatever nonsense he says when he comes back out, cheeks numb.

the procedure took less than an hour. you sit there scrolling through your phone but not really reading anything, replaying the way he looked at you before disappearing down the hallway.

when the door finally opens, your head snaps up.

and there he is.

martin emerges with gauze tucked into his cheek, eyes glassy, posture slightly off balance. his hair is flattened on one side from the chair, and he looks tall and disoriented and completely gone.

the dental assistant walks him over gently. "he did great," she says with a polite smile, guiding him toward you.

martin blinks slowly at you, processing. "oh," he says, voice thick and heavy from the anesthesia. "it's you."

you stand immediately, biting the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing. "yeah. it's me," you reply softly, reaching for his arm before he tips sideways.

he stares at your face as if he has just discovered something profound. "you're so small," he murmurs in awe, squinting slightly.

you scoff. "you're just built abnormally large."

he considers that, swaying slightly. "i'm a skyscraper," he agrees solemnly, nodding once as if this is a medical fact.

you thank the assistant, listen to the post-op instructions carefully, and keep one steady hand on his back the entire time. he leans into you without even realizing it.

when you finally get him outside, the sunlight makes him squint dramatically.

"why is it so bright?" he mumbles, raising a lazy hand in front of his eyes.

"because it's daytime," you say patiently, guiding him toward the car.

he gasps suddenly, stopping mid-step. "did they steal it?"

you freeze. "steal what? did you forget something inside?"

he lowers his voice, conspiratorial. "my wisdom."

you stare at him. "yes," you deadpan. "they surgically removed your intelligence."

he frowns at that, deeply offended. "but i had a lot of that."

"i'm not so sure." you manage to get him into the passenger seat, buckling him in because his hands keep missing the seatbelt latch. he watches you closely the entire time, eyes following every movement.

when you close the door and walk around to the driver's side, you can see him through the windshield talking to himself.

you slide into your seat. "what are you doing?"

he turns his head slowly, blinking at you. "i got bored. sorry."

you have barely pulled out of the dental clinic parking lot when the shift happens. one second he's slumped in the passenger seat, blinking slowly at the world. the next, he inhales sharply and sits up straighter.

"okay," he says, nodding to himself, voice still thick from anesthesia but suddenly full of purpose. his fingers tap against his thigh in an uneven rhythm. "i feel the beat."

you glance at him, already wary. "what beat?"

he turns toward you with wide, determined eyes. "the beat beat. can you say martin play the beat?"

you sigh softly, adjusting your grip on the steering wheel. "martin play the beat."

he lifts one hand, palm facing down, bouncing it midair as if conducting invisible music.

"yo," he starts, clearing his throat dramatically. his gauze shifts a little but stays in place. "wisdom tooth gone, but i'm still elite, six foot three in the passenger seat."

you press your lips together, staring straight ahead. "careful with the gauze."

he ignores you completely. "jaw real numb but my heart real loud, my girl right here make the dentist proud."

"you're very high right now."

he considers that, eyebrows knitting together. "no," he says slowly, shaking his head. "i'm six three."

"you are."

"six sev—"

"stop. don't even think about it."

"sorry."

after a few seconds, he perks up again. "okay, last one," he announces, lifting a finger in the air.

"make it quick," a laugh bubbles out of you, the stress of the morning dissolving.

he watches you laugh, expression softening. "you're really pretty when you laugh," he says suddenly, voice slower now, more sincere than the rap.

your laughter fades into a soft exhale. "that's the drugs talking."

he shakes his head once, as much as he can with the gauze stuffed in his mouth. "no. i've been knowing that."

then, without warning, he resumes. "gauze in my mouth but i still got bars, she driving steady, we about to get stars."

you glance at him briefly. "what stars?"

he leans closer, lowering his voice as if revealing a secret. "ice cream stars."

you reach over and gently cover his mouth. "concert's over," you announce, trying not to smile.

he mumbles something against your palm, eyes crinkling.

you pull your hand away carefully. "what was that?"

he blinks slowly. "i love you."

"love you too," you reply quietly, brushing your thumb against his cheek, careful of the sore side.

he smiles lazily, satisfied, then sinks deeper into the seat.

two minutes later, he's asleep.

head tilted toward you. mouth slightly open. gauze still in place. tall frame folded awkwardly in the passenger seat of your car. it stays like that for twenty more seconds.

then he starts laughing.

it begins as a small puff of air through his nose, shoulders shaking slightly in the passenger seat. you glance over at him, confused, because nothing happened. you're literally just driving.

"what?" you ask carefully, eyes flicking between him and the road, your tone cautious because he has been unpredictable for the past ten minutes.

he turns his head toward you very slowly, eyes glossy and unfocused, a smile stretching across his face. "you're driving," he says, as if this is groundbreaking information, then he bursts into another fit of laughter that makes his whole frame bounce.

you really should have taken him straight home. that would have been the responsible choice.

instead, you're standing inside a small ice cream shop that smells of sugar and waffle cones, holding the door open while he shuffles in beside you.

"sit," you tell him gently, guiding him toward a small round table by the window. your hand presses lightly to his chest to steer him in the right direction, your tone soft but firm so he does not wander toward the freezer display and attempt to investigate it.

he obeys without question, lowering himself into the chair carefully, movements are slow and exaggerated. he rests both hands flat on the table and blinks at the wall for a few seconds.

you stand in front of him, studying his face. his cheeks are puffy from the gauze, lips slightly parted, eyes glossy and unfocused.

"okay," you crouch down a little so you're in his line of sight. your fingers brush lightly against his knee to ground him. "what flavor do you want? "

he turns his head toward you with the slow curiosity of someone discovering a new species.

he frowns slightly, thinking very hard. "blue."

"blue is not a flavor."

he leans back in the chair, offended.

"it is in my heart," he says, his words muffled but determined, one eyebrow lifting as though you have personally insulted his creativity.

you exhale slowly through your nose. "do you mean blueberry? bubblegum?"

he squints at you. "no. i want blue."

you stand there for a second, weighing your options.

"i'm getting you vanilla," you decide finally, straightening up.

he watches you rise with wide, slow-blinking eyes.

"vanilla is shy," he murmurs thoughtfully, gaze drifting to the napkin dispenser. "i'm brave."

you soften at that despite yourself. "you survived oral surgery," you reply lightly. "you are very brave."

he processes that, his expression changing. his eyebrows pull together slowly, confusion replacing amusement.

suddenly, he studies your face as if seeing it for the first time.

"martin?" you say softly, stepping closer to the table. your fingers rest lightly against the edge near his hand.

he stares at you, lips parting slightly. "who are you?"

you freeze for half a second, your heartbeat stumbling before you force yourself to breathe normally.

"it's me," you say calmly, lowering yourself back into the chair across from him. your tone is slow and warm, careful not to spike with panic. "it's okay. you're just still numb."

he keeps looking at you, searching your face for something familiar.

"you look important," he murmurs after a moment, his brow still furrowed. his fingers twitch slightly on the table, as if he wants to reach out but is not sure he is allowed.

"i am," you nod, offering him a small smile. "i'm your girlfriend."

he blinks at that. "girlfriend," he repeats slowly, testing the word. his eyes drop briefly to your hand on the table, then back to your face. "are you nice?"

the question almost undoes you.

"i try to be."

he studies you again, longer this time. then, very slowly, he pushes his hand across the table toward yours. his fingers brush against your knuckles clumsily.

"you feel safe," he says quietly, voice hazy but certain.

your vision blurs for just a second. "i try to be," you repeat, curling your fingers around his hand. your thumb strokes the back of it in slow circles.

he relaxes a little at your touch, shoulders lowering.

"did you bring me here?" he asks after a pause, glancing around the shop as if it has just appeared.

"yeah. you wanted ice cream after the dentist."

he gasps faintly. "i had a dentist?"

"you did."

he considers that, then nods once, accepting it without further concern. "okay."

you end up holding the cup for him half the time, tilting it carefully while he takes slow bites of vanilla ice cream. every few seconds he pauses mid chew to stare at you for whatever reason.

when you're finally done, you throw the empty cups away and walk back toward him. "okay. field trip is over. we're going back to the car."

he looks at your hand for a moment, then places his much larger one into yours without hesitation. his grip is loose but warm, fingers curling instinctively around yours.

"i trust you," he stands up a little too fast and sways.

you immediately step closer, your free hand bracing lightly against his chest to steady him. "easy," you murmur, your voice softening as you guide him toward the door. "you're still wobbly."

he leans into you without realizing it, towering over you but letting you direct every step. outside, the late afternoon sun is bright, and the parking lot is uneven in places.

you tighten your hold on his hand.

"watch your step," you glance up at him to make sure he's actually listening.

when you reach the car, you unlock it and open the passenger door for him. he stands there looking at it like it's a portal to different dimension.

"duck," you remind him, lifting your free hand to hover over the top of his head. your palm lightly shields him from the door frame as he bends down.

he doesn't bend enough.

you gently press down on the back of his head. "more," you say patiently.

he finally lowers himself properly and slides into the seat. you make sure his legs are fully inside before carefully helping guide his head back so he does not bump it on the frame.

"thank you for protecting my bones," he says gravely, looking up at you with hazy appreciation.

"you're welcome," you reply, fighting a smile. you adjust his seatbelt, making sure it sits correctly across his chest. "i would prefer you keep it intact."

once he's secure, you close the passenger door. you take exactly two steps toward the driver's side before you hear it.

tap tap tap.

you turn and see martin is knocking on the window with both hands, eyes wide, mouthing something behind the glass.

you walk back toward him slowly.

he presses his face closer to the window, palm flat against it. when you are close enough to hear him through the crack, he raises his voice.

"i'm only seventeen," he declares urgently, his tone full of theatrical panic. "i shouldn't be taken away."

"taken where?"

he gestures vaguely around the parking lot. "the facility," he insists, nodding once as if confirming classified information. his brows knit together with genuine concern. "this is how it starts."

you stare at him through the glass. "you are not being taken away."

"you're not the police?"

"no but i bought you ice cream." you open the passenger door halfway and lean down to his eye level.

he studies your face carefully, evaluating whether you're trustworthy. "are you the girlfriend?"

you inhale slowly. "yes, i am the girlfriend."

his expression shifts into recognition. relief floods his features. "oh," he says softly. "okay. i trust you."

you gently close the door again, making sure it latches properly this time.

as you walk around to the driver's side, you hear him humming to himself, completely at peace now that he has decided you're not an undercover agent transporting him across state lines.

you slide into the driver's seat and glance at him.

he's staring out the windshield with serious contemplation, reflecting on the fragility of youth and the injustice of imaginary arrest.

you rest your head back against the seat for a second before starting the engine.

this is day one.

you have seven days of recovery ahead.

and as he suddenly whispers to himself, "seventeen is such a tender age," with such sorrow, you cannot help but think—

it's going to be a long week.

JUHOON 𝖽𝗈𝖾𝗌 𝖾𝗑𝖺𝖼𝗍𝗅𝗒 𝖺𝗌 𝗁𝖾’𝗌 𝗍𝗈𝗅𝖽, 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗀𝗁 𝗁𝖾’𝗌 𝖾𝗑𝗍𝗋𝖾𝗆𝖾𝗅𝗒 𝖼𝗈𝗇𝖿𝗎𝗌𝖾𝖽. 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗅𝗂𝗉𝗌 𝗉𝖺𝗋𝗍 𝗌𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗅𝗒 𝖺𝗌 𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝖺𝗍𝖼𝗁𝖾𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗌𝖾𝗍 𝗎𝗉 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖼𝖺𝗆𝖾𝗋𝖺, 𝗂𝗍 𝖼𝗅𝗂𝖼𝗄𝗌 𝗍𝗈 𝗁𝗂𝗆 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗁𝖺𝗌 𝗍𝗈 𝖻𝖾 𝖺 𝗍𝗋𝖾𝗇𝖽. 𝗌𝗍𝗂𝗅𝗅, 𝗁𝖾 𝗄𝖾𝖾𝗉𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝗎𝗉 𝖻𝖾𝖼𝖺𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗉𝗎𝗍 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗆 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾. 𝗈𝗇𝖼𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗄𝗂𝗌𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗆, 𝗁𝖾 𝗄𝗂𝗌𝗌𝖾𝗌 𝖻𝖺𝖼𝗄 𝖺𝗅𝗆𝗈𝗌𝗍 𝗂𝗆𝗆𝖾𝖽𝗂𝖺𝗍𝖾𝗅𝗒. 𝖡𝖴𝖳𝖳𝖳𝖳𝖳 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗒 𝗎𝗉. 𝗁𝖾 𝖽𝗈𝖾𝗌𝗇’𝗍 𝗄𝗇𝗈𝗐 𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗍𝗈 𝖽𝗈 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗆 𝗈𝗋 𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝗁𝗈𝗅𝖾 𝗉𝗎𝗋𝗉𝗈𝗌𝖾 𝗈𝖿 𝗉𝗎𝗍𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗆 𝗎𝗉 𝗐𝖺𝗌. 𝗈𝗇𝖾 𝖺𝗋𝗆 𝗌𝗅𝗈𝗐𝗅𝗒 𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗌 𝗍𝗈 𝗅𝗈𝗈𝗌𝖾𝗇 𝗍𝗈 𝗍𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗋 𝗁𝖾’𝗌 𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗈𝗐𝖾𝖽 𝗍𝗈 𝗆𝗈𝗏𝖾. 𝗁𝖾 𝖽𝗈𝖾𝗌𝗇’𝗍 𝗅𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝗅𝗈𝗇𝗀 𝖻𝖾𝖿𝗈𝗋𝖾 𝗀𝗂𝗏𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗂𝗇 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗉𝗅𝖾𝗍𝖾𝗅𝗒, 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖽𝗈𝗐𝗇 𝖺𝗅𝗅 𝖺𝗍 𝗈𝗇𝖼𝖾 𝗍𝗈 𝗐𝗋𝖺𝗉 𝖺𝗋𝗈𝗎𝗇𝖽 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗍𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗅𝗒. 𝗁𝖾 𝗉𝗎𝗅𝗅𝗌 𝖺𝗐𝖺𝗒 𝖿𝗂𝗋𝗌𝗍, 𝗂𝗇𝗌𝗍𝖾𝖺𝖽 𝗈𝖿 𝗅𝗈𝗈𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖺𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎, 𝗁𝖾 𝖻𝗎𝗋𝗂𝖾𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖿𝖺𝖼𝖾 𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗈 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖼𝗋𝗈𝗈𝗄 𝗈𝖿 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗇𝖾𝖼𝗄.

MARTIN 𝗂𝗌 𝖨𝖬𝖬𝖤𝖣𝖨𝖠𝖳𝖤𝖫𝖸𝖸𝖸 𝗌𝗎𝗌𝗉𝗂𝖼𝗂𝗈𝗎𝗌 𝖿𝗋𝗈𝗆 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗆𝗈𝗆𝖾𝗇𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗍𝗋𝗒 𝗍𝗈 𝗅𝗂𝖿𝗍 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌. 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖾𝗅𝖻𝗈𝗐𝗌 𝖻𝖾𝗇𝖽 𝗂𝗇𝗌𝗍𝗂𝗇𝖼𝗍𝗂𝗏𝖾𝗅𝗒 𝖺𝗌 𝗁𝖾 𝗉𝗎𝗅𝗅𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝖻𝖺𝖼𝗄 𝖽𝗈𝗐𝗇. 𝗁𝖾 𝗋𝖾𝖿𝗎𝗌𝖾𝗌 𝗍𝗈 𝖼𝗈𝗈𝗉𝖾𝗋𝖺𝗍𝖾 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗒𝗈𝗎. “𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖽𝗈𝗂𝗇𝗀.” 𝗁𝖾’𝖽 𝖺𝗌𝗄 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖭𝖠𝖲𝖳𝖨𝖤𝖲𝖳 𝗅𝗈𝗈𝗄, 𝗌𝗊𝗎𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖺𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎, 𝖺𝗅𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝗒 𝖽𝖾𝖿𝖾𝗇𝗌𝗂𝗏𝖾. 𝗁𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗄𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎’𝗋𝖾 𝗀𝗈𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗍𝗈 𝗍𝗂𝖼𝗄𝗅𝖾 𝗁𝗂𝗆 𝗈𝗋 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝗌𝖾, 𝖺𝗍𝗍𝖺𝖼𝗄 𝗁𝗂𝗆 𝗂𝗇 𝗌𝗈𝗆𝖾 𝗌𝗈𝗋𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝗌𝗂𝖼𝗄 𝗐𝖺𝗒. 𝗂𝗍 𝗍𝖺𝗄𝖾𝗌 𝖺 𝖫𝖮𝖳 𝗈𝖿 𝖼𝗈𝗇𝗏𝗂𝗇𝖼𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗁𝗂𝗆 𝗍𝗈 𝖺𝖼𝗍𝗎𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒 𝖽𝗈 𝗂𝗍 𝖺𝗌 𝗁𝖾 𝗄𝖾𝖾𝗉𝗌 𝗒𝖺𝗇𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝖽𝗈𝗐𝗇 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗇𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗀𝗈𝗍 𝗍𝗈𝗈 𝖼𝗅𝗈𝗌𝖾. 𝗋𝖾𝗅𝗎𝖼𝗍𝖺𝗇𝗍𝗅𝗒, 𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖾𝗍𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗅𝗂𝖿𝗍 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝖺𝖻𝗈𝗏𝖾 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗁𝖾𝖺𝖽 𝖡𝖴𝖳 𝗁𝖾’𝗌 𝗂𝗇𝗌𝖺𝗇𝖾𝗅𝗒 𝗌𝗍𝗂𝖿𝖿. 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗌𝖾𝖼𝗈𝗇𝖽 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗄𝗂𝗌𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗆, 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗁𝖺𝗇𝖽𝗌 𝗂𝗆𝗆𝖾𝖽𝗂𝖺𝗍𝖾𝗅𝗒 𝗌𝗅𝗂𝖽𝖾 𝗍𝗈 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖻𝖺𝖼𝗄 𝗈𝖿 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗁𝖾𝖺𝖽, 𝖿𝗂𝗇𝗀𝖾𝗋𝗌 𝗍𝖺𝗇𝗀𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗂𝗇 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗁𝖺𝗂𝗋, 𝗉𝗎𝗅𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖼𝗅𝗈𝗌𝖾𝗋. 𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖾𝖺𝗇𝗌 𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗈 𝗂𝗍 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝗍𝗂𝗅𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗁𝖾𝖺𝖽 𝗌𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗅𝗒 𝗍𝗈 𝗄𝗂𝗌𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖻𝖾𝗍𝗍𝖾𝗋. 𝗁𝖾’𝗌 𝖳𝖧𝖠𝖳 𝖤𝖠𝖲𝖸𝖸𝖸𝖸. 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗇 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗉𝗎𝗅𝗅 𝖺𝗐𝖺𝗒, 𝗁𝖾 𝗀𝗋𝖺𝖻𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗐𝗋𝗂𝗌𝗍 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖽𝗋𝖺𝗀𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖡𝖠𝖢𝖪 𝗂𝗇. 

SEONGHYEON 𝖥𝖮𝖫𝖣𝖲 𝗎𝗇𝖽𝖾𝗋 𝗇𝗈 𝗉𝗋𝖾𝗌𝗌𝗎𝗋𝖾. 𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖾𝗍𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗅𝗂𝖿𝗍 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝖺 𝗊𝗎𝖾𝗌𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇. 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗅𝗂𝗉𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗌𝗁𝖺𝗉𝖾𝖽 𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗈 𝖺 𝗌𝗈𝖿𝗍, 𝖺𝗅𝗆𝗈𝗌𝗍 𝖾𝗇𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗍𝖺𝗂𝗇𝖾𝖽 𝗌𝗆𝗂𝗅𝖾 𝖺𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖾𝗒𝖾𝗌 𝖿𝗈𝗅𝗅𝗈𝗐 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋𝗒 𝗆𝗈𝗏𝖾. 𝗁𝖾 𝖺𝗅𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝗒 𝗄𝗇𝗈𝗐𝗌 𝗁𝖾’𝗌 𝖺𝖻𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝗍𝗈 𝗅𝗈𝗌𝖾 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗁𝖾’𝗌 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗉𝗅𝖾𝗍𝖾𝗅𝗒 𝖿𝗂𝗇𝖾 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗂𝗍. 𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖾𝖺𝗇𝗌 𝗂𝗇 𝖻𝖾𝖿𝗈𝗋𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗅𝗂𝗉𝗌 𝖼𝗈𝗎𝗅𝖽 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖼𝗁 𝗁𝗂𝗌. 𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝗂𝗍𝖾𝗋𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒 𝗆𝖾𝗅𝗍𝗌. 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝖽𝗈𝗇’𝗍 𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗒 𝗎𝗉 𝖺𝗍 𝖺𝗅𝗅, 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗒 𝖨𝖭𝖲𝖳𝖠𝖭𝖳𝖫𝖸 𝖿𝗂𝗇𝖽 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗐𝖺𝗂𝗌𝗍, 𝗁𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖼𝖺𝗋𝖾𝗌𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖼𝗎𝗋𝗏𝖾 𝗈𝖿 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝖻𝖺𝖼𝗄. 𝗁𝖾 𝖽𝗈𝖾𝗌𝗇’𝗍 𝗉𝗎𝗅𝗅 𝖺𝗐𝖺𝗒 𝗎𝗇𝗍𝗂𝗅 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖽𝗈, 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗇, 𝗁𝖾 𝖽𝗈𝖾𝗌𝗇’𝗍 𝗅𝖾𝗍 𝗀𝗈. 

KEONHO 𝗂𝗌 𝖤𝖷𝖠𝖠𝖠𝖢𝖳𝖫𝖸𝖸𝖸 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝖺𝗇𝗍𝗌 𝗍𝗈 𝖻𝖾. 𝗁𝖾’𝖽 𝖺𝗇𝗇𝗈𝗒 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝖺𝗅𝗅 𝗄𝗂𝗇𝖽𝗌 𝗈𝖿 𝗊𝗎𝖾𝗌𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇𝗌 𝗐𝗁𝗂𝗅𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗉𝗈𝗌𝗂𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇𝖾𝖽 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗋 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗁𝖾𝖺𝖽. 𝖺𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗅𝖾𝖺𝗇𝖾𝖽 𝖼𝗅𝗈𝗌𝖾𝗋, 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗌𝗆𝗂𝗅𝖾 𝗐𝗂𝖽𝖾𝗇𝖾𝖽, 𝖾𝗒𝖾𝗌 𝖿𝗅𝗂𝖼𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖽𝗈𝗐𝗇 𝗍𝗈 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗅𝗂𝗉𝗌 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖻𝖺𝖼𝗄 𝗎𝗉 𝖺𝗀𝖺𝗂𝗇. 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗆𝗌 𝖽𝗋𝗈𝗉 𝖻𝖾𝖿𝗈𝗋𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖼𝗈𝗎𝗅𝖽 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇 𝗄𝗂𝗌𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗆. 𝗈𝗇𝖾 𝗁𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗐𝗋𝖺𝗉𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗈𝗎𝗇𝖽 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗐𝗋𝗂𝗌𝗍 𝗂𝗆𝗉𝖺𝗍𝗂𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗅𝗒, 𝗉𝗎𝗅𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗈 𝖺𝗇 𝗂𝗆𝗆𝖾𝖽𝗂𝖺𝗍𝖾 𝗄𝗂𝗌𝗌. 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖻𝗈𝖽𝗒 𝗆𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗌 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗂𝗍, 𝗋𝗈𝖼𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗀𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗅𝗒 𝖺𝗌 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗅𝗂𝗉𝗌 𝗉𝗋𝖾𝗌𝗌𝖾𝖽 𝖺𝗀𝖺𝗂𝗇𝗌𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋𝗌 𝗌𝗈𝖿𝗍𝗅𝗒. 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗇 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖿𝗂𝗇𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒 𝗉𝗎𝗅𝗅 𝖺𝗐𝖺𝗒, 𝗁𝖾’𝗌 𝖺𝗅𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝗒 𝗌𝗆𝗂𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗀. “𝗌𝗈. 𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗐𝖺𝗌 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗍𝗋𝖾𝗇𝖽 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗐𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖾𝖽 𝗍𝗈 𝗍𝗋𝗒?”