you fall back onto the bed, fingers tangling in jake’s hair as he makes a humming sound against you, the vibrations sends sparks up your spine.

jake is good at this, always has been, but tonight he’s showing off. his tongue traces slow circles around you before flicking at your opening and dragging up, seeking out the place where you need him most.

“oh”, you whine. “oh fuck.”

“the clitoris”, he says against you, pulling his head back enough to meet your gaze, eyes becoming glossy as if he wants something more. “did you know it has over eight thousand nerve endings? the most of any part of the human body.”

“jake.” you threaten, fingers finding his temple as he continues to suck gently on your clit, his other hand splayed over the juncture of your thigh and hip.

“its educational,” he teases.

you laugh, a high pitched giggle that turns into a moan when jake sucks your clit into his mouth. your hips buck upwards as he braces himself over you.

“you’re such a nerd,” you manage to say through your moans.

“you are dating a nerd,” he says against your skin. “you knew what you were getting into.”

jake eases two fingers into you as you groan, your head falling back. he uses the stretch of his fingers to find the place deep inside you that makes your whole body twitch. his fingers are long and beautifully angled, curling in just the right way to send another pulse of sensation through you.

“see?” he murmurs, his mouth pressing a kiss to your inner thigh. “angles and vectors, all geometry.”

“shut up,” you gasp, your mouth forming an ‘o’ shape as you try to catch your breath. “ah— jake!”

“the g-spot is actually part of the clitoral structure,” he says, his fingers sliding in and out as his mouth finds your core again. “it all connects.”

“jake, i swear—”

“did you know that the clitoris is shaped like a wishbone?” he asks, tracing slow patterns along you with his tongue, working you over from bottom to top. you forget what you were about to say when he begins rolling his tongue over your clit in fast, shallow strokes.

you are so close, already writhing, and jake knows it, he always knows it. he knows your body the way he knows his textbooks, every little sound and reaction to a chapter he memorizes with devotion.

“you’re gonna come for me, baby?”

jake asks, his voice thick with something between amusement and need as his tongue skates over your thigh. “on my face? are you really going to do it? let’s test it, shall we?”

“your— fuck, glasses—!”

“forget the glasses.”

they are completely fogged over now, all opaque. its absurd, really, the way his tongue flicks over you in short bursts while his fingers curl inside you, making you dizzy with need. you can barely focus on what he says next.

“take them off,” you whine, practically begging. “jake— ”

“cant, im too busy recalling the theory of..” he says, practically purring. you find yourself laughing and whimpering at the same time.

“that doesnt even— thats not how it—”

“maybe physics isnt my strongest subject.” jake sighs dramatically before his tongue licks insistently at your folds, his fingers pumping in and out at a steady pace. he manages to ignore the fog on his glasses long enough for you to climax, shuddering and whimpering his name as your thighs shake on either side of his head. jake hums against your skin.

“come on, baby,” he groans, voice rough. “let me taste it. let me have it.”

“ah— jake!”

“i’ve got you. i’ve got you.”

your orgasm rolls over you, until you are gasping your release into the air, your back arching violently. your fingers dig into jakes scalp, his hair splayed out on either side of your hips. jake licks at you determinedly until your whimpers die down, your body limp, exhausted.

you push his head away weakly.

jake grins, finally lifting himself off of you, his chin glistening. he peeks up at you, the lenses blurred with condensation.

“see?” he says, sliding them up his nose. “perfectly functional.”

“you can’t see a thing.” you scoff.

“i can see enough, princess.”

jake leans over you, his head hovering just above your torso as he peppering kisses all over your body. you taste yourself on his lips when his glasses press against your cheek, warm and fuzzy.

you lift his head by the back of his skull, kissing him thoroughly before sliding his glasses off his face.

“hey,” he whines, blinking up at you. his lashes cast shadows across his cheeks. jake’s face is softer without the frames.

“i was going for a look.” he mumbles softly.

you raise your eyebrows, “the look was clouded nerd who cant see.”

“hey, that’s a classic aesthetic!”

you laugh, pulling him down on top of you. jake melts against you, kissing your collarbone, his fingers finding the sensitive spot at the juncture of your thigh and hip.

“i could go again,” he murmurs, voice heavy with intent. “we could run another trial. for science.”

“for science,” you repeat, laughing when jake’s fingers push into you once more, coaxing another moan from your lips as his glasses sit on the nightstand, forgotten.

Your vision was swimming, a messy blur of tears and sweat. You lay sprawled on the sheets, your body a trembling wreck, completely oversensitive. He was still there, his fingers buried deep inside you, relentless and slow, teasing that spot that had already brought you to the brink three times tonight.

"Don't close your legs," Jake commanded softly, his voice vibrating against your inner thigh. He held your legs open with his shoulders, his dark eyes locked onto your face, searching for every reaction. "Look at me."

You tried to focus, but your mind was shattered. The pleasure was a heavy ache that spiked every time his thumb brushed your clit. "Jake..." you choked out, your voice barely a whisper. "Too much."

"Too much?" He chuckled, a low sound that made your toes curl. His fingers curled slightly inside you, crooking just right to drag a ragged moan from your throat. "You came three times, baby. You can take a little more."

He leaned down, capturing your lips in a kiss that tasted of desperation. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours, his breathing heavy. "Does it feel good?" he asked, his thumb stroking your cheek. "Tell me."

You couldn't form words. You just nodded frantically, your head turning into the pillow.

"Yes or no, Y/N," he insisted, his tone shifting from sweet to demanding. He stopped moving his fingers for a second, just holding you open, which was absolute torture. "We need communication here. I need to know what you're feeling."

"Yes," you gasped, your hips bucking up against his hand involuntarily. "It feels...oh god, it feels so good."

"That's my girl," he praised, his thumb pressing hard against your sensitive bundle of nerves. "But you look like you're about to pass out. Are you okay?"

"I'm...I don't know," you cried out as he started a rhythm again, fast and shallow. "I can't...I'm so full."

"You're so fucking tight around me," he groaned. "Look at how you're clenching. You love it, don't you?"

"I do," you whimpered, your back arching off the bed. "I can't stop."

"Then don't," he commanded, kissing your neck, his teeth grazing the skin. "Just let it happen. Let me take care of you. We can do this all night if you want. Just tell me you're okay, baby."

You wouldn't have thought that the cardboard box in your arms would be heavier than it has any right to be, given it's mostly filled with towels and a lamp that probably won't survive the move. You shift it against your hip, phone tucked between your ear and shoulder as Jungwon's voice crackles through the speaker.

"—and the landlord said the water pressure is good, but you should still check the boiler room, okay? Just in case. Mom keeps asking if you've eaten."

"I've eaten," you say, dumping the box onto the kitchen counter. The sound echoes in the empty space. "I ate a granola bar on the drive."

"That's not eating. You usually eat much more than that, Y/N."

You almost laugh. The corners of your mouth twitch, yet the energy to actually produce the sound feels too expensive. The new apartment is small, already making you hyperaware of your own breathing. White walls, beige carpet, a window that overlooks a fire escape and the back of a laundromat. It's nothing like your old place. And that's totally the point.

"There's a coffee shop down the street," you say instead, peering through the smudged glass of the window. "I saw it when I pulled in."

"Good, you should go there. Drink something with sugar and call me if you need anything."

"I will."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

The line goes dead, and the silence in the apartment rushes back in to fill the space. You stand there for a minute, only breathing, letting your new life settle into your bones. New city with a new apartment, and no memories of the last three years to trip over on your way to the bathroom.

You grab your keys and head out. The neighborhood is weirdly quiet even in the afternoon, it feels like everyone is holding their breath. Old brick buildings line the street, their facades streaked with years of rain. A bodega on the corner, a laundromat, and there, wedged between a bookstore and a clothing shop, the coffee shop. It's decorated with mismatched chairs and a counter cluttered with jars of homemade pastries. You order a black coffee because you don't trust your brain to make decisions, and you take it to a table by the window. You're halfway through the cup, watching a pigeon peck at a discarded wrapper, when the sky opens up. The rain comes down in sheets, loud and violent, rattling against the glass like it's trying to get in. You watch it for a while, then check your phone. It's already 5 PM.

"Excuse me," you say, approaching the counter. The barista, a tired-looking woman with flour on her apron, looks up. "Do you have an umbrella I could borrow? I just moved in across the street, I'll bring it back."

She blinks at you before she disappears into the back, returning a moment later with a flimsy black umbrella. It looks like the one you buy at a bodega for five dollars and immediately regret. "Keep it," she says. "We have like twelve of these."

The rain hasn't let up by the time you step outside. You pop the umbrella open, holding it tight as the wind tries to wrestle it from your grip. The street is a river now, the buildings blurred through the curtain of water. You walk quickly, splashing through puddles, your sneakers already soaked.

The apartment building is a relief when it comes into view. You duck into the alcove of the entrance, shaking water from your hair, and fumble with the umbrella to close it. The mechanism catches on something, and you jerk it, frustrated, only to have it flip open in a violent snap. A spray of water arcs outward, catching the person passing behind you square in the chest.

You freeze.

He freezes.

For an agonizing long moment, neither of you dare to move. He's standing half in the rain, half out, his white t-shirt now clinging to his torso with a growing dark patch. His hair is damp at the ends, dark brown and curling slightly. His eyes ; wide and startled ; scan your face with intensity, making you want to quickly apologize, but the words get caught somewhere in your throat.

His expression falters for the briefest moment. The certainty in his eyes gives way to hesitation, his gaze tracing your features as though something refuses to add up. His head tilts slightly, thoughtful rather than confused. You brace yourself for annoyance. For the kind of clipped anger that would be entirely justified.

Rather than that, he blinks, and a smile touches the corner of his mouth. It's not quite a smile, more like the ghost of one, uncertain and clumsy. "Hi," he says. His voice is a little rough, maybe from the cold. "Sorry, I was—do I know you?"

You shake your head, clutching the umbrella tightly. "I don't think so. I just moved in. I'm sorry about your shirt."

He glances down at the wet patch before looking back up at you. "Don't worry about it. It's just water." He's still looking at you, though. Too fucking long. His gaze lingers, waiting for...something. Whatever it is never comes. With a shake of his head, he drags a hand through his wet hair before a tiny smile finds its way onto his face, warming the corners of his eyes. "I'm Jake. I live in 9C down the hall."

"Y/N," you say. "5C."

"Welcome to the building."

"Thanks."

The rain continues to fall, filling the space between you with noise. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and you realize you're both just standing there, awkward and dripping, with nothing else to say.

"Well," he says, "I should probably go change. Before I catch a cold."

"Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry again."

"Don't be."

He heads for the elevator, and you watch him go, his wet footprints staining the floor. He pauses with his hand on the button, and for only a second, you think he might turn back or might say something else. But then the door swings open, and he disappears inside.

You stand there for another minute, the broken umbrella dangling from your hand, the rain hammering against the awning above you. The feeling of his gaze on your face lingers, unsettled, like a half-remembered dream.

You close the apartment door behind you and lean against it. The key is still in your hand. The broken umbrella is still in the other. Your socks are soaked through because you forgot to wipe your feet.

None of that registers.

Because Jake ; apartment 9C, white t-shirt, gray hoodie, hole in his jeans ; had a face that shouldn't exist outside of Renaissance paintings and the occasional fever dream. Sharp jaw and messy hair that looked intentional even though it definitely wasn't. And his eyes, soft and curious, doing that slow scan of your features like he was reading something he couldn't put down.

You slide down the door until you're sitting on the floor.

This doesn't happen to you.

No—correction. This has never happened to you. You've read about it, sure. Pages in secondhand paperbacks where the protagonist trips and falls into a stranger's arms and he just happens to have cheekbones that could cut diamonds. You've rolled your eyes at those scenes and called them unrealistic. You told yourself that real life doesn't come with lighting cues and slow motion. However, standing on those steps with rain dripping off his chin and an animal shelter's worth of grime on his wrist, he had no business being that striking. That disarming. That stupidly attractive.

Your brain caught on the way he'd looked at you. Not like he was checking you out but more like he was searching for something. A flicker of recognition that didn't meant nothing if you recoil on it. And after that the shrug, and the introduction so smooth it had to be accidental.

Jake.

You press the heels of your palms against your eyes. Are you freaking kidding me ?

"You're being ridiculous." you tell the empty apartment.

Three hours later, you've unpacked exactly one box ; where it cointained your sheets and a single mug shaped like a cactus that Jungwon bought you as a joke three birthdays ago. The mug is now sitting on the kitchen counter, empty, staring at you judgmentally.

He keeps finding his way back into your thoughts. Not because you're trying to hold on to him, and surely not because you can't move on. It happens almost absentmindedly, the way your brain revisits familiar things when it's left alone. How his voice sounded slightly wrecked, like he'd been yelling or laughing or both. The smudge on his wrist ; potting soil, probably, if the canvas bag full of clinking jars was any indication. Pickles? Jam? The man had twelve jars of something and dirt on his hands and he lived four apartment next to yours.

You catch your reflection in the bathroom mirror and frown at yourself.

"Girl, you don't even know his last name." you say.

You go to bed early because there's nothing else to do. The new apartment sounds are unusual, there's more creaks and fewer sirens. At 2:17 AM, someone in the building starts playing the guitar badly. You fall asleep to a mangled rendition of "Wonderwall".

─────────

The alarm drags you from sleep sharply. You bat at your phone until the noise stops, and lie there, blinking at the still unfamiliar ceiling, reacquainting yourself with the fact that this is your life now. Everything was going to be new now.

By the time you've wrestled yourself into something presentable, you're already running five minutes behind. You skip breakfast, grab your bag, and lock the door behind you.

The elderly home sits at the end of a tree-lined street, a squat brick building, you almost mistook it for a community center. The receptionist gives you a visitor's badge and points you toward the common room, where a handful of residents are scattered across armchairs, some dozing, some staring at a muted television, one engaged in a heated argument with a plant.

You're barely through the door when a woman appears at your elbow, small and bright-eyed, with a name tag that reads Hanni in cheerful block letters. "New hire?" she asks, already steering you toward a supply closet. "Thank god. I've been doing double shifts for three weeks. I'm Hanni. You're Y/N. I read your file. It said you have experience with dementia patients. That's good, because Jacob over there—" she jerks her chin toward a man in a cardigan who's now trying to feed his coffee to the plant, "—thinks he's a squirrel."

You blink. "A squirrel?"

"Don't ask. Just go with it. If he offers you acorns, take them."

The day unfolds. You help Mrs. Han find her glasses (they were on her head), you listen to Mr. Eom's stories about a bakery he ran forty years ago, and you learn the exact difference between the "good" applesauce and the "bad" applesauce. Hanni works beside you with effortless competence, cracking jokes under her breath and seamlessly redirecting residents who wander toward the exit. "You're pretty good at this," she says during a break, as you both stand at the nurses' station, scribbling notes. "Most new people get that deer-in-headlights look for at least a week. You just sort of absorbed it."

You shrug, not sure how to explain that this ; the slow pace, the gentle repetition, the small dignities of helping someone remember their own name ; it feels like the only thing you're certain about these days. "It's not that hard. They just want to be seen."

Hanni studies you for a moment, something curious flickering behind her eyes. Then she nods, and the moment passes.

Your shift ends, your feet ache and your brain feels pleasantly fuzzy, which doesn't leave room for anxiety. You change out of your scrubs, say goodbye to Hanni, and step out into the evening air.

The street is calm, the rain from yesterday reduced to a thin dampness on the pavement. You're walking toward your building, hands shoved in your jacket pockets, when you round the corner and nearly collide with someone coming the other way.

Fuck, it's him.

Jake.

He's wearing a different shirt ; navy this time, sleeves pushed up to his elbows ; and he's carrying a cardboard pack of beer tucked under one arm. His hair is dry, pulled up in a little ponytail at the back, and the sight of him in the golden light of early evening hits you like a delayed punch.

"Oh," you say. Why now?

He stops. For a heartbeat, something unsettles his expression, his eyes lingering on you a fraction too long. Then, it melts away, something softer taking place. "Hey. Y/N, right?"

"Oh, you remembered." The words come out flatter than you wanted them to be, yet your pulse is doing a ridiculous drum solo again.

"I remember a lot of things," he says, there's a strange weight to the phrase, like he's saying something else underneath it. He gestures with the beer. "You're heading back?"

"Yeah. I just finished my first day at the elderly home down the street."

"How was it?"

"Exhausting. Good, though. I think. One of the residents offered me a fake acorn, so I'm taking that as a sign of approval."

He laughs, low and surprised, you can see that he didn't expect to find it funny. "That's a pretty solid endorsement. I'd trust fake acorn guy over most people."

You fall into step together, and you notice how he adjusts his pace to match yours, shortening his stride just slightly. The street stretches ahead, lined with those old brick buildings, the sky above streaked with pale orange and lavender. You nod toward the beer. "Expecting company, or is that just for personal purpose?"

He glances down at the pack, a sheepish smile tugging at his mouth. "I'm having friends over tonight. A couple of guys from the shelter—I work at the animal shelter a few blocks over. We do this thing every other Thursday. It's mostly just eating takeout and arguing about which dog breed is objectively the best."

"Which one is?"

"Rescue," he says immediately. "All of them."

You snort. "I think so too."

"Right? This is why we're going to get along." He says it casually, the words land in your chest with an unexpected weight.

The building comes into view, its facade warm in the fading light. He holds the door open for you, and you step into the foyer, the familiar smell of old carpet and someone's cooking drifting through the hallway. At your door you fumble for your keys, and he lingers, shifting the beer from one arm to the other.

"Good first day," he says. "At the job, I mean."

"Thanks." You find the right key, fit it into the lock. "Have fun with your friends. Try not to let the argument escalate into a physical altercation."

"No promises. We're very passionate about this." He's already turning, already stepping back toward his door, when something makes you call out : "Jake."

He stops and looks back.

"Thanks for walking me," you say. "Even if you didn't have to."

A small shrug. "It's fine. I wanted to, anyway." And he's already gone, his footsteps echoing in the corridor, and you're left standing in your doorway, keys still in hand, watching the space where he was.

You unlock the door, step inside, and close it behind you. The apartment is mostly empty, since your laziness won over you to unpack the rest of your stuff. You press your back against the door and stare at the ceiling.

This, you think, is exactly the kind of thing I'd roll my eyes at in a book.

Regardless, you can't stop the smile that spreads across your face, slow and helpless and embarrassingly real.

You're sprawled across the couch, legs tangled in a throw blanket, the glow of the television painting your face in shifting blues and reds. Some reality show about people competing to bake things that look like other things. It's mindless and perfect, exactly the sort of programming that requires zero cognitive effort. Your oversized t-shirt hangs off one shoulder with Justin Bieber's face from his Purpose World Tour, faded and cracked from years of washing. Below that, nothing but a pair of plain cotton panties. Your hair is messy, and there's a half-empty mug of tea growing cold on the floor beside you. You're comfortable. Vulnerable, maybe, but in the privacy of your own space, and that's all that matters.

Your gaze wanders into the kitchen and lands on the trash bin that is overflowing with flattened boxes and crumpled packing paper, the remains of a move you’re still halfway through. It doesn’t look like much, but you know it’ll be the first thing to irritate you in the morning if it’s left untouched. You weigh the options. Get dressed and actually put on pants, find a bra, the whole tedious ritual, or just…go. It's a quick trip. The trash chute is at the end of the hallway, maybe twenty steps from your door. The corridor has been empty all evening. And Jake has friends over. He's occupied. He's not going to be lurking around corners, waiting to ambush you with his inconveniently-timed presence.

Nobody will see you, you tell yourself. It's fine. You're fast as fuck.

You pad to the door, press your eye to the peephole. The hallway stretches, empty. Clear. You crack the door open, just wide enough to slip through, and you're out, barefoot, the cold floor sending a shiver up your legs. The trash bag is heavier than you expected ; you hoist it against your hip, jogging in that awkward, flat-footed way of someone who's both in a hurry and deeply aware of their own exposure. The chute is a metal hatch in the wall. You heave it open, shove the bag inside, hear it clatter down into the abyss. Mission accomplished.

You turn, already planning your retreat, and—

He's standing three feet away. Oh fuck off.

Jake.

He's holding a bulging trash bag of his own, the clink of glass bottles audible as he adjusts his grip. His eyes travel from your face down to the faded Bieber shirt, then back up, and there's a beat of silence where neither of you move. Your brain short-circuits and your mouth opens. What comes out is a garbled mix of syllables that might have been intended as "hey" but emerges as something closer to "heh—uh—I—"

He blinks. Slowly, the corner of his mouth twitches. "Didn't mean to startle you," he says, and his voice is level, calm, almost like he's trying to soothe a startled animal.

"You didn't—I mean, I was just—" You gesture clumsily at your attire, then at the trash chute, then back at yourself, as if this chain of context will explain everything. "The trash was full. And I didn't think anyone would be—I mean, you said you had friends—"

"Friends," he confirms. "They left about ten minutes ago. I was just cleaning up."

"Of course you were. That makes sense." You're still standing there, bare-legged, the shirt barely grazing your thighs, and the hallway suddenly feels like a wind tunnel. You cross your arms over your chest, which does absolutely nothing to help the situation. Jake doesn’t leer nor does he joke. He meets your eyes with that same searching look, softened now into quiet amusement. "You know," he says, "you have a habit of running into me in unexpected situations."

"This is your fault," you say, and the words come out sharp without real bite behind them. "You're supposed to be busy. That was the whole point."

"Sorry to inconvenience you by taking out my trash."

"You're not sorry, are you?"

"No," he admits, his half-smile edges into fuller one. "I'm not." He steps past you toward the chute, and you catch a whiff of a clean and comforting scent, the ordinary scent of someone who's recently showered. He drops his bag in, closes the hatch with a metallic thunk and turns back. "See you around, Bieber," he says, the warmth in the nickname makes your stomach flip.

He's walking back toward his apartment door, and you're standing once again, your face heating in an inexorable crawl. You wait until his footsteps fade before you scurry back to your door, slip inside, and press your back against the wood. The television is still playing, some contestant weeping over a collapsed trompe-l'oeil. You stare at the screen, unseeing.

Bieber.

You look down at the faded face on your shirt, at your bare legs, at the utter mess of your appearance, and you press the heels of your palms into your eyes like the day before. You're still standing with your back against the door, willing your face to return to a normal temperature, when the knock comes.

Three sharp raps.

Your entire body goes still. The television babbles on, oblivious, as you press your eye to the peephole. Jake. Of course. He's standing there, hands in his pockets, looking down at the floor, he's waiting for something. He's changed into a gray sweatshirt, hood down, hair slightly mussed. You don't open the door. You can't, not after what he just witnessed. Not with this shirt still on.

"What?" you call through the wood, and your voice comes out higher, strained.

"Y/N," His voice is muffled but clear. "I know you're in there."

"I'm not opening the door."

A pause. "I'm not asking you to."

"Why are you here then?"

He pauses again. You can hear him shift his weight. "I just wanted to say—" He stops, and you imagine him running a hand through his hair, figuring out how to phrase something. "The shirt. I really like it."

You press your forehead against the door. "You're lying."

"I'm not. I had that exact one in middle school and I wore it until the print started peeling off."

"That doesn't make it better."

"Maybe not." His voice carries a smile, you can hear it, the slight lift in the vowels. "I thought you should know, though. That's all."

You stay silent, unsure how to answer. The pause settles in, comfortable rather than tense, and you notice he isn’t hurrying to fill it.

"Anyways," he says finally, "goodnight, Y/N."

You hear footsteps, receding. You wait until the sound fades completely before you let out a breath you were holding deeply. Your reflection stares back at you from the peephole's warped glass, only a blur of color, but you can feel the heat still lingering in your cheeks. You push off from the door, walk back to the couch, and collapse into the cushions. The reality show contestants are still crying about pastries. You look down at Justin Bieber's faded face. At the cracked screen print and the worn collar.

He had this exact one in middle school, what a coincidence.

You pull the hem of the shirt, stretch it, let it snap back. A small, involuntary sound escapes your throat. It might be a laugh or anything else. You grab your phone, open your messages, and type out a single line to Jungwon.

Y/N [11:52 PM]

I think I'm in trouble.

But you delete it, toss the phone aside, and stare at the ceiling until your heartbeat settles to normal again.

It takes a while.

─────────

The morning came faster than you thought. You grab the umbrella on your way out ; the same flimsy black one that started this whole foolish chain of events ; and stop by the coffee shop before your shift. The barista barely glances up as you set it on the counter.

"Thanks," you say. "For letting me borrow it."

She waves a hand, already reaching for a pitcher of milk. "Keep it next time. We've got a whole graveyard of those things in the back."

You almost tell her there won't be a next time, yet the words feel like tempting fate, so you just nod and head out.

The elderly home is already rumbling when you arrive. Hanni greets you with a coffee cup thrust into your hands and a breathless update about Mr. Eom's missing dentures. You take a sip, let the caffeine do its work, and fall into the cadence of the morning.

By early afternoon, the sun is actually warm enough to justify a walk. You round up three residents ; Mrs. Han, who's having a good day and remembers your name, Mr. Chen, who doesn't say much but mumbles tunelessly under his breath and Jacob, who offered you the fake acorn. He's wearing a different cardigan today, mustard yellow, and he keeps patting his pockets like he's checking for something. The path behind the building winds through a small garden, past benches and bird feeders and a sad little fountain that hasn't worked in years. You walk slowly, matching their pace, letting Mrs. Han point out flowers she's identified incorrectly and pretending to take Jacob's commentary seriously.

It's peaceful, nearly meditative. A moment like this makes you wonder if this new life really is as bad as you thought.

Abruptly, a dog comes out of nowhere. A golden retriever ; young, gangly, all oversized paws and manic energy ; bounds across the grass with the focus of a missile. It's not aggressive and not even barking. It's excited, and its excitement is directed straight at Jacob, who is the slowest-moving, most startle-prone member of your little group. The dog lunges up before you can react, front paws slamming into Jacob’s chest. He rocks back, arms windmilling, then drops in a slow heap, feeling like it’s happening in two conflicting speeds at once.

"Jacob!" You're at his side in an instant, dropping to your knees, hands hovering unevenly. "Are you okay? Did you hit your head?"

Jacob blinks up at you, more confused than pained. His glasses are askew. "I dropped my acorn," he says.

"I'll find it. Just—stay still. Tell me if anything hurts."

A voice cuts through the chaos, alert and breathless. "Oh god—I'm so sorry—"

You look up. Jake is sprinting toward you, the dog's leash trailing behind him like a forgotten flag. He's in work clothes ; a navy polo with the shelter's logo, dirt smudged on his forearm ; and his face is veiled with unguarded panic.

The dog, oblivious, is now trying to lick Jacob's ear.

"Leo, down!" Jake grabs the dog's collar, hauls him back with a firm yet gentle tug. "I am so, so sorry. He got loose—I was just bringing him out for a walk and he saw the—are you okay? Is he okay?"

You're already helping Jacob sit up, checking his wrists, his neck, the back of his head. No swelling or bleeding. He's still patting his pockets for the acorn.

"He's fine," you say, your voice flat. "He's just disoriented."

"Thank god." Jake exhales, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. "I really am—I should have had a better grip on the leash. He's young, he's still learning, but that's not an excuse—"

"You're right." You stand, brushing grass from your knees. "It's not."

The silence that follows is stiffling. Mrs. Han is watching with curious eyes, Mr. Chen has stopped mumbling, and Leo is now sitting at Jake's feet, tail excitedly wagging. You turn to Jake fully. "You work at a shelter. You know how unpredictable dogs can be. Especially around elderly people. One wrong jump, one fall, and it's a broken bone or a concussion. That could actually hurt someone."

Jake meets your gaze without a trace of defensiveness or excuses. He simply nods slowly, his jaw tightening in restraint. "You're right," he says. "I wasn't careful enough. I got distracted, and I let him pull ahead, and I should have anticipated that this could happen." He glances at Jacob, who is now patting Leo's head with a delighted smile. "I'm really glad he's okay. And I'm sorry you had to deal with that."

The words settle with an unexpected weight, disarming you. You were ready for deflection, for something casual and rehearsed. Regardless, he stays still, accepting it without trying to cushion the blow.

You let out a breath. The adrenaline is fading, leaving behind a shaky residue. "Be more careful," you say, and your voice is quieter now. "Please."

"I will." He holds your gaze for another beat, and crouches down to Jacob's level. "Hey, sir. That was my dog. He's really sorry. Are you okay?"

Jacob looks at him, then at Leo before his gaze goes back at his empty palm. "I lost my acorn," he says, there's a note of genuine distress in his voice. Jake doesn't miss a beat. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small smooth stone and presses it into Jacob's hand. "Here. I found this, it must've been yours."

Jacob stares at it. His face splits into a wide, gap-toothed smile. "Thank you," he says, and clutches it like treasure.

You watch it unfold, something uneasy tightening in your chest. Jake stands and meets your gaze again. A flash crosses his face ; rueful, or closer to hope. "I'll make sure he's more secured next time," Jake says, nodding toward Leo. "And if there's anything I can do—"

"There isn't," you say, but the sharpness has gone from your voice. "But still...keep a closer eye on him."

"Always." He turns and walks back toward the path, Leo trotting obediently at his heel. You watch him go, the way his shoulders are slightly hunched, how he glances back once before rounding the corner.

Mrs. Han sidles up to you. "He's cute," she states. "The boy. Not the dog."

You open your mouth, not a sound escaping your mouth. You try again.

"Mrs. Han," you say, "you're supposed to be on my side."

"I am on your side," she says, patting your arm. "That's why I'm telling you."

You help Jacob to his feet, find his acorn in the grass, and start the slow walk back to the building. Your thoughts drift elsewhere, replaying Jake crouching down to Jacob’s level, finding the stone without hesitation, saying 'I will' like he truly meant it.

You shake your head, focus on the path ahead.

After you end your shift, you walk back to your apartment. The sky has gone hazy, and you keep your hands in your pockets, replaying the afternoon in fragments. You unlock your door, kick off your shoes, and collapse onto the couch. The television is still on from last night. You turn it off, let the silence settle.

You decide to pull out your phone and call Jungwon. He picks up, but the background noise is a wall of bass and overlapping voices. You can hear a bunch of voice shouting "CHUG CHUG CHUG!!!" and loud cheers. You hear a door slam, the noise muffles.

"Y/N?" His voice is slightly breathless. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," you say, and you mean it. "I just wanted to check in. You sound busy, though."

"I'm at a mixer party with my house and sororities. It's loud so I stepped outside." He stops for a second. "Are you sure you're okay? You never call this late."

"Late? It's like seven."

"Yeah. You're usually asleep by now."

You fairly laugh. "I've been more awake lately. I had a long day."

"Tell me about it."

So you do. You tell him about everything. You don't want to mention Jake.

"You sound good," Jungwon says when you finish. " Really good. Not just saying you're good."

"I think I am," you say, the words surprise you with their honesty.

"That's all I needed to hear." There's a muffled shout from behind him, someone calling his name. "I should get back. But call me anytime, okay? Even if it's just to complain about old people and dogs."

"Old people and dogs. The two pillars of my existence now."

"Don't let the dogs jump on you," he mentions, you can hear the smile in his voice.

"I won't. Have fun at your party."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

The line goes dead. You hold the phone for a moment before setting it aside, letting the quiet wrap around you. You stand, stretch, and gather your clothes for a shower, a clean towel, a change of underwear, the softest pair of sweatpants you own. You pad toward the bathroom, already anticipating the hot water, the steam, and the small escape from your own head.

You're two steps from the bathroom door when the lights flicker.

Once. Twice. It dies.

The apartment plunges into absolute darkness. No sound from the refrigerator, no glow from the microwave clock, just black, thick and total. You stand there, motionless, one hand gripping your towel, the other reaching for the wall. You feel along the switch, flick it up and down. There's nothing.

You step to the window to peer out. The streetlights are on. The building across the way is lit, warm rectangles of gold in every window. The coffee shop's neon sign still glows. You check your phone to see your battery at 60%. You switch on the flashlight, sweep it across the room. So it's only your apartment. The refrigerator is dead. The outlets are dead. The overhead light, the bathroom ; all dead. You flip the circuit breaker in the tiny panel by the door. Shit. You try the main switch. Nothing.

You stand there in the beam of your phone, your reflection ghostly in the dark window glass, wearing that stupid Justin Bieber shirt and holding a bundle of clean clothes, and you realize you have no flashlight, no candles, and mostly, no backup plan.

The silence presses in. 9C. A certain neighbor who might have a working outlet and a willingness to share. A part of you notes, almost critically, that this would be the kind of contrived convenience you’d hate in a book.

You sigh, grab your keys, and head for the door.

The hour stretches like taffy. You've tried the circuit breaker three times, called the landlord four times, and texted him twice, giving you no results. The voicemail picks up on the first ring, a generic recording without a name. You sit next to your door and consider your options. There's a motel two blocks away. There's the coffee shop, but they close in fifteen minutes. It got to be a joke.

And there's the door at the end of the hallway.

You pace. You argue with yourself. You list all the reasons this is a terrible idea ; all the incidents that happened and degraded your confidence, the fact that you've known this man for approximately forty-eight hours and he's already seen you at your most unguarded multiple times. But the need for a shower wins. You smell like old people and grass, with the sublte tang of anxiety sweat. You can't go to work like this tomorrow and you can't sleep like this tonight. So you put on a pair of shorts ; the longest ones you own ; and a different shirt, and you walk toward his door with the weight of your own dignity dragging behind you.

His door is at the end of the hall. You knock before you can talk yourself out of it. The door swings open. Jake stands there in a faded gray t-shirt and sweatpants, hair slightly damp, a dish towel slung over his shoulder. He's holding a half-eaten apple. His eyes land on you. Travel down to your shorts, back up to your face.

His mouth curves into a smile so wide, so unapologetically amused, that you feel it like a punch right in your guts.

"Bieber," he says. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Don't call me that." The words come out weak, deflated. "My power's out. The landlord won't answer and I absolutely need a shower."

He takes a bite of his apple. He chews slowly, considers you.

"Just the shower," you add, and you can hear how defensive you sound, how utterly transparent.

"I didn't say anything." He steps back, holds the door open. "Come in."

His apartment is small too, but lived-in. A couch with a blanket draped over the back. A stack of books on the coffee table. A guitar propped in the corner. The kitchen is visible from the living room, dishes drying on a rack, a pot of something that smells like garlic and tomatoes simmering on the stove. "Bathroom's down the hall, second door on the left," he says, pointing with the apple still in hands. "Towels are in the cabinet. Use whatever you need."

"Thanks." You pause at the threshold, suddenly aware of the absurdity of this. "I'll be quick."

"Take your time." That smile again, softer now. "I'll keep the apartment from burning down while you're in there."

You close the bathroom door behind you and lean against it, exhaling. Hot water, steady pressure, a luxurious flow that makes you forget every indignity that led you here. You stand under the spray as long as you can, letting it beat against your shoulders, your neck, the tension you've been carrying since yesterday. When you finally step out, wrapped in a towel, you catch your reflection in the mirror. Wet hair and pink cheeks. A stupid smile that you can't suppress.

Stop it. You wipe the steam from the mirror, and that's when you notice it. On the edge of the sink, next to a half-empty bottle of cologne, is a keychain. A small, plastic orange. Slightly faded, the paint worn at the edges.

Your breath catches. You have that exact same keychain. It's been on your keys for as long as you can remember. Well, as long as your memory goes back, which is not even a year. It's one of the few objects that survived the move, one of the small constants in the fog of your past.

You pick it up and turn it over. It's identical, even the little chip in the paint near the stem matches. You stare at it for a long moment. You dress quickly, step out into the hallway, and find Jake in the kitchen, stirring the pot on the stove. "Everything okay?" he asks without turning.

"Where did you get this?" You hold up the keychain.

He turns and sees it. For an instant, his expression falters into recognition before it smooths itself back into neutrality. "Oh, that." He sets down the spoon, wipes his hands on his sweatpants. "I found it, actually. A few years ago, on the street, I think. I kept it because—" He pauses, and you notice the way his eyes shift, slightly, like he's rearranging words in his head. "It reminded me of something. I don't know. I just liked it."

The explanation comes out too smooth and too rehearsed. You're wondering if he's said it before, practiced it, polished it until it sounded natural. You're not even sure why, something about how he said it, but you don't have the energy to interrogate right now. "Funny," you say, pocketing your own keys, where your matching orange dangles. "I have the same one."

He looks at you. You feel like you're standing on the edge of a cliff, for a jump you're not ready for.

"That is funny," he says, and his voice is softer now, almost distant. "Small world."

You nod, not trusting your voice. The moment stretches, fragile, and you're the one who breaks it. "I should go. Thanks for the shower."

"Anytime." He walks you to the door, and the teasing smile has returned. "If the power's still out tomorrow, you know where to find me."

"Bold of you to assume I'll survive that long."

"I have faith in you."

You roll your eyes, yet you're smiling as you step into the hallway. The door clicks shut behind you. You stand there for a moment, your keychain warm in your palm, and wonder what exactly you've just walked into. It's probably nothing, you tell yourself.

Oh it's definitely something.

─────────

A few days pass, you're unpacking one box at a time, learning where the light switches are without having to think about it, catching the same bus at the same time each morning until the driver starts to nod at you like an old acquaintance.

You see Jake in the hallways more often than coincidence should allow. Tuesday morning, you're leaving for work and he's coming back from a run, sweaty and out of breath, and he raises a hand in greeting without breaking stride. Fuck he's hot.

Wednesday evening, you're carrying a bag of groceries and he's hauling a bag of dog food toward the elevator, and you end up walking side by side without discussing it. Thursday, you don't see him at all, and you catch yourself checking the peephole before bed like a woman waiting for something she won't admit to wanting.

Friday arrives with gray skies and the particular exhaustion of a full week. You've just changed into sweatpants.

Three taps. You know who it is before you look. Jake is standing in the hallway wearing a knitted sweater and he's holding his keys in his hand. He looks different at night ; softer, somehow. The hard angles of his jaw blurred by the low light.

"I'm heading to the convenience store," he announces.

You lean against the doorframe. "It's eight o'clock."

"I'm aware. That's why I said convenience store and not, like, a sit-down restaurant." He jingles his keys. "You want to come?"

You hesitate for a second too long, and he catches it. His expression shifts into something hesitant. "For the accident," he adds. "Last week, with Jacob. I've been meaning to…I don't know. Make up for it, in a small way. This is the small way."

"You're making up for catastrophe with a trip to 7-Eleven?"

"Don't call it that. I'd rather call it a restitution." He pauses. "Also they have those frozen slushies that turn your tongue blue, and I don't want to drink one alone because that feels sad even by my standards."

You look down at your sweatpants. "Give me two minutes," you say.

"You look fine."

"I know I look fine. I want to look like I didn't just spend an hour lying on my floor thinking about nothing."

He blinks. "That's—"

"Two minutes." You close the door and change into jeans. You don't know why. It's just the convenience store after all. Although you put on real pants anyway, and you run your fingers through your hair, and when you open the door again, he's still standing there, checking his phone. "Cute," he says, not looking up.

"Shut up."

The walk is short ; five blocks, past the coffee shop with the broken umbrellas, past a laundromat, and past a house with a porch light that flickers like it's sending morse code. The air is cold enough to see your breath, and Jake walks on the street side of the sidewalk without making a thing out of it.

You two arrive at the convenience store, with the buzzing lights overhead. A bell dings when you walk in. The guy behind the counter is watching a small TV mounted in the corner, some sports game apparently.

You grab a basket and Jake grabs another. "This is a competition now," he says.

"It's always been a competition."

The snack aisle is narrow, forcing you to stand closer than necessary. You reach for a bag of chips. He reaches for the same bag. Your hands collide, and he lets you take it without a fight, which is suspicious. "You're being nice," you say.

"What do you mean? I'm always nice."

"No but, like, you're being strategically nice."

He grins. It's crooked and quick, making your chest tighten. "I just want you to let your guard down so I can steal the last bag of sour stripes."

"I don't even like sour stripes."

"Everyone likes sour stripes. That's like saying you don't like breathing."

You move down the aisle, scanning the shelves. Your fingers hover over a bag of shrimp crackers ; the spicy kind, bright red packaging, which Jungwon used to make fun of you for buying in bulk. You reach for them at the same time he does. "These," he says, pushing the bag toward you. "Get these."

"I was going to."

"They're your favorite, right?"

You stop. Your hand freezes over the bag. "I didn't tell you that."

He's already looking at the next shelf, picking up a pack of chocolate cookies, turning it over to read the nutrition facts. His expression doesn't change. His voice is casual, almost bored. "Everyone likes spicy shrimp crackers," he says. "It's not some niche preference. It's a classic. Like salt and vinegar. Or barbecue."

"That's not—"

"I'm getting these," he interrupts, holding up the cookies. "You want a drink? They have that weird melon soda. Everyone says that it tastes like liquid gummy bear."

You stare at the back of his head in confusion. He's walking toward the drink cooler, shoulders relaxed, like the conversation is already over. You grab the shrimp crackers and follow him.

The park is two blocks from your building, a small wedge of grass with three benches and a set of swings that face a community garden. The swings are old, their chains rusty, seats scratched with names and dates, but they hold your weight when you sit. Jake takes the swing next to yours. The plastic bags dangle from his wrist, crinkling every time he moves. You've split everything down the middle ; your shrimp crackers, his chocolate cookies, two bottles of the melon soda, a shared bag of sour striped that he claimed were for everyone, still you've noticed he keeps eating.

The soda fizzes when you open it. The park is empty except for the two of you and a cat sitting on a bench across the grass, watching like it's waiting for something to happen. You swing a little, just enough to rock. The chains squeak.

"My brother," you say, because the silence feels good but you want to fill it anyway. "He's the reason I moved here. Not because he lives here—he doesn't. He lives like four hours away. He helped me find the apartment and with all the packing."

Jake doesn't say anything. He's unwrapping a chocolate cookie, breaking it in half.

"He's in college now," you continue. "Fraternity guy, and he’s so serious about it, which is funny because he's also the least intimidating person I've ever met. Once he cried because I didn’t want to go with him at the dentist."

"That’s cute."

"He's sensitive." You shrug. "He'd kill me if he knew I was telling you this."

"I won't tell."

The cat on the bench yawns. The swings creak. You take a sip of your melon soda and watch the clouds move past the streetlights.

"Jungwon," Jake says.

You almost choke.

"What?"

"Your brother." He's looking at his hands, turning the cookie over and over. "His name. You said it. Jungwon."

You frown. Your brain backtracks through the last thirty seconds, replaying your own words. You definitely didn't say his name. You've been careful about that by habit. Jungwon is precious to you. His name is something you keep close, like a photo in a wallet. "I didn't say his name," you say slowly.

His chewing stops. His throat moves as he swallows. The openness on his face is convincing enough to pass for genuine, if not for the faint impression that he's worn it many times before.

"You didn't?"

"No."

"Huh." He dusts cookie crumbs off his fingers. "Maybe I heard it wrong, or you mentioned it before and I remembered. I don't know."

"I've never mentioned his name."

The silence stretches. The cat on the bench stands up, circles once, lies back down. He sets the cookie down on the plastic bag between you. He wipes his hands on his jeans. For a moment, he looks like he's going to say something else that might explain the way he looked at you that first night on the steps, like he was trying to place you.

His shoulders drop. "He came by," he declares. "Before you moved in. Your brother, Jungwon." He says the name carefully, testing each syllable. "He was checking out the building and making sure the landlord wasn't sketchy. I ran into him in the hallway."

You stare at him.

"He asked me about the neighborhood," Jake continues. "Whether it was safe. Whether people were friendly, and all that stuff." A small smile, almost self-deprecating. "I think he was doing a background check on all the tenants."

"That sounds like him."

"Yeah." He picks up his soda to take a long drink. "He mentioned you, and that you were moving in. I remembered."

It fits, it’s plausible. Jungwon would absolutely do something like that ; interview strangers in hallways, gather informations, build a mental map of everyone who might cross your path. He's been doing it since you were kids, since before the accident, before you forgot a quarter your life.

Nonetheless, something about how Jake tells it feels off. The words are right and the timing is too. Yet, his hands are still, and his hands are never still on the daily basis. He's always tapping or fidgeting or running his fingers through his hair, and right now, sitting on this swing in the dark, he's perfectly motionless. You want to push further. There's something in the back of your mind, a nagging feeling that you couldn’t put a finger on. You can’t, the evening is too nice, and he's bought you snacks. You let it go.

"Small world," you say, echoing his words from the night when you took a shower at his place.

"Small world," he agrees.

─────────

You walk into the elderly home with your hair still damp and the taste of the spicy shrimp crackers lingering at the back of your throat. Hanni's already at the nurses' station, flipping through a clipboard with focus, she’s been here for hours. "You look less dead than yesterday," she says without looking up. "That's progress."

"I slept." You hang your jacket on the hook and grab your name tag. "Almost eight hours. Uninterrupted."

"Must be the neighborhood atmosphere." She finally glances at you, there's a knowing tilt to her mouth. "Or something else."

You ignore that last part. The morning unfolds like every other morning ; the slow parade of residents who need help finding their glasses or their dentures or their way back to their rooms. Mrs. Han asks you three times if you've met her son, and you say yes each time, and each time she looks satisfied and moves on. You're in the common room, helping Mr. Chen with a puzzle he's been working on for weeks, when your gaze drifts toward the window. The street outside is quiet, the morning light still pale and thin. And there, on the other side, is Jake. Can he not look hot for just one day?

He's walking three dogs at once ; a golden retriever, a wiry terrier, and a bulldog that seems to be leading the pack. The leashes cross and uncross as the dogs weave around each other, and Jake's holding them with the practiced looseness of someone who's done this a hundred times. He's wearing a worn denim jacket and a few strands of hair are falling on his face, and when he glances up and spots you through the glass, his whole face shifts. He lifts his free hand to give you a small wave, fingers wiggling. You wave back, your brain couldn’t catch.

The bulldog tugs him forward and he's gone, swallowed by the next block. You turn back to the room. Hanni's standing beside you, arms crossed, watching the empty street with an ambiguous expression plastered on her face. "That’s him?" she asks.

"Yeah."

She hums in a considering sound. "He's fucking hot."

You snort, but it comes out wrong, sounding a bit too defensive. "Yeah. He knows it too, I think."

"He doesn't seem like the type who knows it." She shrugs, uncrossing her arms. "He's unaware of his own face."

You don't respond. You're already looking back at the window, though he's long gone. "His nose," you say, the words stumbling right out of your head. "That's the thing. I can't—" You stop yourself, shake your head. "It's nothing."

Hanni could only nod, she understands and hands you a stack of folded towels. "Focus on the towels," she says. "The nose can wait."

You take the towels and get back to work. The image of him across the street stays with you for the rest of the shift.

The sidewalk cracks under your feet as you walk, the sky a pale gray that threatens nothing in particular, hopefully not rain. You pull out your phone, scroll to Jungwon's contact, and press call. He picks up after some time, which means he's either not busy or he's avoiding something.

"What’s up?" he says. "You're calling at a normal time. That's kind of suspicious."

"I'm walking home from work and I thought I'd fill the silence."

"Fill away."

As you ramble on everything, you don’t allow yourself to bring up Jake yet.

"Sounds like you're settling in," Jungwon says. "That's really good, Y/N."

"Yeah." You kick a pebble off the curb. "It's weird, though. Sometimes I forget I'm supposed to be starting over. It just feels like—I don't know. Like I've been here longer."

"You have been there longer. In a way." His voice drops, careful. "You lived there before. Remember?"

You stop walking. A car passes, its headlights cutting through the dusk. You do remember—fragments, not really. The knowledge that you'd been in this city before the accident and the three-year gap in your memory. You'd chosen to come back because something about it felt familiar, even if you couldn't know why.

"Yeah," you say. "I keep forgetting that part."

Silence on his end. You start walking again. "There's this guy," you say carelessly, and you already regret it. "In my building. His name is Jake. We keep running into each other."

"What kind of running into?"

"Literally and figuratively. He nearly killed one of the old folk at my work. Long story." You suddenly pause. "He has this orange keychain. The same one I have. You know, the little fruit thing on my keys."

You can hear him breathing, he's seems like measuring his response. "That's weird," he says. "That's a weird coincidence."

"Yeah, I know." You wait for him to say more but he doesn't. "He also said he met you when you came to check out the apartment before I moved in. You talked in the hallway, isn’t it?"

"I did talk to someone. I don't remember his name, though."

"Jake," you repeat. "You don't remember him?"

"Lot of people in that building. I was there for like an hour." He laughs but it sounds flat. "Why are you asking?"

You don't know why you're asking. The question hangs there, unanswered, as you round the corner and your building comes into view. "Pure curiosity," you say. "He's nice. We went to the convenience store last night."

"The convenience store at night. Like a date?"

"Not a date, it was an apology. His dog knocked over an old man at my work."

Jungwon is quiet for a beat before talking again. "Don’t tell me that you like him."

"It's not like that."

"It's exactly like that. I can hear it in your voice."

You stop at the front door of your building, hand on the handle. It’s cool under your palm. "I don't even know him. We've talked, like, four times."

"And you're already calling him by name. That's more than you do with most people."

You leave the question unanswered. The door opens, and the smell of aged carpet and lingering cooking oil greets you before anything else. "I'll talk to you later," you say.

"Okay. But Y/N—"

"What?"

"Be careful, okay? Just—" He stops. "Just be careful with yourself. You're still figuring things out. I love you."

"I know. Love you too." You hang up and stand in the foyer, phone warm in your hand. The hallway stretches ahead, empty and quiet as usual. You climb the stairs slowly instead of taking the elevator, each step slow. What is happening? Something doesn't add up.

─────────

The banging comes from somewhere down the hall. Sharp and insistent, the sound of a fist against wood or maybe a shoulder against a frame. You freeze mid-step, your keys still in the lock, heart lurching into your throat. The apartment building is usually calm at this hour with the muffled sound of someone's guitar upstairs or television, but nothing like this.

You press your eye to the peephole but the angle is wrong, the fish-eye view showing only the empty stretch of hallway directly outside your door. The banging continues, punctuated by a voice. It’s raised, female, too muffled to make out words but carrying an obvious edge of distress.

The smart move would be staying inside, lock the door, call 911 and wait it out. The sound carries a note of despair that makes you pause. Your mind drifts to the building's elderly residents and the possibility that someone is in trouble. Before the thought has time to settle, you're unlocking the door and pulling it open.

You step into the hallway.

Jake is there, about twenty feet down, his back half-turned to you. A woman stands in front of him, her posture stiff, her hands gesturing in jagged movements. She's undeniably pretty ; dark hair pulled back, a denim jacket, boots that look expensive. Her face is flushed, and even from here you can see the tension in her jaw. "It's not fair," she's saying, her voice cracking. "You can't just—I've been trying for months, Jake. Months. And you just—"

"Luna." Jake's voice is low, placating, his hands raised in that universal gesture of de-escalation. "I've told you. It's not like that. I'm not—"

She scoffs, loud and bitter. "Not what? Not interested? You've made that fucking clear."

You're frozen in the doorway, unsure whether to retreat or announce your presence. The woman's head snaps toward you, her eyes widening for a split second before narrowing.

"Oh," she says, the word dripping with annoyance. Her eyes scan you for approximately 5 seconds. "Great. She’s back." She brushes past you without another word, her shoulder colliding with yours hard enough to make you stumble back a step. The elevator doors close behind her, and it's just you and Jake in the hallway now. He's still standing there, hands lowered now, his face a mingle of exhaustion and embarrassment. He runs a palm over his jaw, lets out a long breath.

She's back. What?

"That," he says, "was not how I wanted you to meet my coworker."

You blink at him. "Coworker?"

"Luna." He points loosely toward the elevator. "She works at the shelter with me. We've known each other since we were kids."

You lean against the doorframe, crossing your arms. "She seemed upset."

"She's been upset for a while." He rubs the back of his neck. "She's had a thing for me. For years. And I keep telling her I don't feel that way, but she doesn't—" He exhales again. "She doesn't take it well."

You raise an eyebrow. "So she followed you home and banged on your door?"

"She showed up unannounced. I was trying to calm her down. She's not a bad person, she just—" He hesitates, searching for the right words. "She's stubborn, and she doesn't like hearing no."

You study him. His shoulders are still tense, his hands are shoved deep into his pockets. He looks genuinely rattled, not like someone who's been caught in a lie. "Childhood friends," you repeat. "she's been flirting with you, and you felt bad for her."

"First, I’m not flirting with her and I’m not planning on it. I felt bad because I know she's lonely. She's been through some stuff. But I can't—" He looks at you, his expression transforming invisibly. "I can't give her what she wants. It wouldn't be fair to her. Or to anyone else."

"I’ve never seen you so flustered," you declare softly. He huffs a laugh, short and breathy. "Yeah, well. You bring out the best in me."

You push off from the doorframe. "She seems like she'll be fine."

"She'll be fine. She always is." He pauses. "Thanks for not assuming the worst."

"I assumed the worst," you admit. " A girlfriend and an angry breakup."

"Not a girlfriend," he says. "Not even close."

You nod, and the moment stretches between you, comfortable but charged. "Goodnight then, Jake."

"Sleep tight, Y/N."

You close the door behind you and lean against it, listening to his footsteps retreat down the hall.

Not a girlfriend. Is he lying?

You don't know why that detail settles in your mind the way it does. You’d rather sleep it away.

─────────

You're coming back from a late shift, leaving your feet sore and your brain half-fogged, when you round the corner to your floor and find the hallway occupied. Four of them, clustered around Jake's door like they're waiting for someone to let them in. You recognize Jake immediately ; he's leaning against the wall, arms crossed, laughing at something one of the others said. The other three are strangers, but they have that easy familiarity with each other, displaying years of friendship.

Jake spots you first. His face shifts, the laugh settling into a smile that's more reserved but no less warm. "Y/N," he says. "You're back late."

"There was a lot of work to do." You slow your pace, your keys already in hand. "I wasn't expecting to see a lot of people today."

One of the strangers ; tall with sharp features and a casual slouch ; he steps forward, extending a hand. "Jay. I've heard about you."

"Good things, I hope."

"Debatable." The one next to him grins, softer, with eyes that crinkle at the corners. "I'm Heeseung. This is Sunghoon, and that's Jenna, his girlfriend."

Jenna waves from where she's tucked under Sunghoon's arm. She has a face that immediately puts you at ease, round and open and curious.

"We were about to have a drink," Jake announces. "You want to join?"

You hesitate. The exhaustion is tugging at your limbs, but the alternative is your empty apartment and the leftover convenience store chips you've been picking at for days. "Sure," you say. "Why not."

His apartment is the same as before, but with four extra bodies it feels smaller, more alive. Jay immediately claims the couch, sprawling like he owns it. Heeseung perches on the armrest. Sunghoon and Jenna take the floor, backs against the coffee table, and Jake gestures for you to take the single chair by the window.

"Drinks are in the kitchen," he says. "Help yourself."

You grab something from the fridge ; a cheap beer, nothing fancy ; and settle into the chair. The conversation flows around you, natural and unforced, as they talk about work and mutual friends and an inside joke about the shelter.

After two or three drinks, someone suggests a game. "Chug or dare," Jay announces, the glint in his eye makes you immediately suspicious. "You know the rules. Pick chug, you finish your drink. Pick dare, you do whatever we come up with. But you’re forbidden to back down."

"Really?" you say. "This is how you treat your guests?"

"Guests are the most fun," Heeseung says. "You're fresh meat."

Jake shoots them a warning look, veiled with exasperation. "You don't have to play. They're idiots."

"We’re not," Sunghoon protests. "Jake, it’s been years since we know each other. Don’t be surprised."

You look around the room. The faces watching you are expectant, amused, a little bit reckless. The knot in your chest loosens. "I’m in. I'm taking Jake down with me, though."

The first few rounds are tame. Heeseung chugs three times in a row and declares himself champion. Sunghoon dares Jay to do a handstand, which he fails spectacularly. Jenna picks dare and has to call her mom and tell her she loves her, which she does with zero hesitation and an extreme level of sincerity.

After that, the bottle lands on you. "Y/N," Jay says, rubbing his hands together. "Chug or dare?"

You weigh your options. Your drink is half-full. "Dare."

Jay leans forward, eyes glittering. "I dare you to tell us what you first thought when you saw Jake."

The room goes quiet. Jake's hand stops mid-reach for his bottle.

"That's not a dare," you say. "That's kind of embarrassing."

"It's the correct functionality of a dare." Heeseung is grinning now, too. "Answer the question."

You look at Jake. He's watching you with a curious expression.

"You want the honest answer?" you ask.

"Always."

"His nose." The words come out neutral. "I thought it was ridiculous how perfect it was. It’s like someone sculpted it. It's annoying, honestly."

A beat of silence. Then Jay doubles over, slapping his knee. Heeseung lets out a wheeze of a laugh. Sunghoon is covering his mouth, eyes wide. Jenna just shakes her head, grinning. Jake's face has gone slightly pink. He looks down at his bottle, then back at you, and his face softens. "That's not what I expected," he says.

"I had to be unpredictable."

The game continues. Jenna gets dared to chug and does it with ease. Sunghoon gets asked if he'd rather fight a bodybuilder or five horses, and he spends five minutes arguing the logistics. Heeseung picks chug three times in a row and is visibly struggling to stay upright, his ears turning bright pink.

It's Jake's turn. "Chug," he says immediately.

"Whoa, not too fast." Jay says. "You're not getting out of it that easy. I'm changing the rules. You have to pick dare."

"Since when can you change the rules?"

"Since I'm the one asking." Jay grins. "Dare : show us the most embarrassing thing on your phone."

Jake's eyes narrow. "I'm not doing that."

"Then you have to answer a question instead," Sunghoon offers. "From anyone in the room. You pick who."

Jake considers this. His gaze scans the room, passing over Jay and Heeseung, settling on you for a moment before moving to Jenna. "Jenna. Ask me anything."

Jenna tilts her head, thinking. "Why did you move back to this city?" The question lands differently than the others. The light atmosphere falters slightly. Jake's jaw tightens, and for a second you see an unguarded expression crossing his features.

"Personal reasons," he says. "I needed to be back here."

"That's vague," Heeseung notes.

"It's still an answer." Jake picks up his bottle. "I'm drinking now." He finishes his drink in one long swallow, and everyone lets it go.

The bottle spins again, lands on you. Jay's turn to ask. "Chug or dare?"

You're feeling the warmth of the alcohol now, loose and careless. "Dare."

"I dare you to kiss Jake."

The room goes dead quiet. You hear someone inhale sharply ; maybe Jenna or yourself. Jake's head snaps toward Jay, disbelief and uncertainty show on his features.

"Jay," he mumbles, his voice has an edge to it. "That's not—"

"Too late," Jay cuts him off. "She already picked. Rules are rules."

You look at Jake. He's sitting across from you, one arm draped over the back of the couch, his bottle dangling from his fingers. The light from the kitchen catches the lines of his face, the curve of his jaw, the bridge of his nose. That stupid, perfect nose. Lord, why would you make me cross paths with a guy that I obviously can’t have? He’s going to be fucking weirded out since I haven’t kiss a single soul in my entire life.

"I don't have to, right?" you say. "I can chug instead."

"You're not chugging." Jay's tone is firm. "That's not how the game works."

The silence lingers. Jake holds your gaze, his expression betraying him ; hesitation, or resolve masquerading as it. Whatever it is, it stays unspoken.

"Jake," you say, and your voice comes out steady. "What do you think?"

He studies you in silence for what feels like an eternity. Then he sets his bottle down with delicate care, rises, and slowly closes the distance between you. "Okay," he says lowly. "If you're okay with it."

You're not sure if you're okay with it. I mean, he’s hot for sure. You're lost right now, while his hand finds the back of your chair, he leans down, his breath is warm and smells faintly of beer. His lips brush your cheek. Soft, quick, almost unsure. It's not a kiss, not really ; it's the ghost of one, lingering just long enough to leave a hot mark. He straightens up and steps back. The room erupts into wolf-whistles and laughter.

"Cheater," Jay yells. "That's not a kiss."

"Mind you, those are my favorite kind." Jake says, and he's looking at you, not at Jay. You touch your cheek, where the warmth of his lips still lingers. Your face is burning, you're not sure if it's embarrassment or something else. "You're a coward," you say, your tone weak.

He smiles, slow and crooked. "You’re going to thank me later."

The game dissolves after that, the energy beginning to loosen, more rambling. Jenna falls asleep against Sunghoon's shoulder. Heeseung starts recounting a story about one of his high school exes. Jake moves to the floor, leaning against the couch, and you find yourself beside him, your shoulders almost touching. Your head starts to pound.

The game continues. The bottle spins, lands on Jay, then Heeseung, then Jenna. People chug or dare with increasing abandon, the alcohol loosening tongues and lowering inhibitions. Sunghoon admits he once cried while arguing with Jenna. You're on your fourth bottle, maybe your fifth. The edges of the room have gone soft and blurry, and you're laughing at something Heeseung said that you're not entirely sure was a joke. Your face feels warm, your limbs loose, and when you lean back against the couch, your shoulder brushes Jake's once again.

The bottle spins again to land on you. Jay's turn, because it's always Jay. "Y/N. Chug or dare?"

"Dare." You're feeling bold, the alcohol humming in your veins. Jay's grin is wicked. "I dare you to spend ten minutes locked in Jake's bedroom. Just the two of you, with no phones."

The room erupts. Sunghoon lets out a low whistle and Heeseung chuckles while nearly passing out on the couch.

Jake shifts beside you. "Okay, let’s stop here—"

"You cheated earlier," Jay cuts him off. "You’ll have to make up for that."

You glance at Jake. His expression gives nothing away, even though the tightness in his jaw wasn't there a moment ago. He watches you closely, waiting for your reaction.

"Ten minutes?" you say. "That's it?"

"That's it."

You stand, and the room tilts slightly. You steady yourself against the arm of the couch. "Fine."

Jake stands too, as hesitant as before. He leads you down the short hallway to his bedroom, and you hear the hoots and catcalls from the living room as the door clicks shut behind you.

The room is small and neat. A bed with rumpled sheets, a dresser with a lamp, a window overlooking the street. And on the nightstand, next to a half-empty glass of water, a photo frame turned face-down.

Jake leans against the door, arms crossed. "You don't have to do this. We can just sit here and wait it out."

"Where's the fun in that?" You're already wandering around, peering at books on the shelf, a guitar propped in the corner. Your eyes keep drifting back to the photo frame. You walk toward it, curiosity tugging at you. "What's this?"

Jake's body goes still. Before you can reach for it, he's there, his hand catching your wrist, turning you toward him. "No, please don’t," he says, and his voice is urgent.

"Why? Is it embarrassing?"

"Something like that."

You're close now, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his eyes, his pupils are dilated, there’s a slight sheen on his lower lip. The alcohol has made you bold and afraid of nothing.

"I want to see," you say.

He leans in for his lips find yours. The kiss is warm, lingering, carrying a soft urgency that feels almost like a plea. Even though you thought you had no experience in kissing, doing it with him nearly felt natural, as much as muscle memory. The world seems to melt around you. Your thoughts dissolve, and the photo frame slips from your mind as completely as if it had never been there. You stumble backward, your calves hitting the edge of the bed, and you fall onto the mattress, pulling him with you. He catches himself on his hands, hovering over you, but your legs are tangled and the momentum shifts and suddenly you're in his lap, straddling him, your knees on either side of his hips.

His hands find your waist, then slide down, settling on your butt. He squeezes, and you gasp against his mouth. He kisses you again, deeper and slower, his tongue brushing your lower lip. You arch into him, your fingers threading through his hair, and he groans, low and rough.

The kiss breaks for a moment, both of you breathing hard. He's looking up at you, his eyes pleading, his lips parted. "Y/N," he murmurs, your name sounds different in his mouth, sounding like it means something more.

You finally get the hang of it and you kiss him again. His hands tighten on your ass, pulling you closer, and you feel the heat of him through both your clothes. The world outside this room fades into static.

Ten minutes pass. Even longer than that.

You feel him shift beneath you, his hips rolling upward in a slow motion, sending a jolt through your entire body. His hands are still firm on your backside, guiding you, and you follow the movement without thinking, your own hips tilting to meet his.

The kiss breaks just long enough for you to gasp, and he takes the opportunity to press his mouth to your jaw, your neck, and the sensitive spot just below your ear. Your fingers tighten in his hair, and you feel the low vibration of a sound that might be his voice or yours, you can't really tell anymore.

He grinds up into you again, and you feel the full heat of him through the denim, the friction of it making your head spin. Your breath is coming in short, uneven bursts, and his is the same ; harsh and ragged against your skin. His hands slide up from your backside to your waist, then back down, pulling you closer, harder, like he's trying to fuse you to him. You're not sure who moves first, but suddenly you're both lying back on the bed, him beneath you, your legs still straddling his hips, the kiss deepening into something messier. His fingers find the hem of your shirt and slip beneath, grazing the bare skin of your lower back, and you shiver.

Someone bangs at the door. Insistent knocks on the bedroom door. Heeseung's voice, muffled but audible. "Time's up! Ten minutes are over! You're not dead, are you?"

You both stop in your tracks. Your foreheads almost touching, your breath mingling in the small space between. He laughs from half-exasperation and half-relief. He drops his head back against the pillow, and you feel the tension in his shoulders subtly ease.

"Ignore him," he says while he's already loosening his grip on your waist, giving you space to pull back. You sit up, your thighs still bracketing his hips, and run a hand through your tangled hair. Your face is burning. Your lips feel swollen. You're acutely aware of every point of contact between you.

"We should—" you start, yet you don't know how to finish the sentence.

"Yeah." He's watching you from beneath half-lidded eyes, a slow smile spreading across his face.

Heeseung bangs again. "I'm not leaving until you open the door! Jay's timing you!"

Jake groans without real frustration in it. He sits up slowly, his hands finding your waist and steadying you as you climb off his lap. You stand, smoothing down your shirt, and he gets to his feet, adjusting his jeans with casualness.

He opens the door.

Heeseung stands there, arms crossed, a triumphant grin on his face. "Took you long enough. What were you doing in there?"

Jake steps past him into the hallway. "Mind your own business."

You follow, keeping your eyes fixed on the floor, you catch Jenna's teasing glance and Jay's eyebrows have shot up past his hairline. You already have to resist the urge to hide behind Jake's shoulder.

"Drink," Heeseung says, shoving a fresh bottle into your hand. "You've earned it."

You take it carelessly. You stand there, feeling the phantom weight of Jake's hands on your waist, the lingering heat of his mouth on your neck. How the fuck am I going to face him after that?

Or any day after.

─────────

A week passes.

Seven days of routine, of work and sleep and the occasional text from Hanni about something absurd a resident did. You walk the same hallways, take the same elevator, pass the same doors. But you don't see Jake ; not in the corridor, not at the coffee shop and not on the street. It's like he's vanished into the walls of the building, existing only in the memory of that night ; the heat of his hands, the press of his mouth, and how your name rolled over his tongue in such a delicate way.

You tell yourself it doesn't matter, that it was just a game, just alcohol, just ten minutes in a locked room that somehow stretched into something you can't stop replaying. You tell yourself you're not looking for him when you walk past his door nor listening for his footsteps on the stairs.

You can’t even lie to yourself.

Jungwon arrives on Friday afternoon, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and a grin that takes up half his face. He hugs you in the doorway, squeezing too tight, and you let him because you've missed him more than you realized.

"Damn. It’s smaller then I remember," he announces, dropping his bag on the floor. "Like, really small. How do you live here?"

"I manage."

"Barely, by the looks of it." He peers at the stack of boxes still in the corner, the ones you haven't touched since you moved in. "You haven't unpacked everything."

"I'm getting to it."

"Yeah, right."

The weekend unfolds. You take him to the park, to the coffee shop, to the elderly home to meet Hanni and Jacob and Mrs. Han. He charms everyone, that's what he does the best, and by the end of the first day he's already promised to visit again.

Sunday afternoon, you're walking back from the park, the sun warm on your shoulders. Jungwon is telling you about a girl in his sociology class, someone he's been dancing around for weeks, he met her that one mixer party, and you're listening with half your attention, the other half occupied by the streets and the weight of your keys in your pocket. You round the corner into your building's corridor.

No way.

Jake.

He's standing by his door, keys in hand, like he's just coming back from somewhere. He looks up as you approach, and for a moment, A subtle change passed over his face. His eyes lit with recognition, followed by a fleeting trace of relief that was quickly replaced by his usual impassive stance.

"Y/N," he says. "Hey."

"Hi."

Jungwon's gaze flickers between you, sharp and assessing. "You're Jake," he says, there's a weight to the words that makes you look at him. Jake's posture shifts, almost imperceptibly. "Yeah. And you're Jungwon."

"You remember me."

"I remember a lot of things." Jake's voice is calm, yet there's a tension in his jaw that wasn't there before. You look between them, suddenly aware that you're missing something. "You two already know each other. From before I moved in, right?"

"Briefly," Jungwon says, and the word is clipped. He turns to you, his expression softening. "Y/N, can you go inside? I want to talk to Jake for a minute."

"What? Why?"

"I—" He hesitates. "I'll explain later. Please."

You look at Jake. He's watching Jungwon with an expression you can't read, and when he meets your gaze, there's something almost apologetic in it.

"Please," Jungwon repeats.

You hesitate, the key in your hand feeling heavier than usual. Jungwon has never asked you for much, and the look on his face is earnest in a way you rarely see. "Fine," you say, and you don't miss the way both of them exhale just slightly. "You better tell me later."

You slip into your room and quietly shut the door behind you. Remaining still, you lean close until your ear rests against the wood, listening for the hushed conversation outside. Only faint murmurs reach you, too muffled to make out.

You stand in the middle of your apartment, staring at the closed door, your hand still resting on the handle. The silence stretches, thick and heavy, broken only by the distant sound of traffic from the street. You count the seconds, then the minutes, your mind spinning through possibilities you can't figure out.

When the door finally opens, Jungwon steps inside and closes it behind him with a soft click. He doesn't meet your eyes immediately, and his shoulders are set in an unusual way ; the tension he carries when something is bothering him but he doesn't want to talk about it.

"Everything okay?" you ask.

He runs a hand through his hair, exhales slowly. "Yeah, it’s fine. It was—" He stops, shakes his head. "He's a little weird. That's all."

"Weird how?"

"I don't know." He shrugs too quickly. "It’s just the way he talks. He sounds like he knows more than he's saying. It's probably nothing."

You study him. His jaw is tight, and there's a crease between his brows that he's trying to smooth away. You've known him your whole life, or at least the parts you remember, and you can tell when he's holding something back. "Jungwon." You keep your voice level. "What did you talk about?"

He moves past you toward the kitchen, opens the fridge, and stares inside with focus. "I just wanted to get a read on him and make sure he's not some weirdo who's going to cause problems for you."

"And?"

"And he's not." He pulls out a bottle of water, twists off the cap to take a long drink. "He seems fine. Genuine, even. I just—" He pauses and sets the bottle down. "I don't know. There's something about him that feels familiar, and I can't figure out what it is."

Your stomach tightens. "Familiar how?"

"I don't know." He says it again, more frustrated this time. "It's probably nothing. I'm probably just being overprotective."

The unease that's lingered since the moment you saw the keychain resurfaces with renewed force. Jake's searching gaze keeps replaying in your mind, refusing to be ignored. Questions crowd your thoughts, but one look at Jungwon's guarded expression tells you this isn't the time to press him. You know he'd only withdraw further.

"Okay," you say. "If you say it's nothing."

"It's nothing." He meets your eyes, something in his gaze that's almost pleading. "Drop it, okay? For now."

You nod, even though every instinct is telling you not to. He relaxes for a bit, and the moment passes. Something is happening. Something you don't understand. And you're starting to think that the answers might not be as simple as you hoped.

─────────

As the door shuts behind Jungwon, the apartment returns to its usual calm. You stand quietly, replaying the fragments of a conversation you were never meant to hear. Whatever Jake said has stayed with him, but his expression is firmly closed off.

You wander into the living room, grab your phone and scroll through notifications. A news alert catches your eye ; an article about the sequel to that movie you've been waiting for, the one you've watched half a dozen times since you moved. Your stomach drops as you read the date. The premiere was last week. You missed it.

You're already moving toward the door before you fully decide to go. Your shorts are fine. The hoodie is fine. It's just a movie, and the theater is only a few blocks away. You don't bother changing or checking your reflection. You grab your keys and step into the hallway.

Jake is at the elevator, walking out as you're heading down. He stops when he sees you, his gaze traveling over your outfit, the urgency in your stride.

"Whoa," he says. "Where's the fire?"

"Movie." You're already past him, one hand on the buttons. "The sequel to that film I've been waiting for. I missed the premiere. I'm trying to catch a showing."

He watches you for a beat, then his hand lands lightly on your arm, stopping you. "Wait. Which movie?"

You tell him the title. His eyebrows lift.

"I like that one too," he says. "I actually have it. The original, I mean. On my laptop. I downloaded the sequel the day it came out."

You blink at him. "You downloaded it?"

"Yeah. I was going to watch it tonight, actually." He drops his hand and shoves it into his pocket. "If you want, you could watch it with me, at my place. Instead of running to the theater in shorts."

The simplicity of his offer makes it harder to dismiss. You think about the movie theater and everything that comes with it, but those thoughts are quickly overshadowed by the past week without him, the lingering uncertainty between you, and the rush of your heartbeat. "That's not weird?" you ask. "Watching a movie with your neighbor you haven't talked to in a week?"

He shrugs, a small smile playing at his mouth. "It's a good movie. And I promise I won't talk during the quiet parts."

You consider it. The hallway is dark, the evening light filtering through the window at the end. He's standing there, patient, and waiting for your answer.

"Okay," you say. "I don’t want to share my snacks, though."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

You follow him to his door, your footsteps echoing in the hallway. His apartment is just as you remember it ; the guitar, the books, the soft warm lights. He gestures toward the couch while he grabs his laptop from the coffee table and plugs it to the TV. You settle into the cushions, pulling your knees up, the hoodie swallowing you. The screen lights up, the opening credits rolling. He sits at the other end of the couch, a respectful distance between you, and hits play.

The movie plays on, but neither of you is really watching anymore. The scenes blur into background noise, punctuated by your shared laughter at a line you both find cliché, a character you both hate, a moment that still makes you cringe after all these years. Between scenes, you talk ; about the original movie, about other films, about nothing at all ; and the space between you shrinks with each exchange.

You barely register the moment his arm comes to rest along the back of the couch. The small brush of his fingertips against your shoulder goes unnoticed too. It's only when his hand settles there, warm and reassuring, his thumb lazily drawing slow circles over your hoodie, that you become aware of just how close he is. The blanket is draped over both of you, a thin barrier against the cool air of the apartment. His other hand slips beneath it, finding your thigh, resting there with a casualness that feels anything but like it. You lean into him, your head drifting toward his shoulder, the conversation fading into comfortable silence.

The movie continues, although you can feel your eyes becoming heavy. The warmth of his hand on your thigh, the rhythm of his breathing, the low murmur of dialogue from the TV ; it all blends into a haze of contentment. Your eyelids droop, flutter, close.

"Y/N." His voice is soft, barely above a whisper. "You're falling asleep."

"Mmm." You don't open your eyes. "I know."

"Do you want to go back?"

The room stays quiet as his words linger. Beyond the door waits a dark hallway, an empty apartment, and a bed that has already gone cold. The image settles over you like a burden, leaving you with little desire to leave.

"I don't want to move," you murmur, the words slurred with sleep.

He's quiet for a moment before he decides to speak. "You could stay here if you want. I have an extra blanket, or—" He pauses. "The bed's big enough."

You lift your head, blinking at him. His face is so close, his eyes soft in the low light of the screen. There's no expectation in his expression, no pressure. It’s an offer.

"Okay," you say.

He stands, extends a hand, and pulls you gently to your feet. You both walk shortly to his bedroom. He pulls back the covers, and you slip in, the mattress dipping under your weight. He climbs in behind you, his arm finding your waist, pulling you close. His chest presses against your back, his legs tangling with yours, and you feel his breath warm against the curve of your neck.

"You smell so good," he murmurs, the words a low vibration against your skin.

You laugh, low and drowsy. "I haven't showered."

"Don't care." His nose brushes your hairline. "You always smell good."

His arm tightens around you, his hand splayed across your stomach. His lips press a soft, absent kiss to your shoulder, then another, barely there. "Your skin is so soft too," he confies, you can hear the smile in his voice. "I wanted to tell you that before. When you got out of the shower at my place, that first time. But I didn't want to be weird."

"You're being weird now," you mumble, but you're smiling too.

"Keep acting like you don’t like it." He nuzzles into your neck. "I'm okay with it."

You feel his hand slide from your stomach to your hip, his thumb tracing slow circles against the bone. His breath evens out, his body relaxing behind you, and you feel yourself sinking into the warmth of him.

"Jake," you say, barely audible.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for letting me stay."

He squeezes you gently, his lips pressing against your hair. "Anytime, Y/N."

Curled against his chest, you slowly surrender to sleep. His arm remains securely around you, its warmth grounding you until the last of your thoughts dissolve.

─────────

The sunlight filters through the curtains, and you blink awake slowly, your mind still thick with sleep. The bed is warm, the sheets tangled around your legs, however, the space beside you is empty. You reach out, your hand finding only cool fabric.

You lie there for a moment, orienting yourself. Jake's room. Jake's bed. The events of the night before trickle back in fragments. You check your phone on the nightstand. Saturday, 9:47 AM. Two days off stretching ahead of you, unplanned and open. You pad out of the bedroom, still in the oversized hoodie you wore last night, your hair a mess and your eyes half-opened. The smell of coffee hits you brutally. Jake is standing at the kitchen counter, a mug in one hand, his phone in the other. He's in a plain white t-shirt and gray sweatpants, his hair still sleep-tousled, and he looks up when he hears your footsteps.

"Morning," he says, his voice so soft and reassuring. "I didn't want to wake you. You looked comfortable."

"You're still here," you say, your voice scratchy. "Don't you have work?"

He shakes his head. "Day off. I figured I'd take it easy."

You close the distance without giving yourself time to hesitate. Slipping your arms around his waist from behind, you rest your cheek between his shoulder blades. Warmth radiates through him, and you feel his entire body go still beneath your embrace. He stays still. His breath barely catches, and you feel the tension ripple through his shoulders. After that, his hand comes down to rest over yours, his thumb brushing across your knuckles.

"Y/N," he says, and his voice is rougher than before. "You're going to make me drop my coffee."

"Put it down, then."

He does as you say. You hear the mug clink against the counter, and then he's turning in your arms, his hands finding your waist, his face close to yours. A flush is creeping up his neck, pink and noticeable, the sight of it makes thousands of sparks flicker in your stomach.

"You're blushing." you observe.

"I’m not," he says, his ears are red now, and he's not meeting your eyes. "I just wasn't expecting a hug. First thing in the morning. From someone who—" He stops, clears his throat. "Never mind."

"From someone who what?"

He finally looks at you, vulnerability filling his gaze completely. "From someone I really didn't want to wake up alone."

Words fail you, so you simply stay where you are. He pulls you into him, holding you with gentleness before resting his forehead against the top of your head. As he breathes in deeply, the strain he'd been carrying begins to slip away.

"Your hair smells like my shampoo," he mumbles into your hair.

"Your shampoo smells good."

"It's just generic stuff from the convenience store."

"Still smells good."

He laughs, soft and warm, and his arms tighten around you. "That sounded stupid, doesn’t it?"

You smile and chuckle against his chest. "A little bit."

You only eat eggs, toasts and drink coffee, but it feels like more than that. You sit across from him at his small kitchen table, the soft light of the sun landing on his face, and the conversation flows easily between bites.

He tells you about the shelter and problems that he had when he took care of a dog for the first time, and you do the same.

"It's a good job," you say, stirring your coffee. "Exhausting, but good. They make me laugh sometimes."

"They sound like characters."

"They are." You pause, watching him over the rim of your mug. "Can I ask you something personal?"

He looks up, a hint of wariness in his eyes, but he nods. "Sure."

"Why did you move back here? You said that night at the game—personal reasons. But you didn't elaborate."

He's quiet for a moment, his fork hovering over his plate. "I had some things to figure out," he says slowly. "Things I couldn't figure out anywhere else."

"Like what?"

He meets your gaze, something you can’t quite read passes across his face. "Like whether some things are worth coming back for."

The answer is vague and careful, yet there's a weight to it that makes you not want to know more about it. So you don't.

"Your turn," you say instead. "You can ask me anything."

He sets down his fork, considering. "What made you choose this city? Out of all the places you could have gone."

You look down at your coffee. The steam rises in slow spirals. "I used to live here. Before the accident." You say it matter-of-factly, you've learned to say it over the past year. "I don't remember it, but something about it felt right. Like I was supposed to come back."

"The accident," he repeats, and his voice is measured now. "You've mentioned it before. The memory loss."

"Yeah." You wrap your hands around the mug, let the warmth seep into your palms. "Three years. Just gone. I woke up in the hospital and suddenly I was 22, and I didn't remember being 21, 20 and even 19. My brother had to tell me who I was friends with, where I'd worked, what I'd done." You pause. "It's strange. Knowing there's a version of yourself out there that you'll never meet."

Jake is watching you intently, his breakfast forgotten. "That must have been hard," he says quietly.

"It was. Still is, sometimes. There are things I know I'm supposed to remember—people, places, moments—and I just can't access them. It’s like a locked door I don't have the key to."

He's silent for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is softer than before. "Do you ever feel like you're close to remembering? Or that something triggers it?"

You consider the question. "Sometimes it’s little things. A smell, a song, or an object." You think of the keychain, the one that matches his. "But it never sticks. It's just—there and it’s gone."

He nods slowly.

"Sorry," you say. "That got heavy."

"Don't apologize." He reaches across the table, his hand covering yours. "Thank you for telling me."

You look at his hand on yours, warm and soft. "Your turn," you say, trying to lighten the mood. "Ask me something else."

He thinks for a moment. "What's your favorite thing about this city? Now that you're back."

You smile, the tension easing. "The coffee shop on the corner. They have terrible pastries but really good lattes."

He laughs, and the sound fills the kitchen. "I'll have to try it sometime."

"Maybe I'll take you." The words come out before you can stop them, and you feel a flush creep up your neck.

He squeezes your hand. "I'd like that."

The morning stretches into a lazy afternoon. You've migrated to the couch, your phone in one hand, scrolling through nothing in particular. Jake is stretched out beside you, his head resting on your thigh like it belongs there, his own phone held above his face. The weight of him is warm and familiar now, and you've stopped overthinking how his hair brushes against your bare knee.

He's quiet, focused on whatever he's reading, his thumb occasionally swiping. You're half-watching a video on your own screen, the sound muted, when you feel his body shift. A pause. His thumb stops moving.

Then his free hand moves, quick and unexpected, his fingers finding the spot just above your knee. He digs in lightly, and you jolt, your phone nearly slipping from your grip.

"Jake!" Your voice comes out loud, a mix of surprise and laughter. "What are you doing?"

He grins, an unapologetic grin, and his fingers keep moving, dancing along the sensitive skin of your thigh. You try to twist away, but his head is still heavy on your lap, pinning you in place, and he's using his other hand to trap your leg.

"Stop—" You're laughing, breathless, trying to grab his wrist. "I'm serious—"

"Are you?" His voice is teasing and low. His fingers find your ribs, and you arch, a helpless sound escaping you.

"You're the fucking worst." You manage to grab his hand, but he's stronger, and he uses the momentum to roll slightly, shifting so he can reach your side. The tickling intensifies, and you're squirming, your free hand batting at his shoulder.

"Say I'm the best," he says, his voice muffled against your stomach.

"Never."

He doubles down, and you dissolve into helpless laughter, your phone clattering onto the floor. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes.

"Okay—okay—you're the best." The words come out in a wheeze. "You're the best, Jake. I surrender."

He stops, his hand stilling, still he doesn't move away. His face is close now, hovering over you, his eyes bright with amusement and softness beneath.

"That was easy," he says.

"Fuck you."

"You wouldn't," He settles back down, and you slap his arm for the comment. His head finding your lap again, his hand resting loosely on your knee. "Don't worry. I'll go easy on you next time."

You pick up your phone with your heart is still racing, and you can feel the warmth of his palm through the thin fabric of your shorts.

A random movie starts on the laptop screen, playing as background noise to fill the silence. You're sitting on the floor between Jake's legs, your back against the couch, your head tilted back slightly as his fingers work through your hair. He's been at it for a while now, separating strands, twisting them together, muttering under his breath when they slip apart.

"Like this?" he asks, his voice close to your ear.

"Tighter," you say. "You're not pulling enough."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't. Just—here." You reach up, your hand finding his, guiding his fingers to the right section. "Hold that one. Now cross it over the middle. Yes, like that."

He follows your instructions with concentration and that makes you smile. His fingers are careful, delicate, and you feel the gentle tug as he works through a tangle.

"You've done this before, no?" you say.

"Never. I'm just naturally talented."

You snort. "We'll see about that."

Another minute passes. He's quiet, too focused, and you can feel the slight movement of his hands as he continues his work. You're both lost in the small intimacy of the moment.

"Okay," he says finally. "I think I got it."

You reach up, your fingers brushing against the braid he's made. It's lopsided, uneven, with strands sticking out at odd angles. You tug at it gently, and a section comes loose.

"It's bad," you say, and you can hear the laughter in your own voice.

He lets out a mock-offended sound. "I spent ten minutes on that."

"Ten minutes and this is what I get?"

"I'm a beginner. Tell me I’m doing good. Please."

You turn your head to look up at him. He's pouting weakly, his bottom lip pushed out, his eyes looking down with exaggerated hurt.

"Okay," you relent. "You did great."

His expression shifts instantly, the pout melting into a pleased smile. "Really?"

"For a first try. It's not completely terrible."

"High praise." His hand finds your shoulder, squeezing gently. "I'll take it."

You settle back against the couch, your head still tilted to look at him. He's looking down at you, his gaze soft, unguarded, letting you see something he usually keeps hidden.

"These past few days," he says, his voice quieter now. "They've been—I don't know. I've been comfortable. More than I have in a while."

"You're not going to get all sentimental on me, are you?"

He laughs, low and warm. "Maybe a little. Is that okay?"

You wait and watch him, the light catches his eyes, the slight curve of his mouth. The air between you feels heavier now. He leans forward, his face hovering above yours, and you feel a pull ; something that tugs at the edges of your memory. The feeling is fleeting, gone before you can grasp it, yet it leaves a warmth in its wake.

"Y/N," he says, your name sounds different on his lips.

Suddenly, his mouth is on yours, gentle and upside down, his lips soft against your own. You lean into him, your hand reaching up to cup his jaw, and the kiss deepens. His fingers thread through your hair, careful not to pull the messy braid loose, and you tilt your head further to meet him. The angle is awkward, the position of him behind you and you below making it clumsy, but you don't want to stop.

When he finally pulls back, his face above yours by an inch, his breath is uneven.

"You’re so pretty that it hurts," he admits, his voice barely above a whisper. "I could handle a little pain, though."

"You don't look bad yourself." You chuckle softly, close your eyes and let yourself feel it ; the warmth of him, the pace of his heart against your back, the small certainty that this is exactly where you're supposed to be.

Now, the movie has ended, the credits scrolling silently across the screen. Silence remains in the living room. You've shifted positions, no longer on the floor but curled together on the couch, your back against his chest, his arms wrapped around you. His legs bracket yours, and your head rests in the crook of his neck, the warmth of him seeping through your t-shirt.

His lips find your temple first, light and sweet, a barely-there press of skin against skin. Then your cheek. Then the corner of your eye. Each kiss is soft, as he's memorizing the geography of your face. You feel the slight stubble on his jaw brush against you.

"Are you still going to kiss every inch of my face?" you murmur, your eyes closed.

"Every single one." He punctuates the words with another kiss, this one on the bridge of your nose. "I have a list. It's very thorough."

You laugh, tired and content, and his arms tighten around you. His lips trail down to your jaw, then your chin, then the spot just below your ear.

"Getting distracted?" you ask.

"Completely." Another kiss, this one on your neck. "This is your fault for being here."

"I didn't do anything."

"You’re existing right now, so deal with the consequences."

You tilt your head back, giving him more access, and he takes the invitation, his mouth trailing along the curve of your throat. His kisses are still gentle, almost reverent, but they linger a little longer now.

His fingers find your hand, lace through yours, squeeze once. You feel the weight of his lips on your shoulder, your collarbone, the soft skin just above the neckline of your hoodie. Then back up, retracing the path, pausing at your cheek again.

"You're very thorough," you manage, your voice dreamy.

"I told you. I'm a man of my word."

He presses one last kiss to the corner of your mouth, soft and sweet, and then settles his chin on the top of your head, his arms still wrapped around you like he's afraid you'll disappear.

You don’t want to move. The afternoon light has shifted, growing gold, and the room feels suspended in a bubble of warmth and intimacy.

"Jake," you say, your voice barely above a whisper.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For today. For all of it."

He presses his lips to your hair, a silent reply, and you feel his smile against the strands. The last kiss lingers, right against your hair, and then you tilt your head up, catching his mouth with yours. It's not the upside-down kiss from before, this one is direct and utterly intentional, your lips finding his with unexpected certainty. He responds immediately, his hand cupping your jaw, angling you toward him.

You feel his other hand slide from your shoulder down your side, settling on your hip. You shift, twisting in his arms, and before you know it, you're turning to face him properly. Your knees find the cushion on either side of his thighs, and you settle into his lap, straddling him, your chest pressed against his.

His hands find your waist immediately, gripping you through the fabric of your t-shirt, his fingers splaying across the curve of your hips. He pulls you closer, and you feel the strong warmth of him beneath you, his breath hitches slightly as you settle your weight against him.

"You're going to make it hard to stop." he murmurs against your lips while he's smiling.

"That’s too bad." you whisper back, you could feel the vibration of his laugh.

─────────

It’s been an hour. You’re still straddling Jake, your knees sinking into the cushions on either side of his hips as your mouths move together in a heated, urgent kiss. His lips are warm and demanding, although there’s a delicious clumsiness to the way he kisses you ; teeth grazing a little too eagerly, his tongue sliding against yours with more hunger than precision. He’s so turned on he can barely focus, and it shows in every shaky breath and muffled sound.

His large hands slide down your back and grip your ass firmly now, fingers digging into the soft flesh with possessive strength. He squeezes and fondles you without restraint, kneading your cheeks as he pulls you harder against the growing bulge in his sweatpants. A low throaty moan echoes from his chest into your mouth, raw and needy, sending a rush of heat straight through you.

He breaks the kiss for half a second to gasp for air, forehead lightly pressed to yours, before diving back in even sloppier than before ; lips wet, tongue eager, hands still greedily massaging and spreading your ass as he rocks you against him. His grip is tight enough to leave marks, but the way he groans your name between kisses makes it impossible to care.

You pull back to catch your breath, your hands resting on his chest as you look down at him with flushed cheeks. His eyes are veiled with want, lips slightly swollen from the messy kiss, and his hands are still firmly anchored to your ass, unwilling to let go.

“Sorry,” you whisper, voice a little shaky. “If I’m bad at this…it’s my first time doing any of it, really.”

Jake blinks up at you, his breath still ragged. For a moment his grip on your ass loosens slightly, but then he squeezes again, almost reassuringly. A soft surprised chuckle escapes him before he leans in and presses a gentler kiss to the corner of your mouth.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs against your lips, his voice husky and sincere. “I’ve never gotten past a kiss either. So…we’re both figuring this out.”

He pulls you closer again, one hand sliding up your back while the other stays possessively on your ass, and kisses you slower now ; still clumsy with need, still moaning softly into your mouth, but now with a shared nervousness that somehow makes everything feel even hotter.

You smile softly against his lips at his confession, a warm flutter of relief mixing with the heat in your belly. Boldness comes through you, you slide one hand down his chest, slowly tracing the ridges of his abs through the thin fabric of his shirt. Your fingertips press lightly, exploring the firm muscle beneath, and Jake’s entire body jolts under you.

He gasps sharply into your mouth, hips twitching upward as a shiver runs through him. He’s incredibly sensitive there ; every slow drag of your fingers makes his muscles tense and twitch. Another involuntary moan slips out of him, breathier than before.

“S-sorry,” he blurts out by reflex, cheeks burning as he pulls back just an inch, eyes half-lidded and embarrassed. His hands tighten on your ass again, almost like he’s grounding himself. “I’m just…really sensitive. Fuck, that feels good.”

He leans in quickly to kiss you again, clumsier now from the rush of sensation, his abs contracting under your exploring touch as he rocks you gently against him, clearly fighting the urge to apologize a second time.

You keep tracing his abs, feeling them flex and twitch under your fingertips, when his breathing grows even heavier. His hands squeeze your ass one last time before sliding up to your hips. He leans in close, lips brushing your ear as he whispers softly, voice rough with arousal.

“Take your panties off for me…please?”

The words send a fresh wave of heat through you. You hesitate, suddenly shy, cheeks burning as you bite your lip and glance away. Jake notices immediately. A small affectionate smirk tugs at his lips despite how flustered he is.

“What’s wrong?” he teases gently, voice playful, his fingers tracing slow circles on your hips. “Don’t get all shy on me now…I’m dying here.”

You swallow hard, heart racing, but the way he’s looking at you ; equal parts desperate and sweet ; makes you brave. Instead of taking them off completely, you reach the hem of your shorts and throw them next to the couch, hook your fingers into the side of your panties, and push the damp fabric aside, exposing yourself to him.

“You can touch me,” you whisper, voice barely audible.

Jake’s eyes widen slightly. He nods slowly, one hand sliding from your hip down between your bodies. His middle finger gently traces along your slick folds, testing, before he slowly pushes it inside you ; careful, inch by inch, watching your face the whole time to make sure it’s okay. His breath catches at how warm and wet you feel around his finger, and he lets out a shaky moan, forehead dropping to your shoulder.

“Fuck…is this alright?” he murmurs, voice trembling with restraint as he holds still, letting you adjust.

You let out a shaky breath, hips shifting slightly against his hand as his finger moves inside you.

“That feels good,” you whisper, voice breathy and honest. “Really good…”

Jake’s eyes light up with relief and hunger. Encouraged, he slowly pulls his middle finger back, then carefully pushes two fingers in this time ; his middle and ring finger ; stretching you more. He’s clumsy about it, his movements a little uncoordinated from how turned on he is, but the gentle pressure feels incredible as he works them deeper.

He starts to pump them slowly, trying to find a rhythm, when suddenly his breath hitches.

“Wait—” he says quickly, almost like he remembered something.

Before you can respond, he curls his fingers upward, searching. The moment he hits that sensitive spot inside you, a loud, involuntary moan escapes your lips, loud and needy. Your thighs tremble around him as pleasure jolts through your body.

His face flushes deeper, a proud but clumsy grin breaking across his face even as he keeps awkwardly pumping and curling his fingers, trying to do it again. His free hand grips your ass tightly for balance, his own breathing ragged and uneven while he watches you react, completely lost in how you sound and feel.

You’re still trembling from the sudden rush of pleasure when he slows his fingers, keeping them buried inside you. He looks up at you with those wide, needy eyes, his cheeks flushed and his breathing ragged.

“Tell me I’m doing good…” he whispers, voice deep and a little vulnerable as he searches your face. “Please?”

You cup his face gently in both hands, thumbs brushing over his warm cheeks. Leaning down, you kiss him softly, tenderly, your lips lingering against his for a long moment. When you pull back just enough to speak, you gaze softens.

“You’re being so good to me,” you murmur. “It feels really good, Jake…keep going.”

A relieved moan slips from him at your words. His eyes flutter half-closed, and he presses into your touch like he’s starving for the praise. His fingers start moving again ; still a little clumsy and eager ; pumping slowly in and out while curling every few strokes to hit that spot that make you squirm. His free hand squeezes your ass tighter, pulling you closer as he kisses you back, messy and grateful.

You keep kissing him, slow and sweet, when Jake suddenly pulls his fingers out of you with a wet sound that makes you both blush. He shifts underneath you, breathing hard, and hurriedly works open his jeans.

“I need to feel you more,” he mutters, voice thick with desperation.

He lifts his hips and shoves his pants and boxers down just enough to free himself. His cock springs out, hard and throbbing, already leaking at the tip. You barely get a look at it before he pulls you back down onto his lap, lining you up so your bare, soaked pussy presses directly against his length. You start moving again, grinding with your panties still pushed to the side. The hot, velvety shaft of his cock slides perfectly between your slick folds, the head bumping against your clit with every roll of your hips. Jake groans loudly, head falling back against the couch as his hands return to grip your ass, guiding you faster.

“Fuck…you feel so good,” he moans, clumsy and desperate. He’s getting impossibly harder beneath you, his dick twitching and throbbing with every grind. His hips jerk up to meet yours, uncoordinated and eager, making wet sounds every time your slick heat drags along his entire length.

He looks completely wrecked already ; lips parted, eyes hazy with desire, fingers digging into your ass as he rocks you harder against him, chasing more of that delicious friction. You keep grinding against him, the slick sounds growing louder as both of you get messier. Your panties are completely soaked, the fabric clinging wetly to your folds, and his boxers ; now bunched around his thighs ; are dark with your arousal too.

Jake lets out a frustrated groan and lifts you just enough to shove his boxers the rest of the way down his legs, kicking them off. He reaches into his pocket, tears open a condom with shaky hands, and rolls it on quickly, his cock twitching hard as he does. You move to slide your panties down, but he catches your wrists gently, stopping you.

“Wait—” he breathes, voice hoarse. His eyes drop to where your soaked panties are still pushed to the side, the pretty fabric framing your glistening pussy. “Don’t take them off. They’re too pretty on you like this…looks so fucking hot.”

He pulls you back down onto him, guiding the head of his cock to nudge against your entrance through the shifted fabric. His hands return to your ass, squeezing firmly as he looks up at you with doe, desperate eyes, clearly waiting for you to take the next step while his throbbing length presses impatiently against your heat.

You brace your hands on his shoulders and slowly sink down onto him, taking every inch of his cock inside your tight, soaked heat. The stretch is intense, making you gasp and pause halfway before you breathe through it and slide all the way down until your hips meet his. Jake’s head falls back with a deep, broken moan, his fingers digging hard into your ass.

But after a few seconds, the latex feels uncomfortable and distant. You lift yourself off him, quickly peel the condom away, and sink back down onto his bare cock before he can protest. The raw heat of him makes you both moan.

His eyes fly open in panic. “Wait—fuck—baby—” he stammers, hands gripping your waist tightly as his cock throbs hard inside you. His face is flushed with alarm even as pleasure clouds his expression.

You can’t help but laugh softly at his wide-eyed reaction, the sound breathy and fond. “It’s okay,” you whisper, leaning down to kiss him.

You start moving ; not bouncing, but grinding slowly in deep circles with him fully buried inside you. The pressure against that sensitive spot makes you whimper, but it completely wrecks Jake. He moans loudly, the sound raw and uncontrolled, his whole body tensing beneath you.

Suddenly, his hands clamp around your waist and he lifts you straight up, pulling out of you with a wet pop. You blink in confusion, hovering above him as his cock twitches angrily in the open air, slick with your juices.

“I was about to cum,” he pants, voice strained and embarrassed. “You’re too warm and tight…and I’m really sensitive right now. Fuck, I almost didn’t stop in time.”

He looks up at you, chest heaving, cheeks burning red as he tries to catch his breath, still holding you suspended above his lap.

You hover above him for a moment, still catching your breath, then bite your lip shyly and whisper, “It’s okay…if it happens and you cum inside me, I can take the morning after pill.”

Jake looks up at you, eyes glassy from the pleasure, his chest still rising and falling rapidly. He swallows hard, then nods, his hands gently squeezing your waist. “Okay…but I’ll still try to be careful,” he murmurs. “I don’t want to mess this up for you.”

You smile softly at his sweetness and slowly sink back down onto his bare cock, taking him all the way inside again with a soft gasp. Once he’s fully buried, you resume grinding on him in deep circles, your soaked pussy clenching around his thick length.

He groans loudly, his head tipping back for a second before he looks down to where your bodies are joined. His hands slide firmly onto your hips, fingers digging in as he starts guiding you harder against him. He pulls and pushes you in longer, more insistent grinds, forcing your clit to rub against the base of his cock with every roll.

Sloppy sounds fill the room as your soaked folds slide back and forth along his shaft. The harder he makes you grind, the louder the sounds get, your arousal coating him completely. Jake’s moans turn ragged and desirous, his abs flexing under your hands while he stares at the way your pretty panties, still pushed aside, frame your pussy taking every inch of him.

You keep grinding on him, the wet sounds growing filthier with every roll of your hips, when Jake suddenly sits up straighter. One of his hands slides up your back, pulling you closer as his mouth finds your neck.

He starts licking and kissing the sensitive skin there, sucking gently at first, then harder, while his hips snap upward. He shifts from letting you grind to actively pounding into you, thrusting deep and fast from below. Each rough stroke makes you whimper, your fingers clutching his shoulders as pleasure spikes through you.

“I’m sorry—” he whispers hotly against your neck, voice strained and weak between open-mouthed kisses. His thrusts grow erratic, sloppy, and frantic. “Fuck, I’m so sorry…I’m gonna cum inside you.”

His grip on your hips tightens almost painfully as he buries himself as deep as he can, moaning loudly into your neck while his cock throbs hard inside your tight heat. His body trembles beneath you, clearly fighting it for only a second longer before he loses control.

You cry out as the intense rhythm pushes you over the edge right along with him. Your orgasm crashes through you hard, walls clenching and fluttering wildly around his cock as waves of pleasure rip through your body. At the same moment, Jake groans deeply into your neck and starts cumming, pulsing hot and thick inside you with every thrust.

Still trembling and moaning from your climax, you gasp out quickly, “Finger me—please—”

You don’t need to tell him twice. He lifts you off his cock with a wet sound, lays you back on the couch, and slides two fingers deep into your dripping pussy. He keeps them buried inside you, pumping slowly and softly, curling them gently against that sensitive spot while his thumb rests lightly on your clit.

“Fuck—that’s it,” he whispers soothingly against your ear, voice gentle even as he’s still catching his breath. “You’re doing so good. Let it all out for me.”

His fingers move in slow strokes, drawing out every last pulse of your orgasm as he kisses your neck and jaw. “So pretty when you cum…keep squeezing around my fingers, baby. I’ve got you.”

He stays close, murmuring soft praises while his fingers continue their gentle rhythm inside your soaked heat, helping you ride through the aftershocks.

An hour later, you’re sprawled on the couch with your legs spread wide, one draped lazily over the armrest. Jake kneels between your thighs, his hands resting on your inner thighs to keep you open.

He starts with broad strokes of his tongue, licking up and down your slick pussy, tasting the mess you two made earlier. Then he dives in deeper, pressing his whole mouth against you and kissing your folds like he’s making out with them ; soft, wet, hungry kisses that make filthy sounds echo in the living room.

A deep moan escapes you as his tongue swirls around your clit.

Jake pulls back just enough to grin up at you, lips glistening. “Hey, you gotta be quiet,” he teases in a joking tone, eyes sparkling with mischief. “I can’t hear the TV show if you’re moaning like that. Rude.”

You try to focus on the screen, but the pleasure is making you sleepy and relaxed. Your eyelids start to flutter, growing heavier as you sink deeper into the couch.

Without warning, Jake tightens his grip on your thighs and thrusts his tongue straight into your pussy, fucking you with it in deep, firm strokes. Your eyes snap open with a sharp gasp, hips twitching against his face as the sudden intensity jolts you awake.

He pulls back for a second, smirking. “There you go. Can’t have you falling asleep on me already,” he murmurs playfully, before diving right back in, tongue thrusting into you again while his nose nudges your clit.

His hands hold you firmly in place as he eats you out with renewed energy, clearly determined to keep you wide awake and moaning.

You can’t hold back anymore.

The steady thrust of Jake’s tongue inside you, combined with the way his nose keeps rubbing against your swollen clit, pushes you straight over the edge. Your second orgasm hits hard and fast. Your thighs clamp around his head as you cry out, back arching off the couch while waves of pleasure crash through you.

While you’re still cumming, he quickly pulls his tongue out and replaces it with two fingers, sliding them deep into your clenching pussy. He curls them gently against that sensitive spot, pumping them slowly and steadily to draw out your orgasm even longer.

“That’s it…cum on my fingers again, baby,” he murmurs against your thigh, voice low and husky as he watches you fall apart. “Fuck, you’re squeezing so tight.”

He keeps fingering you through every pulse and shudder, soft and deep, never rushing. His thumb moves up to circle your clit lazily, prolonging the pleasure until your moans turn into breathy whimpers and your body finally starts to relax.

Even then, he doesn’t pull his fingers out right away. He leaves them buried inside your warm, fluttering heat, gently stroking your walls while he kisses the inside of your thigh, looking up at you with a satisfied, slightly smug smile.

─────────

Both of you cuddling in his bed, and sleep finally gets to you. You're both tangled in his sheets, limbs intertwined, the warmth of his body a grounding presence against your back. His arm is draped over your waist, his breath slow and even against your neck, and you can feel the occasional press of his lips against your shoulder ; delicate, absent, as he's kissing you even in his sleep.

You should be content and you are content. Nevertheless, there's a dull ache beginning to throb behind your eyes, a persistent pressure that makes you wince when you shift against the pillow.

"Jake," you murmur, your voice rough. "I have a headache."

He stirs behind you, his arm tightening around your waist. "Mmm?"

"A headache. Do you have any painkillers?"

He blinks, his eyes still heavy with sleep. "Bathroom cabinet on the top shelf. There's a bottle."

You start to untangle yourself, but his arm holds you for a moment longer, pulling you back against him. "Don't go," he mumbles, his nose brushing your ear.

"I'll be right back." You press a kiss to his knuckles, and he loosens his grip.

You pad out of the bedroom, the cool air of the apartment raising goosebumps on your bare skin. You grab the shirt he'd left on the floor ; his shirt, the one he'd worn earlier ; and pull it over your head. It falls to your thighs, soft and worn, and you feel a small thrill at the intimacy of it.

The bathroom is as small as you could remember the last time you took a shower, the light harsh when you flick it on. You find the painkillers easily, shake two into your palm, and turn to get water.

You pause.

The drawer next to the sink is slightly open, just a crack, and something inside catches your eye. You don't know why you reach for it. Curiosity, maybe. The same instinct that made you want to see the photo frame by his bed.

You pull it open.

The drawer is filled with photographs ; loose, some curled at the edges, same as snapshots you'd find in a shoebox under a bed. But these aren't random. You recognize the faces.

Your face. And Jake's face.

Both of you, younger. His hair is different, shorter, but the smile is the same. Your hair is shorter too, your eyes brighter, and you're pressed together like you've known each other for years. In another, you're at a café, holding up coffee cups, laughing at something off-camera. In another, you're in a park, your head on his shoulder, his arm around you like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Your hands are shaking. You dig deeper, pulling out more photos. One with your parents. Your mother's arm around you, your father's hand on Jake's shoulder, and the four of you are smiling at the camera like a family.

Another with Jungwon. He's younger, his face rounder, and he's giving a thumbs-up while Jake ruffles his hair.

You drop the photos. They scatter across the floor, and you stumble back, your back hitting the bathroom wall.

This doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense. You don't remember any of this. You've never seen these photos before in your life. But your face is there, your smile, your eyes. And Jake is there too, always beside you, he's always been part of the picture.

The memory loss. The three years.

You feel the world tilt beneath you, the edges of your vision going fuzzy. The photos on the floor stare up at you, silent and damning.

"Y/N?"

Jake's voice. He's at the doorway, his eyes still sleep-soft, and he's holding a glass of water. He takes one step into the bathroom, then stops. His gaze drops to the photos scattered around your feet.

The glass slips from his fingers. It shatters against the tile, water spreading in a river across the floor.

"Y/N," he says again, and his voice is different now, sounding afraid.

You look at him. At the face you've come to know over these past weeks. The face you've kissed, laughed with, let hold you. The face that has been hiding everything from you.

"You knew me?" you say, and your voice comes out flat, hollow. "You knew me before?"

He doesn't answer as the look on his face says it all.

"All this time," you continue, the words spilling out now, unstoppable. "You knew everything. You knew me. You knew me and you didn't say anything."

"I was going to tell you." His voice is low. "I was trying to find the right time. I didn't want to scare you—"

"Scare me?" A broken laugh escapes you. "I've been living in a fog for a year. I've been trying to piece together who I am, and you—you've been standing right there, holding all the pieces, and you didn't tell me."

The rain starts outside, a sudden downpour that hammers against the window. You don't remember putting on his clothes, but you're moving now, past him, through the apartment, toward the door. He calls your name without you turning back.

You barge into the hallway. The stairs are a blur beneath your feet. You burst out into the rain, and it hits you like a wall ; cold, merciless, soaking through the shirt, your hair and your skin.

You don't know where you're going, and you know you can't be near him, nor look at his face and see the truth you were too blind to notice.

The street is empty, the rain turning the pavement into a river. You walk, then run, your bare feet slapping against the wet ground, your breath coming in ragged gasps. Behind you, you hear a door slam. A voice calling your name, distant and helpless.

Your legs don’t seem to want to stop. Your bare feet slap against the wet pavement, each step sending shocks through your legs, but you don't stop. You actually can't stop because if you do, you'll have to think, and thinking means facing what you just saw.

Your fingers fumble with your phone, slick with rain, and you manage to pull up Jungwon's contact. It rings once, twice, three times, and then the automated voice cuts in. Voicemail. Full. You try again and it’s the same result.

"Come on," you mutter, your voice cracking. "Come on, pick up. Pick up—"

The phone slips from your grip, clattering onto the wet ground. You leave it behind and keep walking, your arms wrapped around yourself, the thin fabric of his shirt doing nothing to ward off the cold.

"Y/N."

His voice. Behind you. Closer than you expected.

You keep walking faster, your breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

"Y/N, please—just stop—"

"I don't want to talk to you." Your voice is barely audible over the rain. "Go away."

"I can't do that." His footsteps are closer now. "I can't let you run out like this. It's not safe."

"You don't get to decide what's safe for me." You finally stop, spinning around to face him. He's there, a few meters away, soaked through, his hair plastered to his forehead, his chest heaving. He's stopped too, keeping his distance like you're a wild animal that might bolt.

"You don't get to decide anything," you continue, your voice rising. "You knew me. You knew me and you lied. Every single day, every single conversation—you looked at me and you knew exactly who I was, and you let me stumble around like an idiot trying to figure it out."

"I didn't lie—"

"Hiding the truth is lying." You're shaking now, from cold and anger. "You kept all of it from me. The photos, the memories—" You gesture wildly. "Everything. You let me think we were strangers." Your voice cracks. "You let me fall for you like you were someone new."

"I had to." His voice is raw. "I had to keep it from you. It was the only way—"

"The only way for what?" You're yelling now, the rain muffling the sound but not the anger. "The only way to protect yourself? The only way to make sure you didn't have to deal with the mess of my broken brain?"

He flinches like you've struck him. "No. That's not—"

"Then what? What the fuck is about?"

He's quiet for a long moment. The rain falls between you, heavy and cold, a curtain that separates you from him. When he speaks, his voice is quieter, barely above a whisper.

"Because I was scared."

You laugh, a hollow, broken sound. "Scared of what?"

"Of this." He gestures between the two of you. "Of you remembering and looking at me like you are right now. Like I'm a stranger. Like I'm someone who hurt you."

Your chest tightens. "God—Jake do you even care about me?"

"I fucking do." He takes a step closer, and then stops himself. "I loved you, Y/N. Before the accident. We were—" He runs a hand through his wet hair, his voice cracking. "We were together. For three freaking years. We lived together. We had a life."

You stare at him, the words hitting you like blows. "I don't remember."

"I’m aware of that." He's crying now, his tears mistook for rain drops. You can't tell. "I’m aware that you don't. And that's—that's the worst part. Because I've been standing here, watching you rebuild your life, and every time you looked at me like I was a stranger, it felt like losing you all over again."

"Why did you stay, then?" Your voice is barely a whisper. "Why didn't you just leave?"

"Because I made a promise." He meets your eyes. "A promise to your brother, to Jungwon. After the accident, when you couldn't remember anything—he came to me. He said that if I really loved you, I would stay away. That seeing me, remembering me, would confuse you. That it would hurt you more than it would help."

"So you just—walked away?"

"I tried. I moved to another city. I told myself it was for the best. But I couldn't." He stops, his voice breaking. "I couldn't stay away. When I heard you were coming back here, I told myself I wouldn't interfere and that I'd keep my distance. But then I saw you with that stupid umbrella, and—"

His words trail off, lost in the rain. You stand there, shivering, the weight of everything pressing down on you.

"I was scared," he continues, his voice still barely audible. "I was scared that if I told you, you'd run. That you'd look at me and feel nothing. That the person you were before—the person I loved—was gone forever, and I couldn't bear that. So I kept it to myself. I told myself I was protecting you. But really, I was protecting myself."

The silence stretches between you.

"You should have told me," you finally say, and your voice is weak, drained of emotion. "You should have trusted me to handle it."

"I know." He looks down at the ground. "I know. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Y/N. I never wanted to hurt you. I just—" He stops, his shoulders shaking. "I just wanted to hold onto the part of you that was still mine. Even if you didn't know it."

Your chest is heaving again and you feel the tears mixing with the rain on your cheeks. You're not sure when you started crying or maybe you've been crying this whole time.

"When?" Your voice cracks once again. "When did we—when did we first meet?"

He looks up, and you see the tears streaming down his face, indistinguishable from the rain. "Nineteen," he says, his voice raw and broken. "We were nineteen. You were wearing that oversized Bieber shirt, and you tripped over your own feet walking into that library, and I—" He pauses, a sob tearing from his throat. "I fell in love with you right there."

You feel the sob building in your chest, unstoppable and devastating. "I’m sorry."

"It’s okay." He's crying openly now, his shoulders shaking. "I—I needed you to know that you were loved. That you are loved. By me. Always."

Your legs give out. You don't realize it until you're sinking, your knees hitting the wet pavement, your hands bracing against the cold ground. The sobs are torn from you now, ugly and loud, your entire body shaking with the force of them.

He’s already moving. His feet splash against the wet ground, closing the distance between you in seconds. He drops to his knees in front of you, his arms wrapping around you, pulling you against his chest. His body shields you from the rain, his hands cradling the back of your head, pressing your face into the warmth of his neck.

"I'm sorry," he's saying, over and over, his voice broken and fragile. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Y/N."

You feel his tears against your skin, his body shaking with the same sobs that are tearing through you. He holds you tighter, afraid you'll disappear, and you grip the wet fabric of his shirt, your fingers twisted in the material.

"I don't remember," you choke out. "I don't remember any of it."

"That's okay." His voice is a whisper, trembling. "That's okay. We can—we can start over. We can make new memories. Whatever you need. I'll give you whatever you need."

You pull back just enough to look at him. His face is streaked with rain and tears, his eyes red-rimmed, his expression open and completely unguarded.

You let him hold you, his arms wrapped around you like a shield against the world, and you feel something shift in your chest. The rain continues to fall, but you barely notice it anymore.

All you feel is him.

─────────

The next morning. You're sitting on the edge of the couch, your legs stretched out in front of you, the bruises on your knees a mottled purple from the fall the night before. The rain has stopped, but the world outside is still wet, the streets glistening under the gray sky.

Jake is kneeling in front of you, a small first-aid kit open on the floor beside him. His movements are gentle, careful, as he dabs at the scrapes with an antiseptic wipe. You flinch slightly at the sting, and he murmurs an apology, his fingers light against your skin.

"I could do it on my own." you say, your voice hoarse from crying.

"Let me do it for you. Please." He doesn't look up, his focus on the cut on your knee. "I should have done this last night, but you were—" He stops, swallowing. "You were upset. I didn't want to push."

You watch him as he works, the furrow of concentration between his brows, his lower lip catches between his teeth. His hands are steady despite everything, carefully smoothing the edges of a bandage over your skin.

"There," he says softly. "All done."

You're about to say something when the door slams open.

Jungwon stands in the doorway, his chest heaving and his eyes wild. He's still in his clothes from yesterday, his hair disheveled, his phone clutched in his hand like a lifeline. He must have come straight from wherever he was, must have run the whole way. His gaze sweeps the room and takes in the two of you. Jake kneeling at your feet. The bandage on your knee. Your tear-streaked face. And mostly, the visible tension in the air.

He looks at Jake and at you while shifting his gaze between both of you.

"Fuck." he says, the word heavy, loaded with remorse.

Jake rises slowly to his feet. He stands there, his hands at his sides, his face blank.

"Jungwon," he starts, but Jungwon cuts him off.

"What the fuck, Jake." He steps into the room, the door swinging shut behind him. "I told you—I told you to stay away. I told you it would be better for her. And for everyone. And you—" He stops, his jaw tight. "You couldn't keep your promise for even a year?"

"It wasn't like that." Jake's voice is steady yet a tremor is present beneath it. "I didn't plan this. It just happened."

"It just happened?" Jungwon scoffs. "You see her in the hallway and suddenly all your promises mean nothing?"

"Jungwon—" you start, both of them turn to look at you, and the weight of their gazes makes the words die in your throat. Jungwon's expression softens slightly. "Are you okay?" he asks, the question is directed at you, not Jake.

You don't know how to answer that. Are you okay? You're sitting in the apartment of a man you've known for weeks, who apparently knew you for three years before that, who you still can't remember, who you cried in the rain with, who bandaged your knees this morning because he cares about you. And you can’t understand any of it.

"I don't know," you say honestly.

Jungwon runs a hand through his hair, exhales slowly. "I should have told you," he says with regret in his voice. "I should have told you about him. About everything. I thought I was protecting you, but I—" He pauses and shakes his head. "I made it worse."

"He knew," you say, voice flat. "He knew and he kept it from me. You both did."

Jake flinches and Jungwon looks away.

"I had to," Jake says quietly. "I had to see if you could remember on your own. If there was any part of you that still—" He swallows, the words caught in his throat. "I needed to know if you could love me without the memories."

Jungwon's head snaps toward him. "That's not why you did it."

"Isn't it?" Jake's voice is raw. "I wanted to believe that if I just gave you time, you'd remember, and I know that it sounds stupid. That you'd look at me and see all the years we had. But you didn't. You never did." He looks at you, his eyes glassy. "And I had to accept that the person I loved might never come back. But I still loved you anyway."

The silence in the room is suffocating. You look from Jake to Jungwon, the weight of their secrets pressing down on you, and you feel something crack inside your chest.

Jungwon is the one to break it. "I'm sorry," he says, the words are directed at both of you. "I was scared. I didn't want to lose you again, Y/N. And when I saw the two of you starting to know each other I panicked." He confesses, his composure cracking. "I just wanted to protect you and I failed. I failed both of you."

Jake stays silent, his eyes fixed on the floor.

You take a breath. The air is thick, but you force yourself to speak.

"I don't remember him," you say, looking at Jungwon. "I don't remember any of it. But I—" You stop, your voice catching. "I know I felt something. Even when I didn't know who he was. That has to count for something, doesn't it?"

Jungwon meets your eyes. Then he nods, slowly.

"Yeah," he says quietly. "It does."

─────────

The afternoon has settled in, the earlier tension slowly unwinding like a knot being picked apart. Jungwon left an hour ago, his goodbye awkward but not hostile, a promise to call later that felt more like a question than a statement. You'd watched him go, the door clicking shut behind him, and then you'd turned to find Jake standing in the middle of the living room, his hands shoved in his pockets, his eyes uncertain.

Neither of you had spoken for a while. Then you'd walked to the kitchen, pulled out a cutting board and some vegetables, and started preparing something that might become dinner. He'd followed, hovering at the edge of the counter, until you'd handed him a knife and told him to chop the onions.

Now you're standing at the stove, stirring a pan of vegetables, while Jake sits on a stool behind you. His fingers are in your hair again, separating strands, twisting them together with a concentration that's become familiar over the past few days. The braid is better than yesterday ; still not perfect, but recognizable.

"You're getting better at this," you say, your voice quiet.

"I've had practice." An incredible softness in his voice. "Also, you're very patient. That helps."

You stir the vegetables, watching them sizzle and soften. The silence is comfortable, however, there's something sitting between you, a question you've been turning over in your mind since last night.

"Jake," you start, and you feel him pause, his fingers stilling in your hair. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

You keep your eyes on the pan. "Last night—was that our first time?"

You feel him go still behind you. His hands are frozen in your hair, and for a moment, you think you've overstepped. You feel his breath, a soft exhale, and his hands resume their work.

"Yes," he says, and his voice is careful. "That was our first time."

The words hang in the air. You nod slowly, processing. "So we never had sex…before the accident?"

He shakes his head, even though you can't see him. "We were close, and we lived together. But we never did those kind of things." He pauses, his fingers continuing to work through your hair. "We were waiting. I don't know what we were waiting for. The right moment, maybe." His voice drops. "I never really thought about it. I just knew I wanted it to be right."

You set down the spoon, turning to face him. He's watching you, his hands hovering where your hair falls against your shoulders. His eyes are searching, cautious.

"Jake," you say. "How long did you go without doing it?" You stop, not sure how to phrase it. "Without being with anyone?"

He understands. His jaw tightens, and he looks down at his hands. "It’s been a year. Since the accident." He meets your eyes again. "I couldn't. I tried to…talk to girls, once. It didn't feel right. I mean, I didn't feel right. I couldn't even hold someone's hand without feeling like I was betraying you."

You feel your breath catch. "Even when you didn't know if I'd ever remember?"

"Especially then." His voice honest. "It didn't matter if you remembered me or not. I remembered you. I knew what we had, and…I couldn't replace that. I really didn't want to."

You look at him, this man who's been carrying this weight for three years, who stayed loyal to a ghost he didn't know would ever come back. You look at his hands shaking slightly, his eyes are glassy.

"I didn't know," you say.

"How could you?"

You reach out, your hand finding his. He looks down at your fingers intertwined, and you feel the dull trembling in his grip.

"Thank you," you say, your voice almost a whisper. "For waiting. Even when you didn't have to."

He looks at you with vulnerability in his gaze. "I never really had a choice. It was always you. It's always been you."

You pull him closer, your arms wrapping around him, your face pressing into his shoulder. He holds you back, his arms tight around your waist, and you feel the steady beat of his heart against your chest.

The vegetables are still burning. You're still wrapped in his arms, your face pressed into his shoulder, his warmth seeping through the thin fabric of your shirt. His hand is cradling the back of your head, his fingers gently threading through the braid he'd just finished.

He pulls back to look at you. His eyes are red-rimmed, his face still carrying the traces of the tears you'd both shed.

"I love you," he says.

The words are simple, unadorned. Only three words, spoken as they've been sitting on his tongue for years, waiting for the right moment to be released. You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. Your throat is tight, your chest aching with the pressure of everything you don't know how to say.

Noticing your silence, he leans in, his lips pressing against your forehead, lingering long enough for you to feel the slight shaking in his breath.

Then your cheek. The corner of your eye. The bridge of your nose. Each kiss is slow, like he's tracing the contours of your face with his mouth, memorizing every inch. His lips brush your temple, your jaw, the base of your neck.

"You don't have to say it back," he murmurs against your skin. "I just needed you to know."

You feel the tears pricking at your eyes again, yet they're not the same as before. "You've been carrying this for a year," you manage, your voice thick. "And you still—"

"Still love you." He presses another kiss to your cheek, then your other cheek, then the corner of your mouth. "Yes. I do. And I'll keep saying it until you're tired of hearing it."

"I won't get tired."

He pulls back, his eyes searching yours.

"That’s good for me." he says softly, the smile that tugs at his lips is small and tentative. His hands cup your face, thumbs brushing away the tears that have escaped down your cheeks. He leans in, his forehead resting against yours, and you feel the warmth of him surrounding you.

"Jake," you whisper.

"Yeah?"

"Stay with me. While I try to remember. While I figure this out." You swallow. "Don't leave again."

He doesn't hesitate once. "I won't."

His lips find yours, soft and gentle, and when he pulls back, he presses one last kiss to the tip of your nose.

You were ready to rebuild your life, with everything you’ve shared from now, with him.

You’d both silently decided the bar didn’t count. It belonged to some emergency exit version of yourself, the one who shows up when everything falls apart and then sensibly disappears by morning. Two strangers, one terrible night, and then back to real life, like it never happened. That was supposed to be the whole story.

For weeks you’d told yourself he didn’t exist. No last name, no number, just a blurry memory getting less real by the day. And then there he was. Not imaginary, not gone, just three feet away in a room that smelled like antiseptic instead of whisky, looking at you like he was doing the same impossible math you were.

It still didn’t add up.

You didn’t move. You didn’t speak. The chart in his hand had gone slack, like whatever clinical purpose it once held had dissolved the second recognition hit his face. You watched him swallow. Watched his jaw work, like he was searching for some professional footing and coming up with nothing.

You weren’t doing any better. Your pulse was in your throat, your fingertips, that strange hollow drop in your stomach that had nothing to do with the pregnancy and everything to do with him. A month of telling yourself this was impossible, and here it was anyway, undoing every careful assumption you’d built your new life on.

When he finally spoke, the composure was gone from his voice. He took a slow breath, like he needed it just to stay upright.

“Is the baby mine?”

This time it was quieter. Just him, stripped back down to the same person who’d sat beside you in that bar a month ago, asking a question he already knew the answer to but needed to hear anyway, like saying it out loud might keep the ground steady under him.

You closed your eyes for a moment. “Yes,” you said. The word barely made it past your throat, smaller than you meant it to be.

He didn’t say anything right away. When you opened your eyes, he was still watching you, something delicate moving behind his expression. Not quite fear, not quite relief, but some confused tangle of both, like a man standing at the edge of a life he hadn’t planned for and couldn’t make himself walk away from.

“Okay,” he said, so quietly the hum of the lights above almost swallowed it.

You recognised that it was precisely the same word you had muttered to your bathroom mirror a month prior. You both had no idea how much that one tiny syllable was going to demand of you.

For a brief moment, his hands just hovered in the space where the chart had been, uncertain, as if every professional instinct he had spent years honing had suddenly stopped responding. He set the chart down hard enough that it slid slightly across the counter.

“I can’t examine you.” What remained sounded jagged and unsteady. 

“What?” 

“Conflict of interest.” He said it like the words hurt on the way out.

You went very still. You already knew. You’d known before he said it, really, but hearing it made it land differently.

He ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time, you saw his composure completely crumble. It was not the cautious, contained way it had earlier cracked, but rather clearly and painfully, as if he were witnessing the disintegration of every assurance he had relied upon throughout his adult life.

"I don't know what to do," he said in a rough voice.

You just stared at him for a second. Then something inside you quietly folded in on itself. 

Sure. 

Why did you expect anything else?

You’d told yourself you didn’t need to know the father. You’d cried over the impossibility of it before it was even real, before there was anything to be impossible about. You’d accepted that you’d raise this child alone, because that was just how it was going to be. Strangers didn’t become families. One extraordinary night didn’t rewrite an ordinary life

You'd come to terms with it. Or at least you thought you did. But here he stood now, and he saw the doubt in his face, and that studied acceptance began to crack. Not because he actually rejected you, but because your heart already decided what his hesitation meant.

"Right," you said, speaking in a more flattering tone than you meant to, and you were already grabbing the armour you had developed over the previous month. "There is nothing for you to figure out. I told you that I had nothing to ask of you.”

He scowled.

"What?"

"I said there's nothing for you to figure out."

You could no longer bring yourself to look at him. Rather, you occupied yourself with smoothing out imperceptible wrinkles on the paper that was spread out on your lap.

"I wasn't looking for you." You took a swallow. "I wasn't trying to find you."

The words had a false flavour. Everything was different. Saying it out loud hurt more than you expected. You hated that some part of you had already filed Jungwon under the same heading, hated how quickly and completely your body had braced for the same ending, as though you had never once been given a reason to expect anything else from anyone.

Jungwon was watching you. He'd seen patients recoil before. The woman who had stopped crying because she had made up her mind it was no good. The overly polite husband after receiving a terminal diagnosis. The parents who resorted to talking about parking validation because to face reality would destroy them. Some people didn't fall apart loudly. Sometimes they were unbearably controlled. That's what you were doing.

“You think I’m trying to go?"

The sentence slipped out before he'd fully decided to say it. Your fingers paused. For the first time since you'd looked away, you met his eyes.

The words hit home visibly. You saw something flicker behind his eyes, not defensiveness, something more like recognition, as though he knew precisely which wound he'd just stepped on without meaning to. You didn't expect that from him. This wasn't something he had asked for. Even if he wanted nothing to do with you or the baby, you told yourself that made sense. 

The bar surfaced again, whether you wanted it to or not. That ring around your glass. The way you’d kept twisting it on your finger instead of just taking it off, because taking it off would have made it final in a way you weren’t ready for. You remembered what you’d said that night, loose enough with drink to be honest, past caring who might overhear.

"I think he stopped choosing me long before he ever said it out loud.”

You looked away first this time, blinking hard at the poster on the wall, the one you'd deliberately avoided studying earlier. Your throat had gone tight enough that breathing normally took actual effort. You pressed your lips together, willing yourself to hold it. 

That did not work.

One single tear escaped before you could stop it. Hot and humiliating, sliding down your cheek at the worst possible moment, in front of the worst possible person. You wiped it away quickly, angry at your body for betraying you in this way.

“I have to go,” you said, your voice cracking halfway through the sentence. You slid off the exam table too quickly, the paper crinkling loudly in the small room, and reached for the door before you could change your mind, before you could let yourself fall apart any further in front of him.

You didn’t get far. His fingers wrapped loosely around your wrist, warm, hesitant, like he wasn’t sure he had any right to hold on but couldn’t quite make himself let go either. Just enough to stop you. You went cold.

“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Please. Don’t walk out like this.”

“I—” Your voice gave out completely, and the tears came without permission.

His hand hovered between the chart, the exam table, and finally settled against his own chest.

"You don't have to say anything," you continued, quieter now, the bitterness folding into something more tired than sharp. "I wasn't going to ask you for anything. I didn't come here looking for you." 

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Whatever he'd been about to say didn't survive that.

"I'll get someone else to take my file," you said, before he could. "You don't have to be involved in any of it. Really. It'll be easier that way. For both of us."

"That's not what I want," he said quietly.

"You don't know what you want yet," you said, not unkindly, just certain. "That's okay. You don't have to. I stopped expecting anyone to figure that out on my timeline a long time ago."

You picked up your bag from the chair, not looking at him now, because looking at him made it harder to keep the walls up, and the walls were the only thing keeping you standing.

"I can manage this myself," you said, quieter. "I've been managing everything myself. This isn't any different."

He didn't say anything as you walked past him, though you felt his eyes on you the whole way to the door, uncertain and unresolved in a way that you told yourself, firmly, was not your problem to fix.

The hallway outside the exam room felt longer than it had on the way in.

You kept your eyes forward, one foot in front of the other, the way you'd taught yourself to walk out of rooms that had just quietly ended something. It would've been easier if he'd been cruel about it. If he'd looked at you the way you'd braced yourself for. 

But he hadn't been cruel. He'd looked lost. Standing there in his white coat with a stethoscope around his neck and no idea what to do with his own hands. And somehow that was worse. Because lost meant he hadn't decided yet. Lost meant there was still a version of this where he tried, and failed, and you had to watch it happen up close instead of guessing at it from a distance. 

You couldn't do that again. You didn't have it in you to hope for something and then watch it quietly dissolve a second time in the same year. So you'd decided for him before he could make it for himself. It felt almost merciful, in a strange, aching way. If you didn't let yourself need him, there was nothing left for him to take away. 

You didn't need him. You'd meant that.

But walking away from a room where someone had, for one brief second, looked like he might actually want to stay. That took more out of you than you let yourself admit. Because some small, foolish part of you, had wanted to be wrong about him. Just once, for someone to prove your worst assumptions weren't the safest bet.

You got in your car, hands steady on the wheel the way they'd been steady the night everything else fell apart, and you didn't cry until you were three streets away, safely out of sight of anyone who might feel obligated to ask if you were alright. 

.

.

.

Jungwon didn't move for a long moment after the door clicked shut.

The room felt too quiet without you in it. He was still holding a pen he didn't remember picking up, and when he looked down at his own hand, it took a second longer than it should have for the object to register as familiar.

A baby.

The word sat in his chest like something he'd swallowed wrong, lodged and unmoving. He'd delivered dozens of them. He knew what the next nine months would look like on a chart. He did not know what it meant that one of them might have his name attached to it.

He sat down heavily on the stool you'd left empty, the vinyl still faintly warm, and stared at the door like it might open again and make the last ten minutes make sense. It didn't.

He realised, that he didn't even know your first name. Not really, he'd seen it on the chart, glanced at it in that first frozen second before recognition hit, but it hadn't stuck, buried under everything else crashing through him at once. He didn't know where you lived. What you did for a living, though, something about you had felt like you spent your days around people who needed patience. He remembered that much from the bar, vaguely, the way you remember the shape of a feeling more than the words that caused it. He didn't know if you had family nearby. Friends. Anyone who'd sit with you through this the way he clearly wasn't being let anywhere near it.

He didn't know a single real thing about the woman who had just told him, flatly, that she was carrying his child and didn't expect anything from him because of it. That last part kept snagging on something in his chest, sharp and unpleasant, like a wire he kept running his thumb over without meaning to.

He didn't know what that meant, not exactly, but he knew enough to recognize the shape of it. The practiced ease of someone who'd said some version of that sentence before, to someone else, about something else. You hadn't sounded angry when you said it. That was the part that unsettled him most. Angry, he could have argued with. Anger gave him something to push against. But you'd sounded certain, the way people sound when they've simply stopped being surprised by disappointment, when they've built their whole footing around expecting less so the ground never has anywhere lower left to drop.

A knock at the door pulled him upright before he could sit with it any longer. Nurse Park leaned her head in, brow raised at the empty room, the abandoned chart, him sitting there like he'd forgotten how exam rooms worked.

"Dr. Yang? Your two o'clock is—"

"I need you to reassign a patient," he said, before she could finish. His voice came out steadier than he felt, which surprised him almost as much as everything else today had. "Transfer her file to Dr. Kim. Today, if you can."

Nurse Park's brow rose further, curiosity plain on her face, but she didn't ask. That was one mercy, at least. "Sure. Everything okay?"

"Fine," he said, too quickly. "Just a conflict of interest."

She left it at that, ducking back out, and he was alone again with the abandoned chart and the too quiet room and the sound of his own pulse suddenly very loud in his ears.

He didn't go find you. He told himself it was because you'd asked him not to, because chasing you down the hallway would have looked exactly like the kind of scene neither of you needed in a hospital full of patients. He told himself a lot of things in the next several minutes, none of which made the unease in his chest sit any easier.

He didn't know you. You'd made that painfully, deliberately clear, like it was a wall you needed built between the two of you before either of you said something you couldn't walk back. But you were going to have his child. And he was going to spend the rest of the day, and probably several after it, turning over the unbearable fact that a woman whose last name he'd only just learned had already decided, quietly and completely, that he wasn't someone worth hoping for.

He picked the pen back up. Set it back down.

Somewhere down the hall, his next patient was waiting, and he had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to walk in there and be anyone's calm, steady doctor when his own life had just come apart at a seam he hadn't known was there.

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Three days.

That was all it had been since you walked out of that exam room, and already your body seemed determined to make you regret every ounce of composure you'd held onto in front of him. It was as if some cruel switch had been flipped the moment you'd said the word yes out loud, made it real to someone other than yourself. Like your body had been waiting for a witness.

You woke Wednesday morning already nauseous, the ceiling swimming faintly overhead before you'd even tried to sit up. You'd read that morning sickness typically started later, that this was early even by the worst case scenario timelines, but apparently your pregnancy hadn't read the same pamphlets you had.

By the time you managed to get upright, the room tilted sharply enough that you had to grip the headboard and breathe through it, slow and deliberate, before attempting the short, treacherous walk to the bathroom.

You didn't make it in time to feel dignified about it. Afterward, you sat on the bathroom floor with your back against the cold tub, forehead damp, waiting for your stomach to stop staging its rebellion. This was becoming routine faster than you wanted to admit. Not once, but twice already this week you'd called your department to push back your morning lecture, voice pitched carefully steady, blaming a stomach bug going around campus. You'd never missed lectures before. Not once. It unsettled you more than you let yourself dwell on.

The apartment was silent except for the tap still running in the sink. No one to hand you water. No one to notice you'd barely eaten since yesterday, that the crackers on your nightstand had gone untouched because even the smell of them turned your stomach some hours. You'd gotten good at being invisible to everyone, including yourself.

You didn't know if this was normal. You didn't know if you should be worried, if this level of sick warranted a call to whoever your new doctor was going to be, or if this was simply what your body intended to do to you for the better part of the coming months. You had no one to ask. No one who'd sit on the edge of your bed and tell you this part was supposed to be hard, that it would pass, that you weren't failing at this before it had even really begun.

You  pulled yourself back onto your feet using the edge of the sink, rinsed your mouth, and studied your reflection for a moment. Pale, hollow around the eyes, nothing like the woman who used to stand in front of a lecture hall like she had her whole life figured out.

"You're fine," you told her, quietly, the way you'd told yourself countless small lies over the past month that had somehow, collectively, kept you upright. "You've done harder than this alone."

You believed it most days. Today, curled back into bed twenty minutes later with a bucket close enough to reach without standing, the blanket pulled up to your chin against a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, you weren't entirely sure you believed it at all.

But there was no one there to notice the difference. So you closed your eyes, and let the silence hold you instead, and waited, the way you always did, for the worst of it to pass on its own.

You should have called in sick. You knew that the moment you stepped out of the car, the parking lot tilting faintly at the edges in a way that had nothing to do with the morning sun.

But you'd already missed two lectures this week, and a third would mean questions you didn't have answers for, sympathetic looks from your department head that you didn't think you could survive without your composure cracking down the middle. So you'd taken two crackers and a sip of ginger tea you couldn't taste, told yourself you'd manage, and gone in anyway.

You almost did.

The lecture hall was half full, forty some students scattered across the tiered seats, laptops open, the low hum of a Thursday morning. You'd made it through the attendance. Through the first ten minutes on developmental milestones in early childhood, your voice steady even as your stomach had begun its slow, familiar climb somewhere around slide four.

You kept going. 

"—and by eighteen months, most children can typically identify two to three body parts when asked, which becomes important later when we discuss—"

The room tilted.

The front row of desks sliding sideways in your vision like the whole hall had been picked up and set back down at a slight angle. You gripped the edge of the podium, hard, waiting for it to right itself the way it usually did if you just breathed through it, counted to ten, kept your face neutral.

It didn't right itself. Cold sweat prickled along your hairline. Your vision narrowed at the edges, the way it did right before things went dark, a sensation you recognized now with a distant, clinical horror even as your body refused to respond to anything you told it to do. You heard your own voice trail off mid sentence. You saw, as if from very far away, several students look up from their laptops.

"Professor?"

You tried to say I'm fine. Give me a second. The words didn't make it out. The podium seemed to tilt away from your hand, or your hand slid off it, you couldn't tell which, and the last clear thought you had was a strange, absurd flicker of worry that you were about to fall in front of forty students and there'd be no graceful way to explain any of this afterward.

Then the floor came up to meet you, and everything went white, then gray, then nothing at all.

You came back to fluorescent light and unfamiliar voices, the particular antiseptic smell that your body had apparently decided to associate with catastrophe now. Someone's hand was wrapped around your wrist, fingers pressed lightly, counting.

"Ma'am? Can you hear me?"

You blinked, the ceiling swimming into slow focus, a stranger's face hovering above you, kind and unfamiliar. Not him. You didn't know why some small, useless part of you had braced for it to be him.

"You fainted," the nurse said gently, once she saw your eyes track her properly. "You're in the ER. One of your students called it in. You went down pretty hard in the middle of a lecture."

Fainted. In front of your entire class. You closed your eyes again, mortification arriving even before you'd fully processed the rest of it, a hot wave of embarrassment layering itself over the nausea that hadn't actually gone anywhere.

"I'm fine," you said, or tried to. Your voice came out cracked, thinner than you meant it to. "I just need to go home. I have another class at—"

"You're not teaching anything today," the nurse said, not unkindly, but with the particular firmness of someone who dealt with stubborn patients for a living. "You're pregnant and dehydrated and you haven't been keeping food down. We're keeping you a few hours at least, getting fluids into you."

There was someone whose opinion mattered now, whether you liked it or not, and he worked three floors up in this exact building. 

A resident you didn't recognize came by twenty minutes later to check your IV line, young, unfamiliar, entirely uninterested in anything beyond your vitals and your chart. You almost laughed at the relief that gave you. 

By the time they discharged you late that afternoon, an IV bruise blooming faintly on the inside of your elbow, a stack of printed pamphlets about hyperemesis gravidarum tucked under your arm.  You called a cab instead of your own car, since you didn't trust your hands on a wheel yet, and sat in the back seat with your forehead against the cool window, watching the hospital shrink behind you. 

You told yourself that was fine. You told yourself that a lot, lately. It didn't make the ride home feel any less quiet.

The cab dropped you off just as the sky was starting to dim, and by the time you'd climbed the two flights of stairs to your apartment. The elevator was broken again, of course it was. Your legs were shaking badly enough that you had to stop twice, palm flat against the wall, waiting for the stairwell to stop tilting.

You made it inside. You didn't make it much further than that. The pamphlets slid out of your grip and scattered across the entryway floor as your knees gave out, not dramatically, just a slow, graceless folding, your back sliding down the front door until you were sitting on the cold tile with your knees drawn up and your whole body trembling like something had come loose inside it.

The nausea came back within the hour, worse than it had been that morning, worse than it had been at all this week. It didn't announce itself gently. It arrived in one violent lurch that had you crawling toward the bathroom, not trusting your legs to carry you upright.

You didn't make it to the toilet in time. You barely made it to the bathroom at all, retching over the edge of the tub instead, your whole body seizing with the force of it long after there was anything left to bring up, dry, wrenching heaves that left your ribs aching and your throat raw and scraped, tears streaming down your face less from sadness than from the sheer physical violence of it.

You stayed like that for a long time, forehead pressed against the cool porcelain, saliva and bile stringing from your lips, your hands braced shaking against the tub's edge. Your stomach cramped hard, a deep muscular ache that radiated up into your ribs and down into your pelvis, and for one sharp, terrified second you pressed a hand low against your abdomen, holding your breath, waiting to feel something wrong.

Nothing. No blood. No new pain beyond the exhaustion of your body trying to turn itself inside out. You allowed yourself a single shuddering breath of relief before the next wave hit and you were retching again, nothing left to give it, just your body insisting anyway.

By the time it finally, mercifully passed, you were slumped sideways against the bathtub, cheek against cold tile, drenched in a cold sweat that had soaked through your shirt. Your pulse fluttered too fast and too thin at your wrist when you pressed two fingers there, checking, the way you'd learned to over the past week. Your mouth tasted of bile and copper. Your lips had gone dry and cracked at the corners.

You should call someone. The thought arrived distantly, muted, the way thoughts did when your body had spent everything it had. You'd just been hospitalized for exactly this, hours ago, and here you were on your bathroom floor doing it again, alone, with no one so much as aware it was happening.

Your hand found your phone in your pocket, more out of habit than intention. The screen lit the dim bathroom, too bright, and you had to squint against it. You didn't call anyone. You didn't have the strength to hold the phone to your ear, let alone explain, let alone hear the worry in someone's voice and have to manage that too, on top of everything else.

You set the phone down on the tile beside you instead, and simply lay there, curled loosely on your side, waiting for enough strength to return to your limbs that you could drag yourself the six feet to your own bed.

It took nearly twenty minutes. You slept in your clothes that night, on top of the covers instead of under them, too exhausted to manage even that small effort, a glass of water you couldn't bring yourself to drink from sitting untouched on the nightstand, condensation sliding slowly down its side in the dark, and no one in the world aware that you'd spent your evening on a bathroom floor, alone, quietly and privately falling apart.

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Karina almost didn't come by that morning.

She'd meant to call first, the way she usually did, but you hadn't answered your last two texts, and something about the silence. Three days of it now, uncharacteristic even for you at your most withdrawn, had sat wrong in her chest all week. She'd told herself she was being paranoid. She came anyway.

She still had the spare key, back when you'd both lived two buildings apart and traded keys the way close friends did. She let herself in calling your name, expecting to find you buried in lesson planning, embarrassed to have worried.

She found you on the bedroom floor instead, half collapsed beside the bed like you'd tried to stand and simply hadn't made it, your skin gray pale, lips cracked, one hand still curled weakly against the carpet like you'd been reaching for something.

"Oh my god— hey. Hey!" Karina dropped to her knees beside you, hands shaking as she checked for breath, for pulse, for anything. You stirred faintly at her voice, eyes fluttering half open, unfocused. "Stay with me, okay? I'm calling an ambulance."

"I'm fine," you managed, barely a whisper, the words slurring together. "Just need—"

"You are not fine." Her voice cracked, fear bleeding through the command in it as she fumbled her phone out of her pocket, thumb shaking too hard to hit the numbers cleanly the first time. "You look like you're about to die on your bedroom floor, so don't you dare tell me you're fine."

She got the address out between breaths she didn't remember taking, one hand still gripping yours the entire time, too tight, like letting go might mean losing you to whatever this was.

She rode in the ambulance with you, refusing to be left behind when a paramedic suggested she follow in her own car. She sat in the hospital waiting room for forty five minutes that felt like four hours, knee bouncing, phone clutched uselessly in her lap because she didn't know who else to call, didn't know if there was anyone else to call, and that realization alone made something in her chest ache almost as much as the fear did.

When a nurse finally came to update her, Karina was on her feet before the woman had finished her sentence.

"Family?" the nurse asked, glancing at her chart.

"Might as well be," Karina said, voice tight. "She doesn't have anyone else listed, does she."

The nurse's hesitation was answer enough.

"She's stable," the nurse said instead, gently. "Severe dehydration, malnutrition. She's been dealing with hyperemesis, it looks like, and it seems like she's been managing it alone for weeks. We're keeping her a few days to get her properly stabilized."

Karina pressed a hand over her mouth, equal parts relief and fury rising in her chest. Relief that you were breathing, steady, alive, and fury that you'd let it get this bad without telling a single soul, without telling her, after everything the two of you had been through together.

She sat by your bed for the rest of that afternoon, watching the slow rise and fall of your chest, IV fluid dripping steadily into the back of your hand, and made a silent, furious promise that the moment you were lucid enough to argue with her, she was going to give you an earful about doing this alone.

You stirred sometime near evening, eyes fluttering open slowly, disoriented, focusing first on the ceiling and then, gradually, on her.

"Karina?" Your voice came out cracked, confused.

"Yeah." She leaned forward, gripping your hand, blinking back tears she refused to let fall in front of you. "Yeah, it's me. You scared the absolute hell out of me."

You blinked at her, at the IV in your hand, at the hospital room slowly coming into focus around you, and something in your face crumpled, the exhausted collapse of someone who'd been holding a wall up for too long and had finally, involuntarily, let it fall.

"I didn't want to bother anyone," you whispered.

"You're pregnant and you were dying on your bedroom floor," Karina said, voice thick, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "I don't care how much you didn't want to bother me. You're stuck with me now. No more doing this by yourself."

You didn't have the strength to argue. For once, some small, exhausted part of you was almost grateful you didn't have to.

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Jungwon told himself it would fade. That was the whole premise he'd been operating on for two and a half weeks now. That time would do what time was supposed to do, sand the edges off something sharp until it became just another fact of his life instead of the thing that occupied every quiet moment he wasn't actively filling with something else.

It hadn't worked. He caught himself doing it again during a lull between patients, staring at a blank spot on the wall of the break room, coffee going cold in his hand, his mind somewhere else entirely. 

He'd requested her file be transferred to Dr. Kim, exactly as he'd promised. He hadn't looked at it since. He told himself that was the responsible thing to do. He told himself that every time his hand hovered a half second too long over the patient database before he made himself close it, unopened.

He didn't know if she'd made it to her next appointment, if the nausea she'd looked faintly gray with even standing in that exam room had gotten better or worse, if she was eating, sleeping, managing any of it the way she'd insisted, with such brittle certainty, that she would.

He hated that he thought about it as much as he did. Hated it, and couldn't stop. 

“You've been doing it for weeks." Sunoo took a sip, watching him over the rim of the cup. "Still thinking about the peach dream? Told you it meant something."

"It's nothing," Jungwon said, too quickly, and made himself take a sip of his own coffee just to have something to do with his mouth besides say anything further. "Just tired. Long week."

"It's been a long week for three weeks running, then." Sunoo didn't look convinced, but he let it sit for a moment, watching him with the kind of patience that usually meant he was waiting for a crack to widen on its own rather than trying to force one. "You'd tell me if something was actually going on, right?"

"There's nothing going on." The lie came easier than Jungwon expected it to, flat and practiced, though it sat wrong in his chest the second it left his mouth. "I'm fine."

Sunoo studied him a beat longer, clearly unconvinced, but he shrugged eventually and let it go, the way he usually did when Jungwon's tone made it clear a door had been shut. "Alright. Suit yourself."

The conversation moved on to something else and he was grateful for it, grateful that Sunoo hadn't pushed harder, because he didn't know what he would have said if he had. There wasn't a version of the truth he could hand over that didn't sound absurd out loud. 

He didn't know how to explain that he'd meant to let it go, and instead had spent nearly three weeks failing to stop thinking about a woman whose last name he'd had to read off a chart to remember, whose entire life outside of that one night and that one appointment remained a complete blank to him.

He didn't know how to explain, least of all to himself, why some part of him refused to accept that blank as permanent. He finished his coffee in silence, and when his pager went off a few minutes later, he was almost relieved for the excuse to leave the thought behind, if only for the length of his next shift.

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The consult request landed in his queue a little after four. It was one of a dozen routine notifications that came through on any given shift. He almost skimmed past it. He didn't work in obstetrics anymore, not since he'd handed his own patient list over to Dr. Kim weeks ago. He'd made an effort to stop looking at those cases.

But this one came through internal medicine, not OB. It was flagged as severe dehydration and malnutrition, possible hyperemesis. They wanted a second opinion on fluid management before admitting the patient properly.

He opened the summary out of habit more than curiosity.

Female, thirty two years old. About eleven weeks pregnant. She'd been found unconscious by a friend. Severe dehydration. She'd lost eight percent of her body weight in two weeks. Her heart rate had been dangerously high on admission. There was no record of any follow-up appointment since her first OB visit three weeks earlier.

He frowned at that last part. Three weeks was a long time to go without monitoring, especially with symptoms this severe. Someone had fallen through the cracks. It bothered him, the same way it always did when a patient's file showed the system failing someone who should have been caught sooner.

He looked for the name of the doctor overseeing her care. He found only Dr. Kim listed, with no other notes attached besides an old transfer memo from a few weeks back. He didn't think twice about that memo. He'd written it himself, but his mind was somewhere else, moving through the facts the way he always did, quickly and clinically.

The patient's name was cut off in the quick view screen, an old glitch in the hospital's software that had annoyed him for years. He never thought to be grateful for it before.

He typed up his recommendation. Slow rehydration. Anti nausea medication. Closer monitoring, given the gap in her care. He added a note asking social work to check in, since it looked like she didn't have much support. It was clinical and short, the way he wrote every consult note, and he sent it back through the system without a second thought.

Something caught at the back of his mind for a moment. Eleven weeks. The number surfaced, then sank again before he could think about why it mattered. There was another patient waiting.

He didn't open her full chart. There was no reason to. It wasn't his case anymore, and nothing in the short summary gave him any reason to connect this exhausted, malnourished woman to the one who still, somehow, took up more space in his thoughts than she had any right to.

He moved on to the next consult. But the uneasy feeling stayed with him for the rest of his shift, quiet and shapeless, like a name he almost remembered but couldn't quite reach.

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Jungwon didn't remember falling asleep. He remembered lying in the dark for a long time, staring at his ceiling, exhaustion finally pulling him under sometime past midnight.

And then he was dreaming.

The garden came back to him, the same one from weeks ago, though he knew almost immediately that something about it was wrong.

The trees were still there, heavy branched, familiar in shape. But the leaves had gone brittle at the edges, curling inward like paper too close to a flame. Some had already fallen, scattered thin and brown across ground that should have been soft with grass and instead felt dry and cracked underfoot, like it hadn't seen rain in a long time.

He walked through it the way he had before, searching without knowing exactly what he was searching for. The fruit trees that had once bent low with ripeness now held branches that looked stripped and empty, a few withered pieces of fruit still clinging on that looked more rotten than ripe.

The woman was there again. He still couldn't see her face clearly, the way dreams sometimes blurred the details that should have mattered most, but he recognized her outline, the same as before, standing beneath the same tree where she'd once handed him a peach warm with sunlight.

This time she wasn't holding anything out to him. She was kneeling at the base of the tree instead, one hand pressed against the trunk like she needed it to stay upright. Her shoulders looked thin. Her head was bowed low enough that he couldn't see any of her expression, only the slow, careful way she was breathing, like even that took effort.

"Wait," he said, or tried to. His voice didn't seem to carry the way it should have.

He moved toward her, and the ground beneath his feet seemed to stretch further with every step, the way distances do in dreams, refusing to close no matter how fast he moved. The leaves kept falling around them, one after another, drifting down slow and silent, until the branches above her were bare.

He reached her at last, or thought he did, and knelt down in front of her, and reached out to touch her shoulder. She looked up at him then. He still couldn't make out her face. But he could feel, somehow, in the strange logic dreams operated by, that she was exhausted. Depleted. Something in her had been quietly draining away, day after day, and no one had noticed in time to stop it.

She simply closed her eyes again, her hand still pressed to the trunk of the dying tree, and the last of the leaves let go overhead, falling around both of them like something quietly ending.

He woke with a start, heart pounding, sheets damp beneath him, the ceiling of his own bedroom swimming slowly into focus in the dark.

It took him a long moment to remember where he was. Longer still to shake the feeling that had settled deep in his chest, heavy and wrong, like his body understood something his mind hadn't caught up to yet.

He sat up, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, and told himself it was only a dream. Stress, probably, or guilt finding a strange shape to wear while he slept. But he didn't fall back asleep for a long time after that. He lay in the dark instead, staring at the ceiling, turning the image over and over, the garden gone bare, her kneeling beneath it, exhausted in a way that had felt far too real to belong only to a dream.

He was distracted the whole next day, in a way that didn't sit well with him at all.

It started small. He mixed up the order of two consults, something he never did, and had to double back and apologize to a nurse who'd been waiting on him. He found himself staring too long at a patient's chart during rounds, words on the page not quite registering, his mind circling back again and again to a garden that didn't exist and a woman whose face he couldn't see.

He told himself it was just a dream. He'd told himself that all morning, on repeat, like saying it enough times might finally make it true. It didn't help. The image kept surfacing anyway, uninvited, in the quiet spaces between tasks. The leaves falling. Her shoulders, thin and bowed. The way she hadn't answered him.

And underneath the dream, tangled up with it so tightly he couldn't separate the two anymore, was her. The real her. The woman from the exam room, weeks ago now, sitting there in a paper gown telling him flatly that she didn't need anything from him.

He hadn't seen her since. He didn't know if she was alright. That fact, which he'd been quietly carrying around for weeks, suddenly felt heavier today, pressing somewhere behind his ribs in a way he couldn't explain and didn't like.

He caught himself, twice, opening the hospital directory with every intention of searching her name, only to close it again before he could type more than a letter or two. He had no reason to look. No professional reason, and telling himself there might be a personal one felt like admitting to something he wasn't ready to say out loud, not even to himself.

His chest felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with his own health. It was an uncomfortable, restless feeling, like something was wrong and he didn't have enough information to know what, or where, or how to fix it. He hated not knowing. He'd built his whole career around being someone who found answers, who didn't let uncertainty sit for long before chasing it down. And here he was, useless, sitting with a feeling he couldn't name and no way to act on it.

By the time his shift ended, he'd barely eaten, his coffee long since gone cold and forgotten on his desk. He sat in his car in the hospital parking lot for a while before starting the engine, hands resting on the wheel, staring out at nothing in particular.

"It's just a dream," he said out loud, to the empty car, like hearing it might finally settle something.

It didn't. If anything, saying it out loud only made the discomfort in his chest more obvious, more real, refusing to be reasoned away just because he didn't have a name to put to it, or a face, or any real claim to worrying about her at all.

He drove home in silence, the radio off, the same restless unease sitting with him the whole way, quiet and persistent, like it had no intention of leaving until he did something about it.

He got as far as his apartment door before he stopped fighting it.

He stood there for a moment, keys still in hand, and then, almost against his own better judgment, pulled out his phone instead of going inside. He told himself it was just to check. Just to see that she was fine, that the dream had been nothing, that the tight feeling behind his ribs was simply exhaustion wearing a strange shape. Just this once, and then he'd stop.

He let himself back into his own hallway, sat down heavily on the bottom step of the stairwell instead of climbing them, and opened the hospital's internal system on his phone. His thumb hovered over the search bar longer than it should have. He typed her name.

The system took a second to load, longer than he wanted, his knee bouncing while he waited, and then a list of results filled the screen. Not many. It was an uncommon enough name that there was really only one match that mattered.

He tapped it before he could talk himself out of it. The file loaded slowly, and for a moment his eyes just skimmed without absorbing anything, too much information arriving too fast. Then it started to land, piece by piece, and his stomach dropped further with each line.

Admitted three weeks ago. Severe dehydration and malnutrition. Discharged same day, no documented follow up. Readmitted two days ago. Hyperemesis gravidarum, ketones present, found unconscious by a third party.

Found unconscious. He read it twice, like the words might rearrange themselves into something less alarming the second time. They didn't. He scrolled further, hands not quite steady now, and found the consult note attached to the more recent admission. His own name was on it. His own handwriting, in a sense, typed out clinically weeks ago, recommending fluid management for a patient he hadn't realized was her, flagging her case for social work because something in the chart had told him, even then, that no one was checking in on her.

He'd been right there. He'd read her chart and not known it was her. He'd written notes about her condition and closed the file without a second thought, because the software had cut off her name and he hadn't looked hard enough to notice.

Eleven weeks. The number that had been surfacing in his mind for days finally made sense, horribly, completely, and he felt something in his chest cave in around it.

She'd been sick. Really sick. Alone in an apartment somewhere, collapsing, hospitalized twice, and he hadn't known. He'd been having dreams about dying gardens while she was on a bathroom floor somewhere, or worse, and he'd told himself it was nothing, told himself it wasn't his place to look.

He was on his feet before he'd fully decided to move, keys still in his other hand, phone still lit with her chart, his pulse loud enough in his ears that it drowned out every reasonable argument his own mind tried to raise about boundaries, about what she'd asked for, about whether he had any right at all to show up.

None of it mattered right now. He needed to see her. He needed to know, with his own eyes, that she was alright. He was already moving toward the door before he'd let himself think through what he'd even say when he got there.

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The room had gone dim sometime after the nurses' evening rounds, the overhead lights dimmed low, the machines beside your bed humming their steady, indifferent rhythm into the quiet. Karina had left an hour ago, only after you'd insisted, only after you'd promised you'd call if you needed anything, a promise you both knew you probably wouldn't keep.

You lay there now, IV taped to the back of your hand, the thin blanket pulled up to your chest, and let yourself, finally, stop pretending you were fine.

It came slowly at first. A tightness in your throat you tried to swallow down out of habit. Then your eyes stinging, then blurring, until the ceiling above you dissolved into a soft, watery smear of white. You pressed the back of your free hand against your mouth, an old reflex, quiet, don't let anyone hear.

There was no one to hear. That was the whole problem, wasn't it.

You thought about the last two weeks. About crawling to the bathroom in the dark. About lying on your own bedroom floor, alone, until your body simply gave out and someone else had to find you before it was too late. You thought about how close that had actually been, closer than you'd let yourself admit even to Karina, who'd cried in the waiting room while you were unconscious and hadn't fully stopped being afraid since.

You thought about the tiny, stubborn thing growing inside you that you hadn't even properly begun to plan for, that you were supposed to be strong enough to carry through all of this alone, and some exhausted, honest part of you finally admitted, in the dark, in the quiet, that you didn't know if you could.

"I don't know if I can do this," you whispered, to no one, to the empty room, your voice cracking apart on the last word.

The admission scared you more than anything else had in weeks. You'd built your whole life, especially these last two months, around the belief that you could handle anything alone if you just gritted your teeth hard enough. You'd told Jungwon that, practically to his face. You'd told yourself that every single day since. And here you were, hooked to fluids in a hospital bed for the second time in a month, and the belief was cracking right down the center, and you didn't know how to hold it together anymore.

The tears came harder after that, silent at first, then not silent at all, your shoulders shaking with the effort of trying to keep it quiet even though there was no one there to disturb. You curled onto your side as much as the IV line would allow, one hand drifting to rest low against your stomach, the way it always did now without your permission.

"I'm sorry," you whispered, to the tiny life you couldn't see or feel yet, only imagine. "I'm trying. I promise I'm trying."

It didn't answer, of course. There was only the quiet hum of the machines, and the faint hallway light bleeding in under the door, and the terrible, hollow ache of being so completely alone with something this big.

You cried until you didn't have much left to cry with, until your eyes burned and your chest ached and exhaustion finally started pulling you down toward sleep despite everything. You didn't wipe your face before you let your eyes close. There was no one there to see it anyway.

That was what you told yourself, right up until the moment sleep finally took you under, and you never heard the soft, hesitant knock that came at your door several minutes later, too tentative to wake you, from someone who'd been standing in the hallway for a long moment before he found the nerve to lift his hand at all.

Somewhere between the crying and the exhaustion pulling you under, one thought kept circling back, quiet and unanswerable.

Is it supposed to be this hard?

You didn't know. That was the worst part of it, in a strange way. You'd spent years around children, around the after of pregnancy, the finished product of it, toddlers with sticky hands and easy laughter, and never once had you stopped to ask their mothers what the nine months before had actually cost them. You'd assumed, vaguely, the way people assume things they've never had to live through, that it was hard but survivable, uncomfortable but manageable, something women simply got through with the right amount of patience and ginger tea.

You hadn't expected this. The bathroom floors. The fainting. Two hospital admissions in less than a month, your body seeming to fight the thing growing inside you rather than simply carry it. You wondered, in the dim, half formed way exhaustion allowed for, whether other women went through this too, quietly, alone, and never talked about it because talking about it felt like admitting they weren't handling something that was supposed to come naturally.

You thought of your own mother, briefly, the offhand thing she used to say. Hardest thing I ever did alone. You'd always assumed that meant the raising, the late nights, the years after. You were starting to wonder if she'd meant this part too, the very beginning, the part nobody warned you about because by the time you were far enough along to tell anyone, you were already too deep in it to turn back.

You didn't know if this was normal. You didn't know if other women lay awake at night wondering if their body had simply chosen the wrong person to do this to, someone without the reserves for it, someone already worn thin from everything that came before. You didn't have anyone to ask. Not really. Karina had been wonderful, had sat by your bed for hours, but Karina didn't know what this felt like from the inside, the particular loneliness of a body doing something enormous while the rest of your life went on expecting you to be fine.

You pressed a hand lightly against your stomach again, feeling nothing yet, no movement, no proof beyond the exhaustion and the IV and the doctor's clipped, worried tone from earlier that day. Just an idea of a person, still. A hope, and a fear, tangled together so tightly you couldn't separate them anymore.

Is it supposed to be this hard?

You didn't have an answer. You only had the ache in your chest, and the too-quiet room, and the slow pull of sleep finally dragging your thoughts apart before you could find one.

.

.

.

.

Jungwon didn't remember most of the walk from the parking garage. He remembered running at some point, badge bouncing against his chest, breath tearing ragged in his throat by the time he hit the stairwell instead of waiting for the elevator, two steps at a time, his pulse louder in his ears than anything else around him.

He found your room number on the floor directory and moved toward it without slowing, weaving past a cart, muttering an apology to a nurse he nearly collided with. He didn't bother knocking. He pushed the door open, chest still heaving, and froze.

You were still awake.

You'd curled onto your side, one hand pressed against your mouth, shoulders shaking with the effort of crying quietly in a room that had no reason to expect anyone would walk in on it. Your eyes were red, your cheeks wet, the IV line taped awkwardly to the back of your free hand. You looked up at the sound of the door, startled, and every part of you went rigid.

Disbelief bleeding through the exhaustion. You pushed yourself up slightly against the pillows, swiping a hand roughly across your face, some old reflex to hide what he'd just walked in on, even though it was far too late for that. "What are you— how did you—"

He didn't answer right away. He was too busy staring at you, chest still rising and falling too fast, his own shock plain on his face. He hadn't let himself picture this, not really, not the reality of it. How small you looked. How hollowed out. How clearly you'd been crying alone for a while before he arrived.

"I read your chart," he admitted, voice rough, still catching his breath. "I didn't know it was you until an hour ago."

"You shouldn't be here," you said, though it came out weaker than you meant it to, your voice still thick with tears.

"I know." He didn't move toward you yet, like he was afraid of doing the wrong thing, afraid of taking up space you hadn't offered him. "I know I shouldn't. You told me you didn't need me. I heard you. I've been trying to respect that for weeks, and I have no right to walk in here and undo it just because I'm scared."

"Then why did you come?" Your voice broke on the question, quieter than you meant it, more honest than you meant it too.

He took a step closer, slow, like he was asking permission with every inch. "Because I've been dreaming about you for weeks and I didn't even understand what I was dreaming about," he said, voice unsteady now, none of his usual composure left in it. "Because I read a chart today and didn't know it was yours until it was almost too late to know at all. Because the thought of you lying somewhere alone, going through this by yourself, is unbearable to me. I can't explain why. I've tried to talk myself out of caring this much about someone I barely know, and I can't do it. I've tried for weeks."

You stared at him, tears still slipping down your face, unable to find any words to answer that with.

"I'm not asking you to let me fix this," he went on, quieter now, closer, close enough that you could see how badly his hands were shaking at his sides. "I'm not asking you to trust me, or to need me, or to believe I'll be different from whoever taught you to expect nothing. I know I haven't earned any of that yet." His voice cracked, raw and unguarded in a way you'd never heard from him. "I'm just asking you to let me sit here. Just for tonight. Please. I don't want you to be alone in this room anymore."

You pressed the back of your hand against your mouth, a fresh wave of tears rising, not entirely sure anymore if they were from exhaustion or grief or something dangerously close to relief.

"I don't know… I… ," you admitted, voice cracking apart. 

"One night. That's all I'm asking for right now. Just let me stay."

He reached out, slow and hesitant, and rested his hand near yours on the blanket, not quite touching, close enough that you could close the distance if you wanted to. You did. Your fingers curled weakly around his, and for the first time in weeks, neither of you were entirely, completely alone.

Tuesday was supposed to be ordinary.

The kind of day that disappeared as quickly as it arrived. You finished your morning lecture, replied to a few student emails, stopped by the grocery store on your way home because you'd promised to cook dinner. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that hinted your life was quietly approaching a fault line.

The apartment was supposed to be empty.

You remembered that detail clearly later. He'd told you that morning, half asleep, mumbling something about a meeting running until six. You had the whole afternoon to yourself, or so you'd thought, planning the pasta you'd make, the wine you'd open, the ordinary comfort of a Tuesday night at home. 

You unlocked the front door as quietly as always, balancing a paper bag of groceries against your hip. Then you heard laughter. A woman's laugh, low and familiar, drifting down the hallway like something out of a memory you couldn't quite place. For one suspended heartbeat, your mind simply refused to process it 

Then it did. Your best friend.

You took another step down the hallway. The bedroom door wasn't completely closed. It didn't need to be. Some truths don't ask to be witnessed completely. You already understood, before your conscious mind caught up, that whatever was happening in that apartment wasn't meant for your ears. 

The quiet intimacy of two people who had forgotten the rest of the world existed. Neither of them heard it. Or maybe they did. You didn't stay long enough to find out. There were no questions. No tears. No dramatic confrontation worthy of a movie scene. Because what explanation could possibly undo what you'd already seen?. You turned around before they could notice you. The front door clicked shut behind you with barely a sound. 

Two years of engagement, gone.

Two years of wedding plans scattered across your dining table. Two years of apartment hunting, shared grocery lists, lazy Sunday mornings, and conversations about children you thought you'd have someday. 

You don’t remember the walk to your car. You remember sitting behind the steering wheel with the keys in your hand and staring blankly at the windshield as the city morphed into streaks of bright light. It was just a blur of street lamps, head lights, and everything moving around you while your world was standing still. For a brief moment, you noticed that your hands weren’t shaking. You thought that was strange too. The way that your body had just suddenly gone still and cold and you were just as motionless as your body, like a state of shock had frozen you just outside of the situation.

You couldn’t say how long it was, but what you knew was that you suddenly found yourself standing in front of your closet. Your eyes were drawn to what was at the very back and hidden from view, your black dress. You hadn’t seen it for years.

"It's a little too much," he'd once said with an easy laugh.

"Too short."

"Too noticeable."

You remembered smiling then, folding the dress away because it hadn't seemed important enough to argue about.

You pulled it from the closet and let it fall over your body, the fabric cool and unfamiliar against your skin, hugging you in ways you'd forgotten you were allowed to be seen. It felt like putting on a stranger. Someone who wasn't trying to be agreeable anymore. Someone who had nothing left to protect and nothing left to lose.  You left the engagement ring where it was.

After leaving your phone in your purse, you grabbed your keys for the second time and stepped into the dark. You had no idea where you were headed but felt a certainty in your chest about leaving the life you had. You felt like you could not spend one more moment inside the life that no longer felt like it belonged to you.  

.

.

.

Tuesday hadn't given him any warning either.

Jungwon's shift had ended late. A delivery that ran longer than expected, hours stretched thin by complications that weren't anyone's fault, just the unpredictable nature of the job. By the time he clocked out, his scrubs still smelled faintly of antiseptic, his feet aching in a way that had become so routine he barely registered it anymore. All he wanted was his own bed, maybe food he didn't have to think about. 

He let himself into her apartment with the key she'd given him two years ago, the metal worn smooth from years in his pocket, attached to a keychain shaped like a tiny stethoscope. A joke gift from early in their relationship, something she'd laughed about giving him, something he'd kept clipped to his keys ever since without really thinking about why. 

The shower was running. Her tablet was face up on the kitchen counter, screen still lit from a notification. He hadn't meant to look. He told himself that for weeks afterward, though it stopped mattering fairly quickly whether he'd meant to or not.

A name he recognized. A string of messages that didn't need much context. Photos that answered questions he hadn't known to ask. He stood there in his work clothes, badge still clipped to his coat pocket, and read enough to understand that ‘residency's exhausting’ had been covering for something else entirely for months, maybe longer.

He didn't move at all, actually, just stood there in the kitchen with his hands loose at his sides, feeling something inside his chest go very still and cold. He didn't throw the tablet. 

She stepped out of the bathroom in a towel, damp hair pushed back, and stopped short in the doorway when she saw Jungwon standing there. Badge still clipped to his coat pocket, tablet lying face up on the counter exactly where she'd left it. Something in his stillness told her immediately that the evening wasn't going to go the way she'd planned.

"Jungwon?" Her voice came out careful, testing. "You're back early."

He didn't answer right away. He just looked at her, and she followed his gaze to the tablet, and whatever color was left in her face drained out of it in an instant.

"How long," he said. Not a question. A statement in the shape of a question.

"I—" She pulled the towel tighter around herself, a reflexive gesture, like modesty mattered now, of all moments. "Jungwon, it's not—"

"Don't." His voice remained quiet and level, the same tone he used when he had to tell a patient's family something they didn't want to hear. "Don't tell me it's not what it looks like. I read enough."

Her mouth opened, then closed. For a long moment, the only sound in the apartment was water still dripping somewhere in the bathroom behind her.

"How long," he said again.

She sat down slowly on the arm of the couch, like her legs had stopped being reliable. "Since spring," she said quietly. "Maybe a little before that."

"Spring." He turned the word over like he was checking it for a fracture. "Daeun, that's eight months."

"I didn't plan for it to happen." Her voice cracked slightly, and he almost hated how convincing it sounded, how rehearsed and unrehearsed all at once. "We were just–we started as friends, and then residency got so heavy, and you were always working, and he was just there, and I don't know, it just…"

"I was working," he repeated flatly. "Right. Because I have a job that saves lives, and that's the excuse."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" His voice finally rose. "Because from where I'm standing, you've had eight months to tell me. Eight months of me asking if you were okay, if something was wrong, and you telling me it was just residency. Eight months of me believing you."

She didn't answer that. There wasn't an answer that would have helped her.

"Six years," he said, quieter now, almost to himself. "Six years, and I find out like this. Off a notification on your tablet."

"I was going to tell you." Her eyes were wet now, genuinely, and some old, tired part of him almost felt sorry for her, which made him angrier at himself than at her. "I've been trying to figure out how, for weeks, I swear—"

"Don't," he said again, softer this time, because he didn't have the energy left to argue about her intentions. "It doesn't matter anymore. You could've told me in June. You could've told me in September. You didn't." He stopped, pressed the heel of his hand briefly against his eyes, then dropped it. "That's the part that matters."

"Jungwon…"

"I have to go." He was already reaching for his coat.

"Can we at least talk about this properly? Please. Don't just walk out,"

He paused at the door, hand on the frame, and looked back at her.  Tear streaked, still somehow looking for a version of this conversation that ended somewhere softer than where it actually was.

"There isn't a version of this where I stay, and we talk it through.”

"So that's it?" Her voice cracked properly now. "Six years, and you're just leaving? No fighting for it?"

He almost laughed, though nothing about it felt funny. "You didn't fight for it either," he said quietly. "Not for eight months."

He didn't wait for her response. The door closed behind him just shut, quiet and final, the same way the whole relationship seemed to be ending: without the drama it probably deserved, just a soft, ordinary sound marking something enormous coming apart.

He drove without any destination in mind, the radio off, the city sliding past in a blur of red lights, he stopped out of habit rather than attention. Six years. He kept circling back to the number like it might rearrange itself into something smaller, something easier to hold.

He ended up parking outside a bar he'd never been to. Not his usual place near the hospital, where someone always seemed to know his face even without the coat. Tonight, he didn't want to be recognized. He didn't want to be Dr. Yang, careful and composed, the boy faced physician everyone had to double take before trusting. He just wanted to sit somewhere dark and stop being anyone in particular for a while.

He loosened his tie in the car before he went in. Small, useless gesture. It didn't make him feel any less, as something had just been quietly taken from him.

.

.

.

The bar was louder than you expected for a Tuesday, but you didn't care. Noise was better than silence. Silence gave you room to think, and thinking was the last thing you wanted tonight.

By the time the bartender slid your fourth glass across the counter, the sharp edges of the evening had softened. The ache in your chest hadn't disappeared; it had simply become distant, like hearing thunder several miles away.  You shifted on the barstool, crossing one leg over the other. The black dress rode a little higher against your thigh, and for the first time in years, you didn't bother tugging it back down.

He would've hated that. The thought came uninvited. You emptied the rest of your drink before it could linger. 

That's when he sat down beside you. Close enough that you noticed before you even looked. He was handsome. That was your first thought. Your second was that he looked far too young to be sitting alone in a place like this. His white dress shirt was neatly pressed except for the loosened tie hanging around his neck, as though he'd started the evening trying to hold himself together and abandoned the effort somewhere along the way. His sleeves were rolled to his forearms, exposing tired hands wrapped loosely around a glass he barely touched.

His gaze remained fixed on the amber liquid, unfocused, like he expected answers to settle at the bottom if he waited long enough. There was something strangely familiar about the way sadness sat on him. You almost didn't say anything. Almost.

You looked away. It wasn't your business. You weren't here to notice strangers. You were here to forget yourself. A minute passed, or maybe two. The bartender asked if either of you wanted another round. Neither of you answered. Without thinking, you let out a quiet breath.

"You look like you got dumped."

The words escaped before you could decide whether to keep them. Your voice came out flatter than you'd intended, stripped of humor, carrying more exhaustion than wit.

He turned toward you. Not offended, just surprised. For a heartbeat, neither of you spoke. His eyes searched your face, lingering there with quiet curiosity, as though he couldn't decide if you were teasing him or speaking from experience. Then his gaze drifted lower to the diamond still resting on your left hand. A ring that caught the warm bar lights just enough to betray you. One corner of his mouth lifted into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"You still have your ring on," he said softly.

You followed his gaze, staring at the diamond as though you'd forgotten it was there. For a long moment, you simply twisted it around your finger.

"I forgot to take it off."

It wasn't entirely true. You hadn't forgotten. You just hadn't found the courage. His eyes met yours again.

"You look like you got dumped too."

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

"I did."

He gave a slow nod.

"So did I."

The words settled between you with the quiet understanding that only strangers could sometimes share. Neither of you asked for details or explanations. For tonight, it was enough to know that the person sitting beside you understood exactly what heartbreak looked like.

He glanced at your empty glass. "Another?"

You shook your head. "I think I've had enough of pretending a drink is going to fix anything."

Something about that made him almost smile, the first real one you'd seen from him all night, small and tired but genuine. "Yeah,me too."

The bartender came by again, and this time Jungwon was the one who waved him off, reaching instead for his wallet. You didn't argue when he paid for both of you. Some nights, you didn't have the energy left to insist on independence.

Outside, the air was cooler than you expected, sharp enough to cut through the haze just slightly. Neither of you moved toward a taxi right away. You just stood there for a moment under the bar's dim sign, the city noise a distant hum around you, both of you clearly aware that the night hadn't decided yet what it wanted to become.

"I don't usually do this," you said, not quite looking at him.

"Do what?"

"Any of this. Bars. Strangers. Standing outside at midnight, not knowing what I'm doing."

"Neither do I," he said. Then, after a pause, quieter, "I don't want to go home yet, though."

You understood exactly what he meant, because you felt the same thing sitting heavy in your chest. Home wasn't home anymore. Home was an apartment with echoes you couldn't bear to hear. Home meant seeing the engagement ring still circling your finger. Home meant admitting that tomorrow would arrive whether you wanted it to or not. For the first time that evening, you really looked at him.

He couldn't have been much younger than thirty, though his face carried an unmistakable softness that made him seem younger than he probably was. His tie still hung loose around his neck, his hair slightly disheveled, exhaustion written plainly across features that were almost unfairly handsome. 

He looked as though someone had reached into his life that morning and quietly removed the future he'd expected. That may be why he looked familiar.

"There's a hotel two blocks from here," you said.

He didn't ask if you were sure. He just nodded, like he'd been waiting for someone to say it first.

Neither of you filled the silence with questions about names, jobs, or the people who had broken your hearts. Some things felt strangely unimportant. Inside the elevator, your shoulders brushed for the first time. Neither of you moved away. 

The door had barely clicked shut before the tension that had been simmering between you in the elevator boiled over. There was no slow buildup, no romantic preamble; there was only a desperate, starving need to feel something other than the hollow ache in your chests.

Jungwon turned to you, his face flushed from the alcohol and the heat of the moment. He looked so young, almost innocent, but the look in his eyes was raw and hungry. He reached out, his hand cupping the back of your neck and pulling you into a kiss that tasted of whiskey and grief. It was a collision, teeth clashing, breaths hitching as you both clung to each other like survivors of a shipwreck.

You groaned into his mouth, your hands sliding up his chest to grip the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer until there wasn't a sliver of air between your bodies. He backed you up against the door, the thud of your back hitting the wood echoing in the quiet room. His tongue pushed past your lips, claiming your mouth with an urgency that made your toes curl.

"Please," you whispered against his lips, though you weren't even sure what you were asking for.

He didn't answer with words. His hands slid down to your hips, lifting you effortlessly. You wrapped your legs around his waist, your skirt riding up to your hips as he carried you toward the bed. He dropped you onto the white linens, his body following immediately, pinning you down with a weight that felt grounding and necessary.

Jungwon’s hands were frantic, stripping away the barriers of clothing. He pulled your dress over your head and tossed it aside, his eyes scanning your naked body with a mixture of awe and desperation. When he stripped off his own clothes, you saw the lean, toned muscles of a man who didn't look his age, his cock already hard and pulsing, straining against the air.

He didn't waste time. He moved between your thighs, his fingers sliding down to find your pussy. You were already soaking, the friction of the night and the emotional turmoil making you ache for him. He slid two fingers inside you, stretching you open, while his thumb worked your clit in a rhythmic, punishing pace. You arched your back, a loud moan escaping you as you neared the edge.

"Look at me," he murmured.

You opened your eyes to see him watching you, his expression a mask of longing. He positioned the head of his cock at your entrance, pausing for a heartbeat before thrusting deep inside you in one heavy, seamless motion.

You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders as he filled you completely. The sensation was overwhelming. The stretch, the heat, the sudden fullness that silenced the noise in your head. He began to move, his thrusts deep and rhythmic, driving into you with a primal intensity. Each hit of his pelvis against your ass sounded like a wet slap in the quiet room.

"Fuck," he groaned, burying his face in the crook of your neck, his breath hot against your skin. "You feel so good… shit, so tight…"

You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him down for another bruising kiss as he picked up the pace. He wasn't being gentle; he was fucking you with a desperation that mirrored your own, as if by driving himself into you, he could push out the memory of the woman who had betrayed him. You met every thrust, tilting your pelvis up to take him deeper, wanting to feel every inch of him.

The friction built, a coil of tension tightening in your lower belly. Jungwon’s movements became shorter, faster, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He shifted his grip, grabbing your thighs and pinning them back toward your chest to open you up even more. The angle allowed him to hit your cervix with every plunge, sending sparks of pleasure shooting through your spine.

"I'm close—" he choked out, his muscles straining.

You felt your own climax rushing toward you, a tidal wave of release. You gripped his biceps, your voice breaking into a series of high-pitched whimpers. As you peaked, your pussy walls clamping tight around him in rhythmic spasms, Jungwon let out a low, guttural growl. He gave one final, deep thrust, burying himself to the hilt, and shuddered violently as he came.

You felt the hot, thick jets of his cum pumping deep inside you, filling your womb with a warmth that felt almost spiritual in its intensity. He stayed buried inside you for a long time, his forehead resting against yours, both of you panting, your hearts beating in a synchronized, frantic rhythm.

As the adrenaline faded, the silence returned, but it was different now. The loneliness was still there, but it had been blunted. Jungwon slowly withdrew, the wet sound of his cock leaving your body echoing in the room. He didn't pull away completely; he rolled onto his side and pulled you into his arms, tucking your head under his chin.

Neither of you spoke. There were no names exchanged, no promises of a second meeting. You just lay there in the dim light of the hotel room, two broken strangers sharing a bed, clinging to the fleeting comfort of a night that neither of you would ever forget.

.

.

.

A month passed by.

Long enough for the memory of that night to start to blur at the edges. Sometimes you thought you invented some of it.

You remembered the warmth of whiskey better than you remembered his face. His tie, loosened. How he’d just listened, without asking questions. A pair of tired eyes that had looked at you as if they knew something that nobody else knew.

All else had blurred, melting into the sort of memory that belonged to another version of you. You never came back to the bar. If he did, you wouldn't know it. And if he hadn’t, you wouldn’t have known that either. That was maybe how it was always supposed to be. Life went on, as indifferent as ever. 

Life had moved on, in its own stubborn manner. You got out of the apartment. You’d gone and blocked your ex-fiancée’s number. You weren't going to speak to your ex-bestfriend, and you hadn't. It was a mercy in itself. Your students didn't know that anything was different. They looked at you like you were just their lecturer. Untroubled. Unbreakable.

You could almost pretend your life hadn’t fallen apart. For three hours at a time. That was enough. Until it wasn’t. It began on a Thursday. Not with nausea or vertigo. Only a date. 

You were standing in your kitchen, waiting on the coffee machine to finish brewing, when the thought came unbidden. Your monthly. Your brow wrinkled. You counted backwards, almost absentmindedly. Then you counted again. The answer was the same. It's late.

This was not normal.

Your body was always predictable, almost stubbornly so. Even in college, when your roommates complained about irregular cycles and surprise cramps, yours came like clockwork, and you didn’t bother tracking it anymore. You put your coffee mug down, untouched. 

"It's the stress," you whispered to the empty apartment. It must have been. 

It made sense, didn't it? The breakup, the move, months of your nervous system running on fumes. Bodies did strange things under pressure. You'd read that somewhere, or maybe you just wanted to have read it somewhere. 

You gave it a few more days. Then a week. The coffee you'd started craving black suddenly turned your stomach. Smells you'd never noticed before. The neighbor's cooking, the detergent in your own laundry, sent you running for air that didn't feel like it was choking you. 

One day a co-worker came into your office with take out. The smell alone would have you running for the nearest bathroom. You said it was the flu. Food poisoning.  Anything.  All of it. Except for that one possibility that’s silently trailing you from room to room.

By the time you found yourself standing in the pharmacy aisle staring at a shelf of boxes you never had reason to buy before, some quiet part of you, dreading, already knew. 

You stood in front of the shelf longer than you needed to. So many different brands. Different promises. Different prices. As though any of them could deliver a different answer. You bought two.

As soon as you were home, you didn't wait long to do. Sat on the side of the bathtub, phone timer ticking away before you began to look at your hands and realise they weren't even yours.

Two lines. Then two more.

You sat there for a long time after that, the tile cold beneath you, your mind doing the math it didn't want to do.  The date, the timeline, the one night that had blurred into something you'd tried hard to forget. There was only one night it could have been.

Your heartbeat stumbled.

"No..."

The word escaped before you realized you'd spoken aloud.

You remained there for what felt like hours, staring at the tests resting in your hands as though they belonged to someone else. 

There was only one person. One night. One stranger, with tired eyes and a loosened tie and a sadness that had looked so much like your own it hadn't frightened you. You didn't even remember his name. You didn't know his address. What was his work. If you'd ever see him again.  You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes. A man who existed in your memory as nothing more than tired eyes and a loosened tie, and you look like you got dumped, too.

You didn't know how to find him even if you'd wanted to.

A baby.

The words refused to settle. They hovered somewhere just beyond understanding, too large to fit into the quiet routine you'd been stitching back together over the last month. You were thirty two. Recently single. Still learning how to sleep in an apartment that echoed because there was no one else in it.

You'd spent years building a career you loved, teaching future educators how to nurture children with patience, consistency, and kindness. Ironically, you'd never decided whether motherhood belonged in your own future. You always assumed there would be time to figure it out.

You thought you had more time to decide that. You thought, if it ever happened, it would happen with someone you trusted, someone who'd chosen it with you, not a stranger from a bar whose last name you didn't even know. 

You thought about how easy it would be to end it before anyone had to know it happened at all. No one would ask questions. No one would even know there was something to ask about. You could keep moving forward exactly the way you'd planned, pick your life back up, untangled, unremarkable, the way it was supposed to look after a breakup like this. Clean. Simple.

You sat with that thought for a while, testing its weight, waiting to feel relief.

It didn't come.

Instead, you found yourself thinking about your own mother, who used to tell you that she'd never once regretted having you. Even though your father had left before you turned three. Hardest thing I ever did alone, she'd said once, and still the only decision I never doubted. You'd never fully understood what she meant by that until this exact moment, sitting on a bathroom floor with a truth in your hands you hadn't asked for.

You thought about the years you'd spent in classrooms full of small kids who trusted easily, loved easily, hadn't yet learned that people could hollow you out from the inside without warning. You'd built a career around believing children deserved good beginnings. You wondered, cruelly, whether you were about to fail that belief the moment it became personal.

Then you thought about the alternative. The quiet, empty version of your future you'd have to live with either way. A yes, you might regret, or a no, you were fairly sure you would.

You pressed a hand flat against your stomach, feeling nothing yet, nothing you could point to, and still somehow feeling everything.

A slow breath escaped you.

"I don't need him."

The words were barely louder than a whisper. You said them again.

"I don't."

You weren't trying to convince yourself. You already knew they were true. You didn't need a husband. You didn't need a wedding. You didn't need promises made by someone else to make this decision for you. If this child entered the world, it would be because you chose them. Not because of guilt.

You knew exactly what waited beyond this bathroom door. Questions, whispers and mostly it would be judgment. Forms with blank spaces labeled Father. A future that would be more difficult than the one you'd imagined for yourself. None of that disappeared simply because you'd made a decision. But neither did your resolve.

For the first time since walking into that apartment on Tuesday afternoon, you realized your future no longer felt defined by something that had been taken from you. It was being shaped by something you had chosen. You slowly pushed yourself to your feet and looked at your reflection in the mirror. You looked exhausted. Your eyes were swollen, your hair a mess, your expression still carrying traces of the woman who'd had her heart broken.

But beneath all of that, there was something new. Resolve. You rested your hand over your stomach once more.

"Okay," you whispered to the tiny life only you knew existed.

A faint smile tugged at your lips despite everything.

"It's you and me now."

The words sounded impossibly small in the quiet apartment. Yet,  somehow, they were enough.

.

.

.

The dream came to him three nights in a row.  Always the same, dissolving the moment he woke, leaving only fragments behind the way real dreams rarely do.

In it, he stood in a garden he didn't recognize, thick with fruit trees heavy enough that their branches bent low toward the ground. A woman he couldn't see clearly handed him a single peach, round and impossibly ripe, still warm like it had just been pulled from sunlight rather than a branch. 

He always woke up right after that. Nothing more happened. It didn't need to.

He didn't think much of it, not really. After all, dreams rarely made sense, and he'd learned a long time ago not to chase meaning where there probably wasn't any. Still, on the fourth morning, he found himself mentioning it to Sunoo over coffee in the hospital break room, mostly out of the strange, itching need to say it out loud to someone.

"I keep having this dream," he said, staring into his cup. "Same one, a few nights now. There's a garden, and someone hands me a peach. That's it. That's the whole dream."

Sunoo lowered his own cup slowly, staring at him with an expression somewhere between disbelief and barely contained excitement. "A peach?"

"Yeah."

"Ripe? Whole? Someone handed it to you directly?"

Jungwon blinked at him. "Yes? Why does that matter?"

Sunoo set his coffee down entirely now, leaning forward like Jungwon had just handed him the best gossip of the year. "Do you seriously not know what that is?"

"It's a dream about fruit?"

Honestly, Sunoo never wanted to face palmed himself, but hearing the dumb answer Jungwon gave him got him a reason to. 

"It's a taemong." When Jungwon only stared blankly back at him, Sunoo let out a groan of disbelief. "A conception dream. My grandmother used to talk about these constantly. Fruit, animals, sometimes fire or water, show up in a dream right before someone in the family finds out they're having a baby. Whole ripe fruit like that, handed directly to you? That's about as classic as it gets."

Jungwon huffed, unimpressed, turning his cup slowly between his hands. "You can't be serious."

"I'm completely serious. It's not just some old wives' thing.  Half the moms I know still swear by it. My cousin dreamed about catching a fish barehanded, and two weeks later, she found out she was pregnant. My aunt dreamed about a dragon curling around her arm and had twins."

"That's confirmation bias," Jungwon said flatly. "People remember the dreams that match and forget the ones that don't."

"Sure, sure, very scientific of you, Dr. Yang." Sunoo waved a hand, entirely unbothered by the skepticism. "But you're not the one who usually has these dreams, that's the funny part. It's not always the mother. Sometimes it's the father, or a grandparent, sometimes even a close friend if the dream's strong enough. But if it's the father dreaming it..." He trailed off, grinning now, clearly enjoying himself far too much. "That usually means it's already happened. The universe is just running a little behind on paperwork."

Jungwon rolled his eyes, though something in his chest had gone strangely tight at the words, an unease he couldn't quite explain rationally. "I don't believe in that stuff."

"You don't have to believe in it for it to be true," Sunoo said, entirely too pleased with himself. "That's kind of the whole point of a folktale, isn’t it?"

Jungwon didn't have a response for that. He just sat there, turning his coffee cup slowly in his hands, telling himself it was nothing. Probably just stress, exhaustion, and an overactive mind conjuring strange images after too many back to back shifts. He didn't have a girlfriend anymore. There was no one in his life the dream could reasonably be about.

He didn't let himself finish that thought all the way through.

"It's nothing," he said again, mostly to convince himself. "Just a weird dream."

Sunoo shrugged, tossing his empty cup toward the trash with practiced ease, clearly unconvinced but willing to let it go. "Sure. Just a weird dream."

Jungwon didn't think much more of it after that. Not consciously, anyway. But the image stayed with him regardless, lingering somewhere quiet at the edges of his following days.  A garden, a peach, and a stranger's hands offering him something he hadn't known, yet, that he was already holding.

.

.

.

The clinic wasn't one you'd been to before.

A coworker had recommended it months ago, so excited about the obstetrics department that you'd written the name down without a second thought. It was near campus, near enough to squeeze in an appointment between lectures without sacrificing half your day to traffic.

You wish. That was it. Comfort. Distance from your former life. A doctor who didn’t know your story. Somebody who would see one more first time patient. That's all.

You sat, one leg bouncing under your chair, fingertips tracing the edge of the bracelet wrapped loosely about your wrist. You'd practiced the appointment on the drive over. If they asked about the father, you would tell them as you have been rehearsing it in your mind. 

We're not together.

If they pressed further, then—

I'd rather not discuss it.

Simple.

"Y/L/N?"

A nurse called your name, and you followed her down a hallway that smelled like antiseptic and lavender hand soap, into a small exam room with a poster of a fetal development chart on the wall that you deliberately didn't look at too long.

"Dr. Yang will be with you in just a moment," the nurse said, and left you there with your paper gown and your racing thoughts.

You didn't think anything of the name. Yang wasn't uncommon. You sat on the edge of the exam table, hands folded in your lap, running through the questions you wanted to ask — due dates, next steps, whether the exhaustion you'd been feeling was normal or something to worry about.

Then the door opened.

"Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Yang Jung—"

The sentence didn't finish. It just stopped, cut clean in half, the way a record scratches when the needle's yanked away too fast.

You looked up. And your whole body went cold.

He remained frozen in the doorway, one hand still curled around the handle like he'd forgotten how to let go of it. The patient chart in his other hand slipped slightly in his grip, not enough to fall, just enough that you noticed his fingers had momentarily stopped remembering their one job. Recognition moved across his face almost instantly, undisguised, unrehearsed, nothing like the practiced composure a doctor was supposed to walk into a room with.

The overhead lights were full on him now. Clinical, unfriendly, not like the dim gold haze of that bar a month ago. No booze to take the edge off. No shadows to hide the details And you couldn’t miss him. Same face. Same eyes that witnessed you break against a hotel room door. Quiet and searching, in a way that had seemed to him that night the only honest thing left in the world. Except the face was on a man in a white coat. A stethoscope draped around his neck. His name stitched in careful navy thread over his heart.

Yang Jungwon.

Neither of you said anything. The seconds stretched, thin and unbearable, the fluorescent hum of the room suddenly deafening in the silence. As if hoping he was mistaken. He wasn't.

"...You?"

It barely qualified as a word. More breath than voice. Your mouth had gone completely dry. The sentence never got a chance to finish. Neither of you needed it to.

You weren't doing much better. Your hands had grown cold, and sat in your lap, fingers pressed together hard enough to leave imprints. The paper gown crackled a little with each too-quick breath. You’d spent a month talking yourself into believing that night belonged to some other you, reckless and grieving and gone by morning. And here he was, a white coat, a stethoscope around his neck, his name stitched over his heart, undeniably real, undeniably the same man.

Neither of you said anything. 

His gaze dropped. Not to the chart. To your left hand. The engagement ring was gone. Then, almost involuntarily, his eyes moved lower. To the file tucked beneath his arm. He looked at your name. Gestational age. Estimated conception date. The room became impossibly quiet. His jaw tightened. Not because he was calculating. Because he already had. He didn't need the dates. He remembered the night. The chart simply confirmed what he already knew.

university had settled into something comfortably predictable. the frantic first weeks of introductions and orientation events had faded months ago, replaced instead by routines that seemed to repeat themselves without anyone really noticing. monday mornings always began with students rushing across campus twenty minutes later than they’d intended. the library was impossibly full by lunchtime despite everyone insisting they worked better in their own rooms. by friday afternoon, every coffee shop had queues stretching through the doors, fuelled by exhausted students convincing themselves they deserved an overpriced coffee after surviving another week.

somewhere between all of that, you’d found your place. looking back, it was strange how quickly everything had happened. you’d arrived expecting months of awkwardness, eating lunch alone, second-guessing whether anyone would remember your name after conversations, wondering if uni friendships really were as effortless as people had made them seem.

instead, they’d simply… happened.

sunoo had been the first. he’d sat beside you before your introductory lecture had even begun, complaining dramatically about the size of the campus before asking if you’d figured out where the nearest coffee shop was yet. neither of you had. by the end of the afternoon, the two of you had spent almost three hours wandering around hopelessly lost before accidentally stumbling across the student union together.

after that came jay, who somehow possessed the remarkable ability to complain about absolutely everything while still being the most dependable person you knew. then jake, whose boyish eagerness felt almost impossible to rival, and sunghoon, who’d seemed intimidating right up until you’d realised ninety percent of his sarcasm disappeared whenever someone offered him food.

before long, dinners became shared instead of solitary. library sessions somehow turned into six people studying different degrees around the same table simply because nobody wanted to work alone. birthdays, movie nights, grocery trips, midnight walks to convenience stores after collective assignment breakdowns… somehow, they’d all become normal.

it wasn’t that your newfound group spent every waking moment together. everyone’s timetables were different. there were weeks where assignments swallowed whole days, where some people disappeared beneath deadlines while others barely had a lecture scheduled. but somehow everyone always found their way back together eventually, as though it had become an unspoken expectation rather than something anyone actively organised.

you liked that. how there wasn’t any pressure, only familiarity. outside of your own friends, uni had a funny way of making people feel familiar too.

your course was large enough that you couldn’t possibly know everyone, yet small enough that faces started repeating themselves. people you’d exchanged exactly one conversation with would smile as they passed you on campus. classmates whose names you’d never learnt would wave from the opposite side of lecture theatres. baristas recognised your coffee order before you’d even reached the till.

jay insisted it was because everyone knew you, you insisted he was exaggerating. the truth probably sat somewhere in the middle. you’d always found it easier to smile first than wait for someone else to. if someone looked nervous before a presentation, you’d wish them luck. if someone sat beside you in a lecture, you’d introduce yourself before either of you had time to overthink the silence. conversations came naturally enough that you rarely realised you’d always be the one to start them until they’d ended.

people remembered kindness more than confidence, something you’d learnt a long time ago. which, to give jay some credit, was probably why you recognised so many faces despite knowing so few names.

one of those faces belonged to someone you’d never actually spoken to, you couldn’t even remember the first time you’d noticed him. he’d simply always seemed to exist somewhere on the edge of your life.

sometimes you’d catch sight of him crossing the courtyard with headphones resting loosely around his neck, one hand buried in the pocket of an oversized hoodie while the other balanced an impossible stack of books against his chest. other times he’d already be sitting near the front before lectures began, quietly reading through notes while everyone else chatted around him.

he left classes quickly. professors barely finished dismissing everyone before he was gone, disappearing into hallways crowded with students until he became impossible to pick out from everyone else.

you didn’t know much about him, only fragments gathered accidentally over the course of a year. he was ridiculously smart. heeseung lived with him and you’d hear his complaints, albeit fond ones, about how when jungwon had an exam or assignment coming up, however small, he wouldn’t leave his room until he was impossibly sure of himself, which never happened. 

riki also complained (in much less detail) that he spent too much time studying.

sunoo had once described him as “one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet once he forgets to be nervous.”

that last one had surprised you. from a distance, he always looked composed, quiet, sure. but never nervous. if anything, he’d struck you as someone perfectly content staying in his own company. the kind of person who preferred observing conversations rather than joining them. you weren’t sure you’d ever heard him raise his voice. or laugh loudly. or even stay somewhere longer than he absolutely had to.

still, he was difficult not to notice. perhaps because everyone around him seemed louder by comparison. heeseung laughed with his whole body. riki rarely stood still for longer than thirty seconds. jay somehow managed to turn ordering lunch into a competition. sunghoon teased sunoo relentlessly and jake always seemed to be stuck in the middle, trying his hardest to swat sunghoon’s persistent hands away from sunoo as he tried not laugh himself, for sunoo’s sake. jungwon simply… existed quietly amongst all of it, as though he occupied a completely different pace to everyone else.

you never gave it much thought, he was simply another familiar stranger. someone whose face had become a comfortable part of your life without ever crossing fully into it.

despite sharing more mutual friends than either of you probably realised, you and jungwon had somehow managed to spend the better part of a year existing almost entirely on the edges of each other’s lives. it became one of those things you only noticed after it had already been happening for months. the two of you would be invited to the same birthday dinner, only for one of you to arrive after the other had already settled into conversation. someone would suggest a movie night at heeseung and riki’s flat, and while everyone else gradually drifted into the living room, you’d somehow end up helping jay order food while jungwon disappeared into the kitchen to make more drinks. group photos would be taken at the end of the night, proving you had, in fact, spent several hours in the same room, despite barely exchanging more than a passing glance.

it almost became funny, but not in a way anyone ever pointed out. just one of those strange little coincidences that seemed to happen naturally whenever enough people were involved. if there was a seat beside jungwon when you arrived, someone would inevitably call your name from the opposite end of the table before you had a chance to sit down. if you wandered over to ask heeseung something, jungwon would suddenly realise his cup was empty and excuse himself to refill his water. if everyone split into smaller conversations, the two of you somehow always ended up in different ones. not deliberately. just… somehow.

the closest thing you’d had to a conversation happened sometime during the first semester. you’d arrived at heeseung and riki’s flat with two bags of snacks balanced awkwardly against your hip after volunteering to stop by the corner shop on the way over.

the front door was already unlocked. you’d let yourself inside, calling out a quick hello that was immediately drowned out by riki shouting something unintelligible from the living room. before you could make sense of it, someone appeared around the corner.

jungwon. he’d looked just as surprised to see you as you’d been to see him. for a second, the two of you had simply stared at each other.

“…hey.” you grinned. he noticed the hopeful sparkle in your eyes before he noticed the way the left side of your face tilted up slightly more than the right when you gave him one of the blinding smiles you seemed to dish out so abundantly to his friends. he thought it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen.

“…hi.” he muttered back sheepishly, dropping his gaze to the floor on instinct. 

then he’d stepped aside to let you through with a small, polite smile before disappearing down the hallway again. that had been it. looking back, you weren’t even sure if it counted as a conversation. it obviously hadn’t felt like one.

after that, much to your dismay, the pattern simply continued. you knew who he was, everyone did. if someone mentioned jungwon, nobody ever had to ask, “which one?” he’d built something of a quiet reputation around campus without ever seeming to try.

people on your course didn’t know much about him beyond the obvious. they knew he studied computer science, that he consistently did well in every module he took and that professors seemed to like him. every now and then, his name would come up when someone was complaining about an assignment.

“jungwon finished it last week.”

“apparently he got full marks.”

“does he ever sleep?”

the answer, according to heeseung, was apparently “not during exam season.”

you’d lost count of the number of times he’d shown up somewhere and casually mentioned that jungwon hadn’t left his room all day.

“he’s revising.”

“again?”

“he says he isn’t ready.”

“his test’s tomorrow.”

“exactly.”

heeseung always said it with the same mixture of affection and disbelief, like someone talking about a younger brother who worried far more than he needed to.

riki, on the other hand, had much less patience for it.

“he acts like every quiz decides his entire future.”

“it kind of does,” heeseung had replied once.

“no, it doesn’t.” riki muttered out, rolling his eyes as far back into his head as he could.

“to him it does.” heeseung smiled, swatting riki on the shoulder as he teased him for his dramatics.

the conversation had moved on quickly after that. most conversations did. people laughed, someone changed the subject and eventually everyone started talking over one another again.  still, little comments like that stayed with you, simply because they slowly filled in the gaps around someone you barely knew. the version of jungwon everyone described never quite matched the one you saw. they talked about someone who panicked over assignments, second-guessed himself constantly and somehow managed to convince himself he’d fail exams everyone else expected him to ace. the jungwon you’d always seen seemed unnaturally calm. he walked across campus at an unhurried pace, never looking particularly rushed even when everyone around him was sprinting to lectures. he’d sit quietly before classes with a notebook open, reading through something while conversations buzzed around him. when people spoke to him, he always looked up immediately, giving them his full attention before answering. reserved, maybe. quiet, definitely. but never anxious.

you wondered, briefly, if he simply hid it well. or maybe people behaved differently around those they were comfortable with. the thought didn’t linger for long. everyone was different around their friends, you probably were too.

one friday evening, the two groups ended up at heeseung and riki’s flat after jay had declared that nobody should be spending the end of the week working. the plan had been to order takeaway, watch a film and, in jay’s words, “pretend deadlines don’t exist until monday.”

predictably, the film never really happened. jake and heeseung couldn’t agree on what to watch. then sunghoon decided he was hungry before a decision had been made, so much so that he refused to talk about anything else. by the time food finally arrived, everyone had split off into different conversations scattered around the flat. you found yourself squeezed onto one end of the sofa beside an exasperated sunoo while jake and sunghoon argued over whether pineapple belonged on pizza. jay had wandered into the kitchen to find more drinks, heeseung followed after him. riki disappeared for reasons nobody questioned. at some point, you realised jungwon wasn’t in the room either. you only noticed because he returned a few minutes later carrying a stack of clean plates balanced carefully in both hands. without interrupting anyone, he set them down on the coffee table one by one before disappearing back into the kitchen.

he came back again with cutlery. then napkins. someone thanked him absentmindedly. he nodded once.

“no worries.”

and sat down as though he’d done nothing at all. it was such a small thing that nobody else seemed to pay it any attention. conversation carried on without missing a beat. sunghoon was still insisting pineapple absolutely belonged on pizza.

jay, now involved, disagreed so passionately that you’d begun to suspect it was personal. across the room, jungwon listened with the same quiet smile he’d worn all evening, occasionally laughing under his breath whenever riki deliberately tried to make the argument worse. he looked just comfortable enough to let everyone else fill the room while he quietly existed alongside them. for someone who supposedly struggled around people, there was something unexpectedly reassuring about the way he never seemed to force himself to keep up.

somewhere between arriving and leaving, you realised you’d learnt something new about jungwon. that he wasn’t quiet because he had nothing to contribute, he was quiet instead because he never seemed to feel the need to compete with everyone else for the conversation.

and, for reasons you couldn’t quite explain, you found yourself thinking that was admirable.

the problem with missing lectures wasn’t usually the lecture itself. it was everything that came afterwards.

lecturers had an unfortunate habit of squeezing the most important information into the last ten minutes of class; the reminders about coursework, changes to seminar groups, little comments that never made it onto the slides but somehow always ended up appearing in exams.

normally, you really wouldn’t have worried. one of your friends would send their notes eventually. except this lecture unfortunately happened to be shared with almost none of your friends. by the time you’d made it back onto campus, your phone was already buzzing with messages.

jay Where are you?

sunoo u alive??

jake thought you’d overslept 😭

you smiled to yourself, typing out a quick explanation as you walked across the courtyard.

doctor’s appointment. i’m alive, unfortunately.

three dots appeared almost immediately.

jay Truly devastating news

you rolled your eyes. he still texted like your dad.

the lecture theatre ahead was already emptying by the time you reached it. students spilled into the corridor carrying half-zipped backpacks and takeaway coffees, conversations blending into one another until it became impossible to tell where one ended and another began. a few familiar faces smiled as they passed. someone from your seminar waved. you returned it automatically before stepping to one side to avoid a group hurrying towards the stairs. too late. you’d known it before you’d even arrived. still, disappointment settled somewhere in your gut anyway.

“you look like someone just told you christmas is cancelled.”

you turned to find sunoo weaving his way through the crowd, balancing a coffee in one hand and his laptop under the other arm.

“i missed it.” you pout, poking him in the arm. he followed your gaze towards the lecture theatre.

“…ah.” he realised, mirroring your pout almost mockingly. you’d take it as an insult if his eyes didn’t have that affectionate sparkle in them, seeming to be naturally ever present around you anyways.

“i even left home early.”

“that’s rough.” he said, more gently now. you only sighed in return.

“did i miss much?”

sunoo considered it.

“…honestly?”

your shoulders lifted hopefully.

“…i wasn’t really paying attention after the break.”

you stared at him blankly, eyebrows just starting to furrow.

“you’re unbelievable.”

“i’m honest.” he giggled, winking at you.

“you’re hopeless.”

“a little.” he didn’t sound remotely apologetic.

the two of you drifted further into the corridor to avoid blocking the doorway as more students filtered past. somewhere nearby, someone dropped a folder, sending loose sheets skidding across the floor. three people immediately crouched to help gather them, the interruption lasting all of thirty seconds before everyone continued on with their day. nothing never really stopped moving. sunoo took another sip of his coffee before speaking again.

“you need the notes?”

“unless you’d like to sit my exam for me.” you deadpanned.

“…hard pass.”

“thought so.”

he made a thoughtful noise.

“mine aren’t great.”

“i know.”

“wow.”

“last time i borrowed your notes you wrote ‘i’m hungry’ halfway through a paragraph.”

“because i was.”

“you’d also drawn a cat.”

“…it was a cute cat.”

you laughed. there was a brief pause. then, as though the answer had only just occurred to him, sunoo clicked his fingers.

“ask jungwon.” he exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear.

the suggestion came so casually that it took you a second to process it.

“…jungwon?”

“yeah.”

“why?”

“because he actually listens. and because his notes are terrifying.”

“terrifying?” you replied, eyes wide.

“you’ll see.”

you frowned slightly. asking someone for notes wasn’t unusual. you’d obviously done it before, many times in fact. people asked you all the time too.

still…

“i’ve never actually spoken to him.”

sunoo looked back at you, genuine confusion etched onto his face.

“yes, you have.” he said, suddenly so sure of himself.

“have i?”

“you’ve said hi.”

“…i don’t think that counts.”

“close enough.”

you weren’t convinced, he seemed to notice.

“seriously,” he said. “he won’t care.”

“how do you know?”

“because if someone asked him for notes, he’d probably apologise that they weren’t neat enough.” you couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“…you’re exaggerating.”

“i wish i was.”

before you could answer, his phone buzzed. he glanced down, groaned dramatically and shoved the coffee into your free hand while he typed out a reply with both thumbs.

“seminar?”

“unfortunately.”

he took the coffee back.

“come on.”

“what?”

“he’s probably still inside.”

your eyes drifted towards the lecture theatre doors.

they’d almost emptied now.

through the small window, you could just make out a few remaining students gathering their things.

“…i’ll feel weird interrupting him.”

“you won’t. okay, you might.” sunoo admitted, eyes narrowed as he mused. you gave him a flat look in return.

“helpful.”

“but he’ll still say yes.”

the lecture theatre was almost empty by the time you finally walked inside, a little while after sunoo had walked off to his seminar. you’d stood outside the door for a little longer than you probably needed to, fingers resting against the handle while you tried to convince yourself that this was not a big deal. because it wasn’t. it really wasn’t. you weren’t asking him for anything unreasonable. you weren’t about to have some life-changing conversation or confess some huge secret. you weren’t even asking for help with something complicated. you just needed notes, that was it. you still couldn’t for the life of you figure out why it felt like so much to ask, but that was obviously the reason for your unusually timid lingering outside the door.

you’d seen jungwon’s notes before. not properly, but enough to know that they were probably going to save you from spending three hours trying to piece together half-remembered information from the slides. the problem was not the notes. obviously. 

the problem was that you had never actually spoken to jungwon before. something which always seemed to be nagging at you when you were around him. clearly, you knew which people he was friends with, because you were their friends too. you knew little things you had picked up without meaning to, the same way everyone did when they spent months around the same people. but knowing about someone and knowing someone were completely different things. and for some reason, the thought of walking up to him made you hesitate.

if anything, he was the opposite of unapproachable. he was always easy to be around, yet strangely hard to interpret. there was something about approaching someone who always seemed comfortable in their own space that made you feel like you were stepping into something you hadn’t been invited into.

which was silly. you knew that. you were really not someone who usually overthought things like this. especially not so much so that you were loitering outside like an idiot, rocking on the balls of your heels with too much running through your head. you rolled your eyes at yourself, and how all of this was so unlike you. instead, taking a small breath, you pushed the door open. the sound was louder than you expected in the quiet room. it felt completely different after everyone had left. earlier, it had been filled with voices and movement, people packing away their things while talking about assignments and plans for later. now, it was almost peaceful. the rows of seats stretched out in front of you, sunlight falling across the desks near the windows. a few forgotten papers were scattered around, abandoned by students who had already moved on to their next class.

and there he was. you spotted him almost immediately. you weren’t surprised. if anything, you would have been more surprised if he wasn’t there. he was still sitting near the front, his attention focused on his laptop while he finished whatever he was doing. for a second, you just stood there. you almost laughed at yourself. because why had you made this into such a big thing? he was just a person, a friend at that. a friend who you needed notes from. a friend who would probably definitely say yes.

still, your feet felt slightly heavier as you walked closer. you stopped beside his desk. he didn’t notice immediately. and you were glad he didn’t, because it gave you one last second to collect yourself. then you spoke.

“hey.”

his head lifted. the reaction was small, but you caught it. the slight surprise, the way his attention shifted fully towards you. for a moment, he looked like he was trying to place why you were standing there. then, recognition settled it, not dramatically, just a quiet moment where you felt like you could hear his every thought as you glanced sheepishly at his eyes behind his thick rimmed glasses. something about that made you feel strangely less nervous. because, obviously, he knew who you were. and he wasn’t looking at you like an inconvenient interruption.

“hi.” he said, sounding his voice muffled as he cleared his throat behind his hand. his voice sounded softer than you expected. you smiled slightly.

“sorry, i hope i’m not bothering you.”

he shook his head almost immediately. the response came so quickly that you wondered if he was worried you had mistaken his surprise for annoyance.

you relaxed a little.

“okay. good.” you muttered out, unusually shy.

there was a small pause after that, not really awkward, just unfamiliar. you were two people who had existed around each other for months without ever having a reason to talk. and now suddenly, you did. you explained that you had missed the lecture and needed the notes. you found yourself adding the reason why, even though he hadn’t asked. you mentioned the appointment running late. maybe because you didn’t want him thinking you had skipped class. maybe because there was something oddly important about really wanting (needing) for him to have a good first impression of you, even though technically this was far from his first impression.

the whole thing was ridiculous. you didn’t even know why you cared. jungwon just nodded. as always, there was no judgement in his expression. no teasing. no comment about catching up. a tiny part of you almost wished there was. maybe then you’d be able to open him up a little bit. you told him sunoo had said his notes were really good. and almost immediately, jungwon tried to downplay it, which, to be honest, you’d expected somehow. there was something very predictable about the way he refused to make a big deal out of himself.

you looked at the notebook beside him and pointed out sheepishly that his notes actually had structure. you admitted yours usually consisted of random words that only made sense for the first ten minutes after typing them. this earned a small reaction from him, not quite a smile, but close, and for whatever reason, that felt like a really big victory. jungwon just turned back to his notebook and started gathering the pages. you watched quietly, noticing how there was no rush in the way he moved. he seemed to take care with everything, making sure he had everything he needed before handing it over. as always, it was strangely comforting.

when he looked back at you, he hesitated.

“i can send them.” he said, looking up at you again.

“really?” you smiled.

he nodded and you watched as he glanced between you and his notebook like he had reached the obvious next step but hadn’t figured out how to get there. for a moment you just looked at him with confusion until you realised, he didn’t know how to send them. because neither of you had actually exchanged any way to contact each other. you grinned again before he had the chance to overthink it.

“i can give you my number.” you offered hopefully, his eyes lifting to meet yours again.

“okay.” he mumbled, finally returning your smile, a lopsided grin taking over his features. you thought there was something oddly sweet about how willing he was to help even whilst being unsure of what to do next. you unlocked your phone and handed it to him.

“just put yours in.”

he typed his number in, saved the contact, and handed it back. you looked down.

jungwon

“that’s it?” you said without thinking, he merely blinked up at you in return.

“what?”

“your contact.”

he looked down at the phone.

then back at you.

“yeah?”

you laughed softly.

“i don’t know. i expected maybe something else.”

“like what?”

you glanced at the screen.

“an emoji or something.”

the silence that followed was so genuine that you had to stop yourself from laughing. you don’t even know why you’d said it, you wouldn’t have even done it yourself.

“i don’t really use emojis.”

you smiled brighter and then immediately noticed the tiny hesitation in his expression. you manually tried to soften your own face in hope that he wouldn’t take it as making fun of him.

“i’m not judging.”

“i know.” he mumbled quietly.

almost like he was reassuring himself as much as he was reassuring you. you added that you never used emojis either, which was absolutely not true. you know your friends would have laughed out loud if they’d heard you say it. but something about the small look of relief on his face made your white lie worth it. there was another quiet moment.

“thank you, by the way.” you said, trying to fill the silence as quick as you could. again, he nodded.

“it’s okay.”

you picked up your phone, looking down at his contact one more time before putting it away. now jungwon wasn’t just someone you sat near in lectures or someone you merely shared mutual friends with. now he was someone you had spoken to, someone who had your number. someone who would probably text you later.

“see you later, jungwon.” you motioned to wave before stopping yourself and putting your hand back down again.

“see you.” he replied, another lopsided grin taking shape after he caught your stifled gesture.

and that was it. you walked out of the lecture theatre with his contact saved in your phone, the unexplainable stress finally lifted.

you didn’t expect jungwon to send the notes so quickly. not because you thought he would forget. if anything, forgetting seemed like the least likely thing he could do. from everything you’d heard about him, jungwon was probably the type of person who made reminders for his reminders. you had already accepted that the notes would arrive eventually, probably later that evening after he had checked through them one more time and decided whether they were good enough to send. what surprised you was the fact that your phone buzzed before you’d even reached the other side of campus. you felt oddly good about seeing jungwon’s name. there was a difference between seeing his name appear in a group conversation and seeing it sitting privately in your own messages. it was such a stupid and small thing that you almost laughed at yourself for noticing.

jungwon hi i've sent the notes over

underneath were the files. you clicked on the first one while continuing to walk, expecting exactly what sunoo had described. you were prepared for them to be neat. you were prepared for them to be organised. you were not prepared for them to make you question whether you had been approaching uni notes incorrectly this entire time. the document was almost painfully structured. everything had a place. every topic had been separated clearly, important points marked out without making the page look overwhelming. there were small explanations beside certain concepts, things he had probably written down for himself because he knew he would want to remember them later, but obviously, they were equally as helpful for you too.

you stared at the screen for a few seconds. you barely knew him, but you could already imagine the process. him sitting somewhere quiet after the lecture, going through the notes again, deciding what was important and what wasn’t. because that was simply how his brain worked. you typed back before you could overthink it.

these are actually ridiculous

you paused. you didn’t want to sound like you were insulting him, especially not after he so graciously did you this favour.

quickly, you added:

in a good way 😭

the response did not come immediately. you found yourself looking at the little typing bubble appear, disappear, then appear again. it made you smile slightly. you’d never considered yourself someone who intimidated easily. you were usually the person who filled awkward silences, who introduced yourself first, who made conversations easier for other people (so you’d been told). but jungwon had a way of making you acutely aware of every small interaction. maybe because he seemed so careful in comparison.

eventually, his reply appeared.

jungwon thank you i think they’re okay

you giggled under your breath.

jungwon there are diagrams my notes look like i was writing during an earthquake

this time, his reply came a little quicker.

maybe your handwriting is just fast

you stared at the message. it wasn’t exactly a joke. not one you’d typically laugh at anyways. but there was something about the fact that he had tried to lighten the mood. 

that is the nicest way anyone has ever called my notes terrible

jungwon i didn’t call them terrible

you could practically hear the seriousness behind the message.

you didn’t have to

after that, your conversations stayed small. you preferred it that way. you didn’t suddenly become attached to your phone waiting for him to reply, and jungwon didn’t become someone who messaged constantly. that would have felt unlike both of you. instead, he became someone who existed slightly more in your day. a message about a lecture, a question about an assignment, a quick clarification when you didn’t understand something from the notes he had sent. you noticed quickly that jungwon was much easier to talk to through messages than you had expected. however, he was occasionally so formal that you wondered if he had accidentally written an email instead. but you’d like to muse there was warmth underneath it. maybe that was wishful thinking.

he always answered properly. if you asked something, he didn’t just send a vague response and disappear. he explained and he made sure you understood. and, perhaps more surprisingly, he started asking things back. small things; how your assignment was going, whether you had managed to catch up on the lecture, whether your exam preparation was going better. obviously simple questions, but they mattered to you because they meant progress. and because jungwon was not someone who asked things just to keep a conversation alive… when he asked something, he genuinely wanted to know the answer. you found that oddly refreshing. you were used to people knowing you. that was the strange thing about being naturally social. people often assumed familiarity. they knew your name. they knew your friends. they knew what you were studying. they knew the stories you told at parties or the jokes you made in group chats. but there was a difference between being known and being noticed.

jungwon noticed.

the next time you saw him outside of lectures, it was at one of your usual gatherings. not big enough to call a party, but usually, nobody was sober enough for it to be just an average hangout. by now, heeseung and riki’s place had become almost a second home for your progressively more tight-knit friend group. nobody really planned anything properly anymore. someone would mention they were bored, someone else would suggest going over, and within an hour half you’d all somehow end up there. it was comfortable in a way you hadn’t expected relatively new friendships to become.

you arrived with sunoo and jay, already listening to them argue about something completely unnecessary. the moment you walked in, the usual noise surrounded you. music playing quietly from heeseung’s speaker, riki complaining about losing a game he insisted he wasn’t taking seriously, jake laughing unabashedly from somewhere in the kitchen, heeseung attempting to stop everyone from making a mess while very clearly contributing to it.

it took you a moment to realise jungwon was already there. he was sitting at the edge of the sofa, listening while jake explained something animatedly beside him. before, you probably wouldn’t have approached him. you would have smiled. maybe waved. eventually, someone else would have pulled you into another conversation. but now it felt different. you obviously weren’t best mates. but friends enough that when your eyes met across the room, you wouldn’t hesitate to smile. and this time, he smiled first. it was a tiny thing. so tiny that you wondered if you imagined it. but you didn’t. something about that made you feel strangely content, you noted the way your cheeks flushed an embarrassing pink, feeling the heat spread up your neck as you took in his lopsided smile again.

later, after everyone had settled down, you found yourself sitting near him while the others argued over what film to watch. you weren’t sitting beside him intentionally. at least, that was what you told yourself. there simply happened to be space there. and he happened to be there. the conversation moved around you naturally, everyone speaking over one another the way they always did. jungwon wasn’t the loudest person in the room, but you had started noticing that he never seemed left out.

people included him without thinking. heeseung would always ask for his opinion on whatever niche topic they were discussing like their lives depended on it, jake would show him stupid memes on his phone that rarely prompted a reaction from anyone, riki would jab and poke at him until jungwon’s face broke out in one of his endearingly wonky grins. at some point, your conversation shifted towards classes. you mentioned the lecture you’d missed to sunoo and jay, mostly as a joke about how much work you had to catch up on.

jungwon glanced over.

“did the notes help?” he said, perking up as he did so.

“they did,” you said, smiling. “actually, they helped more than the lecture probably would have.”

he immediately shook his head.

“no, they wouldn’t.” he replied, brows furrowed.

“jungwon.”

“what?”

“you literally explained half of it better than the slides and the prof did.”

he looked like he wanted to argue, but didn’t have a response ready. that happened sometimes. you were beginning to notice it. jungwon was always prepared when it came to academics, but when it came to compliments, he never knew what to do with them. again, you found yourself thinking it was so endearing. obviously not enough that you would ever admit it, not right now anyways. you mentioned one part of the topic that you still didn’t fully understand, not expecting anything from it, you were really just babbling on at this point, to anyone that’s listen, although sunoo and jay had moved on and were having their own conversation now.

but jungwon listened.

and after a moment, he just started explaining. in the middle of heeseung’s living room. not with overly complicated definitions or phrases that made you feel like you were supposed to already understand. he broke it down slowly, making sure you followed each step, like he could see the cogs moving in your head and the moments things clicked for you.

“‘was easier to understand than the actual lecture.” you stared at him blankly after he’d basically summed up the entire second half of the module.

“was it?” he asked, confusion plastered onto his face yet again.

you nodded in reply, realising that you were probably making uncomfortable with the sheer amazement in your eyes. he looked down, a pink flush slowly creeping up his neck.

“i just explained it differently.” he shrugged, pushing his glasses up his nose as he lifted his gaze to meet yours again.

before you could respond, sunoo, who you now realised had clearly been listening despite pretending not to, looked over.

“you know, you could literally just tutor her.” the suggestion was casual, almost thrown away. 

you just looked at jungwon. he looked back at you. and immediately, you saw the thought cross his face, like the idea had never occurred to him.

“i don’t know if i’d call it tutoring,” he said eventually, a deeper flush now making its way up to his cheeks.

“well, what would you call it?” sunoo (almost) snapped, raising an eyebrow.

jungwon opened his mouth. then stopped, because he didn’t actually have an answer. you giggled softly, and this time he didn’t seem as embarrassed. he just looked away, a small smile spreading across his features despite himself. the conversation moved on soon after. jay changed the topic, riki started another quietly fond argument with sunghoon. the moment just passed, much to your forcibly subdued dismay. 

the idea of jungwon tutoring you was never supposed to become an actual plan. at least, that was what you’d told yourself after his brief hesitation. it had been nothing more than something sunoo had thrown into the conversation because he found amusement in pointing out things before anyone else noticed them. for as long as you’d known him (albeit it’d only been a year), he had a habit of doing that, noticing the typically imperceptible shifts between people and making them obvious before anyone involved was ready to acknowledge them. you’d learnt that about him quickly. sunoo always knew when dynamics had changed before either person realised it themselves. so, when he suggested jungwon tutoring you, you had laughed, because it felt too soon to call it anything like that. you and jungwon had exchanged a handful of conversations. you had his number. he had yours. he had sent you notes. you had made unfunny jokes about his lack of emojis. that was hardly enough to suddenly turn him into your personal academic support system.

except, as the weeks went on, you started noticing how often you ended up relying on him. there was a question you couldn’t figure out, so you checked the notes he had sent you. there was a topic you didn’t understand, so you found yourself wondering how jungwon would explain it. that strangest part was that you weren’t someone who usually needed help. not because you felt so uncomfortable that you were were incapable of asking, but because you were normally the person other people asked. it was a role you’d always fallen into without noticing, until now, that is. you were organised enough to remember deadlines, social enough to know who to ask if you needed something and patient enough that people felt comfortable coming to you. your friends joked that you somehow became everyone’s emergency contact despite barely being able to keep track of your own schedule.

you liked being helpful. you liked feeling useful. but there was something unexpectedly comforting about having someone who was willing to do the same for you. jungwon never made you feel like you were behind. he never responded to questions with the kind of surprise that made you feel embarrassed for asking. he simply answered, without fail, every time. and maybe that was why you started asking more. jungwon noticed too. just probably not in the same way you did. you were aware of the changes because they happened around you. you noticed that you no longer hesitated before saying hello when you passed him on campus. you noticed that seeing his name appear on your phone no longer felt surprising, but instead comfortable. for jungwon, it was less obvious because he wasn’t used to analysing his friendships in that way. he had always been someone who let things happen naturally. he had friends. good friends. people he trusted. but most of those friendships had formed slowly, through repeated exposure and familiarity. he wasn’t usually the person who approached first. not because he didn’t want to, but because he had never been particularly good at knowing when he was truly welcome.

with you, he never had to wonder, that was the part that caught him off guard. you made things really easy for him. you spoke to him with your soft, unguarded voice like there was no reason not to. you included him in conversations without making a performance of it, which obviously made it feel more genuine. you looked up at him with your big sparkling eyes through long lashes and nodded attentively when he was talking you through something, so he wouldn't have to guess if you were listening or not. jungwon was used to people noticing him for specific reasons; his grades, his ability to solve problems, the fact that he was reliable. he wasn’t used to someone being interested in what he had to say even when the topic had nothing to do with your syllabus. and you did that often. you asked him small things. what he really thought of the film you’d all watched at heeseung’s place. whether he thought the fancy coffee shop near campus was actually worth the price. whether he agreed with jay’s very strong opinions about literally everything.

none of the questions were particularly important, but jungwon always found himself thinking about them afterwards. he wondered if he’d still be thinking about the things you asked him if they’d come out of anyone else’s mouth. which was becoming increasingly inconvenient for him. because he had assignments. and exams. and a schedule that already felt too full. yet somehow, he always found time to reply to you.

the first time the tutoring idea became a genuine possibility was after another lecture. not because you had planned to ask, in fact, you'd actually been trying very hard not to bring it up. there was something slightly embarrassing about admitting you were struggling with a topic that everyone else seemed to understand. logically, you knew that was ridiculous. uni was difficult and everyone struggled sometimes. but there was still a part of you that hated feeling like you were falling behind. you had spent the better part of an evening trying to understand a section of your module notes, moving between your own work and the lecture slides until the information started blurring together. eventually, out of frustration more than anything else, you sent jungwon a message. you stared at the text blankly for a while before sending it.

hi Lol sorry this is random but do you understand this part?

you attached a screenshot.

almost immediately, you regretted the wording because you realised you’d apologised before even asking. something you did more often than you liked to admit. also, something jungwon had bought up with you before. telling you gently that he felt it was unnecessary to apologise for shivering next to him on heeseung’s sofa while you were sat right next to an open window.

you put your phone down and tried to focus on something else. it lasted approximately three minutes. then your phone buzzed.

i can explain if you want

you smiled before you could stop yourself at the way he’d always phrased his messages. he left space for you to decide. you replied that you would appreciate it, expecting another explanation over text.

instead, a few minutes later:

are you on campus tomorrow?

you stared at the message. your first thought was that you had somehow misunderstood.

yeah, why?

the reply came a little bit slower this time.

i can teach you properly

you looked at the screen for a moment. it was such a jungwon thing to suggest. practical and straightforward, completely unaware of how much trust was involved in what he was offering. because for jungwon, explaining something to someone wasn’t a big deal. it was simply something he could do, and did, regularly in fact. for you, though, there was something different about it. this wasn’t borrowing notes or a quick explanation during a group hangout. it was choosing to spend time together. just the two of you. you found yourself smiling slightly at the thought, then immediately questioned why. which was annoying. because there was nothing strange about spending time with a friend. and jungwon was becoming a friend! you thought that you really needed to stop treating every small interaction like it meant more than it did.

the next day, you met him outside the library. or, more accurately, you met him in the library because jungwon had apparently arrived early enough to secure a table before the usual afternoon rush. you weren’t surprised. when you approached, he was already there, laptop open, notebook beside him, two drinks sitting on the table. you slowed slightly when you noticed the second one.

“i didn’t know what you liked,” he explained before you could ask, gesturing towards it. “so i just got water.”

you looked at the bottle, then at him.

“jungwon.”

he paused.

“what?”

“you’re genuinely the most prepared person i’ve ever met.” you smiled.

for a second, he looked unsure whether that was a compliment. you had started noticing that happened often.

“i didn’t know if you’d have something to drink.”

“most people would just assume.”

“i didn’t want to assume.”

the answer was so simple that it caught you slightly off guard. jungwon always considered things other people overlooked. not because he was trying to impress anyone but because that was simply how he moved through the world. you sat down across from him, opening your laptop. and for the first time, you saw what everyone else probably saw when they studied with him. which wasn’t the intimidatingly smart person people talked about, not the student everyone went to when they were stuck. just someone patient, someone who genuinely wanted you to understand. which, somehow, made it much easier to admit when you didn’t.

the two of you didn’t study for very long before you ended up talking about other things, nothing particularly meaningful. just little conversations that happened naturally between his long, thought out explanations. you found out jungwon hated overly sweet drinks. you found out he had a habit of tapping his pen against his textbook when he was thinking. you found out he actually had a much drier sense of humour than you expected. and, perhaps most surprisingly, he found out you weren’t as effortlessly confident as he’d assumed. you admitted, almost accidentally, that you hated asking questions in lectures because you worried they would be obvious.

jungwon looked genuinely surprised.

“you?”

“what does that mean?” you muttered out through a frown.

“you talk to everyone.”

you laughed quietly.

“that doesn’t mean i can’t get nervous.”

he looked down at his notes. you mused that he probably understood that better than most people. because maybe that was the thing neither of you realised yet. everyone else saw the obvious parts of you; they saw someone friendly, someone confident, someone who belonged everywhere. everyone else saw the obvious parts of him; someone deeply intelligent, someone capable, someone who always knew what he was doing. but none of those things had ever fully summed either of you up. and maybe that was why the two of you got along. because you were both much more complicated than the versions people had decided on.

by the time you packed your things away, the library had started to empty. you hadn’t finished everything. technically, you had probably spent too much time talking. at the end of the day, you’d still understood bounds more than you had when you arrived. you looked at your notes, then at jungwon, a shy smile playing at your lips.

“i think sunoo was right.”

“about what?” he looked up and met your eyes.

“the tutoring thing.”

his expression immediately shifted, not really dramatically, but just enough for you to notice.

“oh.”

you giggled.

“don’t look so terrified.” you replied, pouting slightly involuntarily.

“i don’t.”

“you do.”

he just looked away. which, unfortunately for him, proved your point. you smiled as you packed your laptop away.

“i’m joking.”

but the idea didn’t disappear. and neither did the small smile that appeared on his face when he thought you weren’t looking.

the following tuesday arrived with the kind of weather that never seemed to make up its mind. the morning had started bright enough for people to leave their accommodation without coats, only for grey clouds to roll across the sky before lunchtime, threatening rain without ever fully committing to it. by the time your last lecture finished, the air had turned cooler, carrying the familiar scent of damp pavement that always seemed to settle over campus before autumn properly arrived.

you stood outside the building for a moment, adjusting the strap of your bag as students spilled around you. your phone buzzed.

hi i’m already at the library second floor i found us a table

you couldn’t help smiling. there was something strangely unsurprising about the message because of course he was already there. of course he had arrived early enough to secure one of the quieter tables before the afternoon rush started. of course he had somehow managed to phrase a simple text so politely that it almost sounded like an apology for disturbing you.

you typed back as you crossed the courtyard.

i’ll be there in five :D

you hesitated for a second before pressing send. the smiley face stayed. it wasn’t until your phone disappeared back into your pocket that you remembered your conversation about emojis. you laughed quietly to yourself. he was either going to think nothing of it… or spend the next ten minutes wondering whether there had been a hidden meaning behind one tiny :D

for some reason, the thought made you smile all over again.

the library was busier than usual. students filled almost every table on the ground floor, conversations kept deliberately hushed beneath the steady hum of printers and keyboards, while the occasional sigh or rustle of paper floated between shelves lined with textbooks that looked far too expensive for anyone to actually buy. you climbed the stairs two at a time before slowing your pace. there he was. he had chosen a table tucked beside one of the tall windows overlooking the centre of campus, far enough away from the busiest part of the floor that it felt almost secluded. his laptop was already open. two notebooks sat neatly beside one another. highlighters arranged in a straight line. a mechanical pencil resting precisely across the top page.

he looked up almost immediately. for a second, neither of you spoke. then his expression softened into a small smile.

“hi.” you whispered, hoping he wouldn’t notice the pink you could feel spreading across your cheeks for no apparent reason.

“hi.” he whispered back, his lopsided grin deepening, his dimple now visible.

you slipped into the chair opposite him, dropping your bag onto the floor with considerably less grace than he’d arranged the table.

“sorry if i’m late.”

jungwon glanced towards the clock hanging above the staircase.

“…you’re three minutes early.”

you blinked.

“…oh.”

“just had to find something to apologise for, didn’t you?” the corner of his mouth lifted slightly again as he whispered. you just looked at him for a second before laughing under your breath while pulling your laptop from your bag, bringing it up to your face because now you really had to hide your red cheeks from him. it wasn’t much, barely even a joke. but you were beginning to realise something about jungwon. he was funny! not loudly and definitely not in the way jake was, where half the room inevitably ended up laughing with him. jungwon’s humour appeared quietly, tucked between otherwise serious conversations, almost hidden beneath the way he spoke. if you weren’t paying attention, you’d probably miss it entirely. which somehow made it even better. 

“thank you for doing this.” you said quietly, breaking the comfortable silence while settling your things across the table. 

“for what?” he looked genuinely puzzled, eyebrows furrowed and face devoid of that grin you’d come to really like.

“helping me.”

“you asked.”

“exactly.”

“i don’t mind.” he said with so much conviction that it caught you off guard, like he was urging you to believe him. there wasn’t any awkward insistence that it was nothing, no dismissive shrug. just a straightforward answer, as though helping you had never been something he needed convincing to do.

it made something in your chest feel unexpectedly warm. you had always been the friend who offered. who stayed behind after seminars if someone needed something explained again. who reminded everyone about deadlines because you knew at least one person would forget. you liked taking care of people. it wasn’t something you thought about very often until someone quietly returned the favour. 

jungwon opened one of his notebooks.

“which part?”

you pulled your own notes closer.

“this.”

you pointed towards a page that had become increasingly covered in question marks over the past few days.

“i understand the beginning.”

your finger moved lower.

“and then somewhere around here i completely lose whatever’s happening.”

he leaned forward slightly, just close enough to see the page properly. without thinking, you did the same. your shoulders almost brushed. you didn’t notice until you caught the faint scent of clean laundry and something woodsy. not cologne. nothing strong. just oddly fresh. you blinked quickly, forcing your attention back towards the notebook. jungwon, meanwhile, had already started reading. he didn’t seem to notice the distance between you at all, and you couldn’t help feeling like a little kid about the fact that you were so aware of it, and liked it in fact. perhaps he had simply decided it wasn’t worth acknowledging.

“okay,” he murmured after a moment. “i think they’re explaining it backwards.”

you looked up.

“backwards?” you asked, confusion painting your features like it rarely did. jungwon thought your scrunched eyes and tilted head was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen.

“kind of.” he replied after clearing his throat. he reached for his pencil before hesitating.

“can i?”

you looked down, he was gesturing towards your notebook.

“oh.” you nodded quickly.

“yeah, of course.” 

only then did he start writing. his handwriting was somehow just as neat as you’d expected. he drew a small diagram, crossed something out, rewrote it differently. then turned the notebook back towards you.

“try thinking about it like this instead.”

there was no rush in the way he explained things. he never made you feel as though you were slowing him down. if you interrupted to ask another question, he answered it without sighing or trying to move on too quickly. if you looked unconvinced, he simply found another way of explaining the same concept.

after about twenty minutes, something finally clicked. you stared at the page.

“…oh.”

jungwon looked up.

“does that make more sense?” he asked, hint of a knowing smile spreading across his face.

“a lot more.”

you looked between the diagram and him.

“why couldn’t the prof just say that?” he looked almost embarrassed by the compliment.

“they probably did.”

“they definitely didn’t.”

“maybe they explained it differently.”

“jungwon.”

he met your eyes.

“you’re being modest again.” you whispered, poking him playfully in the shoulder. colour crept faintly into his ears.

“i’m not.”

“you are.”

he looked away first. you smiled to yourself, you were starting to recognise his little pattern. whenever anyone complimented him, jungwon reacted as though they had accidentally handed him something that belonged to someone else. time passed easier than either of you expected. somewhere between diagrams, explanations and comparing lecture slides, the awkwardness that had hovered around your first few conversations dissolved into something quieter. more comfortable. you found yourself talking without thinking about it. sometimes about the work, oftentimes not. you learnt that jungwon almost always studied in the same spot because he liked the light from the window. he admitted, after a surprising amount of persuasion, that he couldn’t concentrate if people chewed too loudly. you confessed that you sometimes highlighted entire pages of content because you could never decide what was actually important.

“that defeats the point of highlighting.”

“i know.”

“then why do you do it?”

“panic.”

he looked down at your notebook.

“…fair enough.”

again, that tiny smile. small enough that someone across the room probably wouldn’t even notice it. you did, every time. and each time it appeared, it seemed to linger a fraction longer than the last. it happened gradually enough that neither of you noticed the hours slipping past. outside, the sky had darkened. students came and went around you, chairs scraping quietly across the floor as people packed their things and left. you only realised how long you’d been there when your stomach growled. loudly. the sound seemed to echo across the table, jungwon’s head snapping up at the sudden noise. your entire body froze. you covered your face with one hand.

“please pretend that didn’t happen.” heat rushed to your cheeks almost instantly.

“i left straight after my lecture this morning.” you laughed awkwardly.

“i completely forgot to eat.”

jungwon didn’t laugh. he didn’t tease you. he simply looked at you for a second before quietly reaching down beside his chair. you frowned. he unzipped his backpack, rummaged around for a moment, then placed something gently on the table between you. a packet of chocolate almond pepero. you stared at it blankly, then up at him.

“…what?”

“you should eat.”

you blinked.

“jungwon…”

“before you try and study anything else… your stomach sounds unhappy.” he mumbled out after being interrupted mid sentence by another grumble from your tummy. despite your embarrassment, you couldn’t help the tiny giggle that escaped.

“thank you.”

you picked the packet up slowly, still looking at it.

“…hang on.”

he looked up from his notebook.

“how did you know these were my favourite?”

for the first time all afternoon, jungwon hesitated.

“i…”

he looked as though he genuinely hadn’t expected the question.

“jay and sunghoon used to buy them for you.” he replied sheepishly, hand scratching at the back of his neck.

“yeah, but that was only once or twice.”

“it was eight times. that i was around to see it at least.” 

you stared.

“…you counted?”

“not intentionally.” he said, his eyebrows knitting together slightly.

“jungwon.”

“they were always the same… so i remembered.”

your heart did something strange. you weren’t even sure why. it wasn’t the snack. it wasn’t even the fact that he’d brought one. it was that he’d noticed! months ago, during noisy evenings where everyone had been talking over one another, he’d quietly remembered something so insignificant that even you would’ve forgotten mentioning it. you looked back down at the packet in your hands.

“that’s…”

you searched for the right word.

“…really thoughtful.”

he seemed almost confused.

“it’s just a snack.”

“yeah i know, ‘m just saying thanks anyways.” you spluttered out quickly and now, shyly, hoping he wouldn’t notice your immediate backtracking after his dismissal. you looked back up at him. for a second, neither of you spoke. jungwon rubbed absentmindedly at the back of his neck again, suddenly looking far more interested in his notebook than he had been a moment earlier.

“…i wasn’t sure if they were still your favourite.”

your smile softened again before you could stop it. it seemed like he was giving you an out from your previous embarrassment. you didn’t feel as much like you’d made an unnecessarily big deal out of it.

“they are.”

he just nodded once in reply.

“…okay.”

for some reason, that answer seemed to make him happy. and as you opened the packet, handing the first stick across the table towards him without really thinking about it, you couldn’t shake the growing feeling that somewhere along the way, tutoring had quietly become one of your favourite parts of the week.

by the time the packet of pepero was empty, the stack of notes between you had doubled. it hadn’t happened all at once. one explanation had turned into another, then into comparing lecture slides, then into jungwon suddenly deciding that one of the examples in your textbook was unnecessarily complicated and rewriting it from scratch in the margins of your notebook. you watched him for a moment while he worked. his brows drew together whenever he concentrated, creating the faintest crease between them that disappeared almost immediately whenever he looked back up. every so often, he would stop writing altogether, not because he had forgotten what he wanted to say, but because he was deciding how to say it. that was something you were beginning to admire about him. jungwon never explained things to prove that he understood them. he explained them so that you would.

it was a small difference, but one you hadn’t appreciated until now.

you had met plenty of people who enjoyed being the smartest person in the room. people who answered questions in ways that somehow made everyone else feel a little smaller for asking in the first place. jungwon was the opposite. if anything, he seemed happiest when the person sitting across from him finally understood. the little smile that appeared whenever something clicked for you was never smug, it was relieved. you caught yourself watching him again. this time, it wasn’t because he was explaining anything. he had reached up absentmindedly to push his glasses higher on his nose, only for them to slip straight back down again a few minutes later. he sighed so quietly you almost missed it before repeating the same movement without even thinking. you smiled to yourself before realising you probably looked like a bit of a perv, hastily bringing your hand up to your face to hide your smile as casually as you could.

“what?”

his voice pulled you out of your thoughts.

you blinked.

“huh?”

“you smiled.”

“…did i?”

he nodded once.

“…why?”

heat crept into your face before you had a chance to stop it. he tilted his head ever so slightly. the expression wasn’t suspicious, just curious. you debated telling him. it wasn’t that embarrassing. not really. still…

“your glasses keep falling.”

his hand immediately lifted towards his face.

“…oh.”

“you’ve pushed them up about six times in the last ten minutes.”

“…have i?”

“i’ve been counting.”

for the first time since you’d met him, you watched jungwon look genuinely flustered. it wasn't dramatic, he didn’t splutter or hide his face. instead, his eyes widened just enough for you to notice before he looked away with a quiet, “i didn’t realise.”

you laughed softly.

“it’s kind of cute.”

the words left your mouth before your brain had caught up. silence settled between you. your smile disappeared.

oops! to be really honest, it was something you’d say to most people with ease. it wasn’t even typically an odd thing to point out, you remembered only yesterday telling jake how adorable he looked when he let his hair grow out a little longer. but something about the way jungwon looked up at you, like you’d just done something jail time worthy, almost made you wince. again, you felt like a kid, a really stupid one at that. you looked down at your notebook so quickly you almost gave yourself whiplash.

“i meant…”

why were you trying to explain it?

“they’re just…” you gestured vaguely towards his face without looking directly at him. “very… you.”

that somehow sounded worse.

“forget i said anything.”

you squeezed your eyes shut for the briefest second after seeing a lack of the lopsided grin you’d become accustomed to on his face. across the table, jungwon had gone completely still. he didn’t look offended. if anything, he looked as though his brain had momentarily stopped working.

cute. you had called him cute. he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that information. compliments had always made him uncomfortable. they tended to sit awkwardly somewhere in the middle of gratitude and disbelief, leaving him unsure which emotion he was supposed to choose. this one felt… different. because you hadn’t said it to be polite. if anything, you’d oddly seemed horrified that you’d let it slip, in a way so unlike what he’d seen of you these past few months. his ears felt warm. he was fairly certain they were turning pink. he hoped they weren’t.

“…thank you,” he managed eventually, the words quieter than he’d intended.

you looked back up, relief written plainly across your face. something in jungwon relaxed. the smallest laugh escaped him before he could stop it at the sheer speed in which the alleviation of your panic ensued. later, as the conversation drifted away from coursework and towards anything else that came to mind, the atmosphere around the table changed almost without either of you realising. the books remained open. pens still rested between pages. yet neither of you seemed particularly concerned with the fact that you hadn’t looked at the lecture slides in nearly twenty minutes. instead, you learnt that jungwon always listened to the same playlist whenever he studied because changing songs distracted him. he learnt that you couldn’t revise in complete silence because your thoughts became louder than whatever you were trying to memorise. you admitted that you had once colour-coded an entire set of flashcards only to lose them the day before a test. he admitted, after a surprising amount of hesitation, that he alphabetised the folders on his laptop.

“you’re joking.” you said, probably too loudly considering the fact you were in a library.

“…no.”

“every single one?”

he nodded.

“…it makes finding things easier.”

you stared at him for a moment before laughing under your breath.

“that’s…”

you searched for the right word.

“the most jungwon thing i’ve ever heard.”

“that’s probably true.”

“you agree?”

“…yeah.”

the consistent honesty of all of his answers no longer caught you so off guard. most people would’ve defended themselves, or laughed it off. jungwon simply accepted it. there was something strangely attractive about that. not because alphabetising folders was attractive.

obviously. but because he never seemed interested in pretending to be someone else. he wasn’t trying to seem cooler than he was, or louder, or more confident. he simply existed exactly as he was. and somehow, that made you want to know him even more. jungwon, meanwhile, was trying very hard not to stare. he wasn’t succeeding particularly well. he was trying so hard to make his constant glances look unintentional but his eyes simply kept drifting back without permission. you smiled all the time. he had noticed that weeks ago. not the kind of smile people put on automatically when they greeted someone. your smiles were different. sometimes they were quick and amused. like when jake would show you some stupid meme on his phone that only ten year olds would typically find funny, you usually ended up laughing at jake himself for his endearingly regressed humour. sometimes they spread slowly across your face before you even realised you were doing it. like when you and riki came to the conclusion that jay was in fact wrong about whatever he’d been arguing about with sunghoon with so much conviction. 

sometimes, when you laughed properly, your nose scrunched ever so slightly. he had never consciously paid attention to something like that before. now he couldn’t seem to stop noticing. every time you tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear while reading. every time you frowned at a sentence before chewing lightly on the inside of your cheek. every time you looked up after finally understanding something he’d explained. he kept remembering them.

which was again, extremely unhelpful. he was supposed to be helping you study. he felt like he’d just been gawking down at you the whole time. eventually, the announcement echoed gently through the library.

“the building will be closing in fifteen minutes…”

you both looked up instinctively, then towards the windows. outside, the sky had turned almost completely dark. 

“…what time is it?” you frowned, surprise colouring your features.

“…eight forty-five.” he said, whispering long forgotten as he checked his phone.

your eyes widened.

“jungwon! we got here at one.”

“…yeah.”

you both looked down at the notebooks covering the table. then back at each other. somewhere between studying and talking, almost eight hours had disappeared.

“i didn’t even notice.”

jungwon nodded slightly.

“…me neither.”

the admission just lingered between you. it probably should have felt awkward. eight hours was a long time to spend with someone you’d only recently become friends with. instead… it felt strangely easy, comfortable, even. like the afternoon had passed exactly as it was supposed to. you packed your things away together, neither of you rushing despite the librarian beginning to switch off lights further down the floor. as you zipped your bag closed, your hand brushed against jungwon’s where both of you reached for the same pen lying between your notebooks. it barely lasted a second. just enough for your fingers to touch before both of you instinctively pulled back.

“sorry.”

you spoke at exactly the same time. then stopped. then looked at each other. a little giggle escaped you first. jungwon’s followed a second later. it was quieter, warmer. and somehow, hearing it felt like accomplishing something. walking out of the library together, you realised something that should probably have worried you a little more than it did. for the first time since uni had started you weren’t looking forward to the next tutoring session because you wanted better grades. you were looking forward to it because you wanted another afternoon exactly like this one. with jungwon. and, a step behind you, jungwon found himself thinking that perhaps he’d start arriving fifteen minutes early next week instead of ten. not because the library got busy. that was simply the excuse he gave himself, the truth was much harder to admit. he liked waiting when he knew you were the person he was waiting for.

a month passed quietly. not in the dramatic way some movies liked to pretend time moved, where seasons changed overnight and entire lives somehow transformed between one scene and the next. nothing about the last few weeks had felt particularly significant while you were living through them. lectures came and went. assignments accumulated faster than any real human being could finish them. the weather grew colder, the mornings darker, and somewhere along the way, the trees lining the paths across campus began shedding leaves that collected in damp piles beneath benches no one wanted to sit on anymore.

life carried on. the only difference was that, at some point, jungwon had become woven into it. you couldn’t have pinpointed exactly when. there hadn’t been a conversation where the two of you had agreed to keep meeting every week. nobody had suggested making tutoring a regular thing. it had simply… happened. 

the first time, you’d arranged to meet because of one particularly confusing lecture. the second time, because there was another topic you wanted him to explain before a quiz. by the third week, neither of you really needed an excuse anymore. thursday afternoons had quietly become yours. sometimes you studied in the library, tucked away in the same corner beside the windows where jungwon always managed to find a table before anyone else. sometimes you ended up in the little coffee shop across from the engineering building after discovering every seat in the library had already been taken. once, when it had started raining halfway through the afternoon, the two of you had spent almost an hour sitting on the floor outside an empty seminar room because neither of you wanted to carry all your textbooks somewhere else.

it didn’t seem to matter where you were. eventually, one of you would arrive first. the other would appear a few minutes later. and somehow, without ever talking about it, the afternoon would disappear. your friends noticed before you did, not in an obvious way. little comments slipped into conversations so naturally that you rarely thought much of them.

“aren’t you with jungwon today?” sunoo had asked one thursday when you’d turned down lunch because you wanted to finish a reading beforehand.

you’d blinked.

“…yeah.”

“thought so.”

that had been the end of it. another time, heeseung had wandered into the kitchen while jungwon was packing his bag.

“library?”

jungwon hadn’t even looked up.

“…yeah.”

“she’s already there?”

“…probably.”

heeseung had smiled to himself but wisely chose not to say anything else. it wasn’t strange. at least, it didn’t feel strange. friends spent time together, friends studied together. if anything, it made sense that you and jungwon had become close. you were taking similar modules, he explained things well, and somewhere beneath all of his quietness, he’d turned out to really make you laugh. you liked being around him. that was all. or at least, that’s what you told yourself.

by now, your study sessions had developed their own unspoken routine. jungwon still arrived first. you still apologised for being late, even when you weren’t, he poked fun at you for this and made you promise you’d stop (knowing full well you never would). he still insisted on explaining concepts from the beginning instead of assuming you understood the foundations. you still interrupted him halfway through with questions that somehow sent the conversation in completely different directions. he no longer looked surprised when you reached across the table to steal whichever pen he happened to be using. instead, he simply sighed with exaggerated patience before sliding another one towards himself.

“you’re unbelievable,” he’d muttered the week before.

“thank you.” you grinned out through a mouthful of apple.

“that wasn’t a compliment.” 

“it sounded like one.”

“…maybe a little.” he muttered out, mask of feigned disbelief broken by his lopsided smile.

you’d giggled so hard that people had actually looked over from neighbouring tables. jungwon looked faintly horrified, which only made you laugh harder. somewhere along the way, he’d stopped apologising every time the silence settled between you. you’d stopped feeling responsible for filling it. there were afternoons where the two of you barely spoke for twenty minutes at a time, completely absorbed in your own work before one of you quietly asked a question. the silence never felt uncomfortable. if anything, it was becoming one of your favourite parts. there was something strangely peaceful about existing beside someone who didn’t expect constant conversation.

“you’re staring.”

your head snapped up.

jungwon looked at you over the top of his laptop.

“…what?”

“you’ve been looking at the same page for five minutes.”

heat crept into your cheeks. had you? you glanced back down at your notes. the paragraph you’d supposedly been reading hadn’t changed. because, apparently, you’d spent the last five minutes watching the way sunlight caught against the rim of jungwon’s glasses instead. the way his dimple emerged slightly when he scrunched up one side of his face in concentration.

brilliant.

“i was thinking.”

“…about operating systems?”

“…yes.” you muttered out after a pause.

his eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. you tried to keep a straight face. he tried to keep a straight face. neither of you managed it.

“you’re terrible at lying,” he said quietly, poking you playfully in the arm.

you pointed your pen towards him.

“that’s rich coming from the person who once tried convincing me he didn’t alphabetise his desktop.”

“…i don’t.” jungwon replied, still trying to make you believe what you knew was false.

“jungwon.”

“…it’s organised by colour now.” he replied, eyebrows raised.

you giggled again so suddenly that you had to press your lips together to keep the sound from carrying across the library. he smiled fondly, hoping you wouldn’t notice the affection that he felt was radiating off of every bone in his body. obviously not because he’d made a joke, but because you’d laughed.

it wasn’t until saturday evening that everything unravelled. everyone had ended up at heeseung’s flat again, the same way they always seemed to. sunghoon had suggested ordering takeaway (again). jay had complained about the prices before ordering it regardless. jake and riki were arguing over a game neither of them seemed particularly good at, sunoo had somehow convinced heeseung to help him bake cookies despite the fact that neither of them appeared to know what they were doing, leaving jay and sunghoon occupying opposite ends of the sofa. you wandered into the other living room (which heeseung has fashioned into a bar of sorts) in search of something to drink. jay followed a minute later.

“can you pass me a glass?” 

you reached into the cupboard without looking.

“thanks.” he replied simply, and if you’d met his gaze, you’d have seen the slight raise of his eyebrows and the hint of a smirk playing on his face.

he leaned against the counter while you filled your own glass with water. there was a comfortable quiet between the two of you, broken only by the distant sound of riki insisting someone had cheated.

“so.” he started.

you looked over.

“so?”

jay shrugged.

“nothing.”

“…you’re doing that thing again.” you exclaimed, probably louder than you should’ve.

“what thing?”

“where you say ‘so’ because you actually want to ask something. that thing that all older women do.” you said, poking him. you thought maybe riki was rubbing off on you, making fun of jay’s mannerisms even though he was only a junior, not too far off of you. he didn’t even bother denying it, just rolled his eyes at you exaggeratedly.

“…are you and jungwon dating?”

the question landed so casually that, for a second, your brain didn’t register it. you just blinked up at him for a second.

“…what?” you muttered, eyes wide.

“you heard me.”

“jay.”

“yes?”

“…what?”

he frowned slightly, as though you were the confusing one.

“i’m just asking.” he smiled, poking at you as if to reassure you. he didn’t expect you to have an expression on your face akin to that of someone who’d just been stabbed.

“why?” you said, forcibly narrowing your eyes as you tried to steel yourself. 

“because you spend half your week together.”

“we study together.”

“you also get coffee afterwards.”

“because we’re already there.”

“and then you walk each other home.”

“…we live in the same direction.”

jay just hummed in response, doing that annoying, all-knowing thing with his eyebrows again.

“interesting.”

“what is?”

“how you’ve got an answer for every single one.”

you opened your mouth. closed it again. before you could muster up another aimless defence, sunghoon wandered into the living room.

“what are you two talking about?”

jay answered before you could.

“whether she and jungwon are dating.”

sunghoon paused.

“…i thought they were.” he said casually.

your heart stopped. you actually thought this in your head before coming to the gross realisation again of how childish you probably seemed. sunghoon turned to glance between you and jay, looking genuinely confused.

“wait…”

his eyes moved between you and jay again.

“…you’re not?” he almost exclaimed, shock painting his features.

“…nope!” you said, popping the p in a desperate attempt to seem unbothered.

“oh.”

“…my bad.” he sounded almost disappointed.

you stared at both of them.

“…why would either of you think that?” you muttered, bringing your cup to your lips in a quiet plea that they’d take that question rhetorically.

much to your dismay, jay just gave you a look that bordered on incredulous.

“because every time one of us asks where you are, the answer is jungwon.”

“because he’s put almond pepero on the ‘essentials’ section on heeseung’s shopping list. and we all know you’re the only one who likes them.”

to your horror, sunghoon continued counting on his fingers.

“because i’ve seen him smile more in the last month than i did during the whole first year.”

“because you both look for each other before anyone else when we all meet up.”

your mouth opened. nothing came out. jay’s expression softened almost immediately, a twinge of regret in his eyes.

“hey.” he nudged your shoulder gently.

“i wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”

“…i know.” you mumbled, now even further embarrassed realising he’d probably noticed the flush on your cheeks.

“just forget i asked.”

you nodded. you tried to smile. you weren’t sure whether it looked convincing. because the problem obviously wasn’t that jay had asked. the problem was that, for the first time, you couldn’t stop replaying everything he’d just said. you did look for jungwon first. you’d never noticed that. and much more terrifyingly, had he?

jungwon had always preferred kitchens to living rooms. not because there was anything particularly interesting about washing dishes or collecting empty glasses, but because kitchens gave him something to do. there was a certain comfort in keeping his hands occupied while conversations carried on around him. from the sink, he could still hear everyone laughing from the other room, hear riki loudly accusing jake of cheating at whatever game they’d inevitably started, hear sunoo protesting about something that was almost certainly insignificant.

it was familiar. comfortable. he liked that. he was rinsing the last of the glasses when footsteps approached behind him, quick enough that he didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. riki had never been particularly subtle.

“avoiding us already?”

jungwon glanced over his shoulder briefly before returning his attention to the sink.

“i’m just washing dishes.”

“that’s not what i asked.”

he smiled faintly to himself. “i know.”

another pair of footsteps followed a moment later, slower this time. heeseung. without a word, he picked up a tea towel and began drying the plates jungwon passed across the counter. it was something the two of them had done often enough that neither of them thought about it anymore. for a while, the three of them worked quietly. or, more accurately, jungwon and heeseung worked quietly while riki stood nearby looking as though he were waiting for the perfect opportunity to interrupt.

it didn’t take long.

“so…”

jungwon didn’t look up.

“…what?”

“where’s y/n?”

the question was so casual that it took him a second to process, he frowned slightly in response.

“in the living room?”

“no.” riki shook his head.

“she went to get a drink.”

“…okay.” jungwon said blankly, obviously confused.

“and you didn’t follow her.”

jungwon finally looked up.

“…was i supposed to?”

the grin that spread across riki’s face immediately made him suspicious. heeseung noticed too, hiding a smile behind the rim of his glass. 

“he genuinely doesn’t realise,” riki muttered, sounding almost impressed.

“realise what?” jungwon almost exclaimed, frustrated now.

instead of answering immediately, heeseung rested the plate he’d been drying on the counter and regarded jungwon thoughtfully.

“when was the last time the two of you weren’t together for more than a day?”

jungwon just blinked. the question felt oddly specific. he thought about it for a moment. lectures, the library, coffee after studying, group dinners, another study session.

“…i don’t know.”

the answer came more honestly than he’d intended. because he genuinely couldn’t remember. somewhere over the last month, seeing you had become part of his routine. not in a way he’d ever consciously planned. you were simply… there. thursday afternoons belonged to the library now. if one of you finished class early, the other usually received a message asking whether they wanted to start studying sooner. if you both happened to be on campus longer than expected, one of you would inevitably suggest grabbing something to eat before heading home. none of it had felt unusual. it still didn’t. friends spent time together, and that was all.

“exactly,” riki said, sounding far too smug and pleased with himself.

jungwon frowned, which riki took as a sign to continue.

“that’s exactly my point.”

“…i don’t know what your point is.” 

“you never do.”

heeseung laughed quietly, folding the tea towel over one shoulder.

“he means that you’ve become close.” heeseung finally chipped in, fond look ever present in his gaze when regarding you or jungwon.

“we are close.” the words slipped out defensively before jungwon had really considered them. he paused, then looked back down at the sink.

“…i think.”

heeseung’s expression softened.

“you don’t have to sound so unsure.”

jungwon wasn’t unsure, that wasn’t the problem. he knew the two of you had become friends. good friends, probably. it was just strange hearing someone else say it aloud. because once they did, he found himself replaying the last few weeks in his head. you reaching across the table without asking to steal his pen, the way you always thanked him, even after he’d insisted you didn’t have to. the fact that you now complained whenever he skipped lunch, as though it had somehow become your responsibility to make sure he ate. he hadn’t noticed any of those things changing. they simply had.

“she’s good for you.” heeseung said it so matter-of-factly that jungwon looked up again.

“…what do you mean?”

“you seem happier.”

jungwon almost laughed.

“because i’m helping someone study?”

“because it’s her.”

the kitchen fell quiet. jungwon looked away first, he didn’t really know how to answer that. he liked spending time with you. that much was obvious. you made difficult afternoons feel lighter somehow. studying, something he’d always considered a solitary task, had become something he looked forward to instead of simply getting through. you made him laugh. more than he’d expected. sometimes without even trying. but that didn’t mean anything, did it? before he could untangle the thought, riki nudged his shoulder.

“you’re a lucky bastard, you know.”

jungwon looked at him.

“she’s pretty.” he continued, heeseung rolled his eyes in response, exasperated with riki’s instinct to always state the obvious.

“and she’s really really nice. everyone likes her.” there wasn’t any jealousy in his voice, just simple certainty.

“she could’ve asked loads of people for help.” heeseung added, much to jungwon’s dismay.

“yeah, well, she asked me.” jungwon almost snapped back, frown deepening further.

“exactly.” riki smirked.

“that’s what we’re saying.” heeseung added on.

jungwon opened his mouth before closing it again. but it was true, you had. for reasons he still didn’t fully understand. before he could think about it any longer, riki ruined the moment completely.

“seriously, hyung.”

he grinned.

“if i were you, i’d be feeling pretty lucky.”

jungwon rolled his eyes, reaching over to swat him lightly around the back of the head.

“you’re unbelievable.”

“i know.”

riki rubbed the back of his head dramatically despite the fact that the hit had barely registered. heeseung only shook his head, amused. neither of them pointed out the faint colour settling across jungwon’s ears. neither of them needed to. because jungwon was already wondering why a perfectly ordinary conversation had left him thinking about you. not about your coursework, or the next tutoring session. just you. and for the first time since the two of you had become friends, he found himself lingering on the thought much longer than he meant to.

somewhere along the way, jungwon stopped feeling like someone you were trying to get to know. for months, he had existed at the edge of your life. someone you recognised before you knew him. someone whose name you heard often, whose face you saw across lecture halls and at group dinners, but never someone you expected to become important to you. now, you couldn’t remember the last time you went an entire day without speaking to him. it wasn’t intentional. that was what maybe made it worse. there had never been a conversation where the two of you decided to become close. no dramatic turning point where you suddenly realised you were friends. it had happened in the quiet spaces between everything else. a message after a lecture because you’d both complained about the same assignment, a five minute conversation that somehow became forty, a walk back from the library that became a regular thing because your routes happened to overlap. you had started knowing things about jungwon that you never would have noticed before. aside from the obvious, everyone knew he was smart. everyone knew he was reliable. everyone knew he was the person people went to when they needed help understanding something complicated. you knew the smaller things. you knew he always checked the weather before leaving the flat because he hated being caught in the rain, you knew he got quieter when he was tired, not because he was upset but because he was saving what little energy he had left for anybody else that needed it, you knew that when he was trying not to laugh, he pressed his lips hard together like he was physically stopping himself.

you knew he pretended not to care about things he absolutely cared about. and somehow, those were the things that made him impossible not to like. which was becoming a bit of a problem. because you were starting to notice him in ways you hadn’t before. you realised it one evening in the library. not in some huge, overwhelming way. you weren’t staring dramatically across the table, suddenly struck by how much you liked him… it was much more inconvenient than that. you were working through a practice question, completely stuck despite having already read through the explanation twice. jungwon was beside you, typing something into his laptop while occasionally glancing over to check your progress. you had gotten used to that, his quiet attention. the way he never interrupted unless he thought you genuinely needed help, the way he somehow knew when you were about to give up before you even admitted it.

“you’re doing that thing again.” he whispered, breaking the silence.

you looked up.

“what thing?”

his eyes moved briefly to your notebook.

“you’re staring at the paper like it’s a death sentence or something.”

you looked back down.

“feels like one.”

a small smile appeared on his face. that tiny reaction you had somehow become weirdly proud of causing. jungwon didn’t often laugh loudly. he didn’t have the dramatic reactions that some of your friends did. but when you made him smile, it felt like you’d earned something. which was ridiculous, you knew that. still.

“you’re impossible,” he said, rolling his eyes fondly.

“and yet you keep tutoring me.” you whispered back, scrunching up your nose as you did so.

“that’s because i’m nice.”

you looked at him, really looked at him with that quizzical glare he’d come to love.

“that sounded suspiciously like you were complimenting yourself.”

“i was stating a fact.” he muttered back, flush rising to his cheeks as he suddenly turned his head back to his laptop.

you giggled under your breath.

and that was when it hit you. not because he looked particularly different, or because something magical happened. just because you realised you wanted to remember this. you wanted to remember sitting in this library with him, you wanted to remember the way he looked when he was trying to defend himself, you wanted to remember the sound of his voice when he was amused. and that was when the thought finally settled.

oh. you liked him. and not in the vague way you liked people, the way you liked your friends. you liked jungwon. and instead of feeling terrifying, the realisation was strangely calm. like your brain had finally caught up with something your heart had already known for weeks.

after that, you didn’t suddenly become a different person. if anything, you became more yourself around him. because now that you knew why you enjoyed being around him, you stopped trying to explain it away. you stopped pretending that you didn’t look forward to thursdays. you stopped pretending that you didn’t check your phone more often when you knew he might message. you stopped pretending that you didn’t notice when he walked into a room. and maybe you became a little less subtle. not intentionally. you just found yourself wanting to make him smile, wanting to hear his little laugh, wanting to see the moments where he forgot to be reserved. you teased him a little bit more. you stole his pens more often despite having your own. you sent him random messages that had absolutely nothing to do with studying. sometimes he replied immediately. sometimes it took him hours because he was busy. but he always replied. and every single time, you caught yourself smiling. which was embarrassing because you had never been someone who cared this much about a notification.

jungwon noticed. he wasn’t sure when it started. at first, he thought nothing of it, you had always been friendly. that was one of the first things he had noticed about you. you made people feel instantly comfortable, you talked to literally everyone, you remembered names with an ease he wished he had about him. you smiled at strangers like it was the simplest thing in the world. so when you started saving him a seat before he arrived, he assumed you were just being considerate. when you started bringing him into conversations more often, he assumed you were making sure he didn’t get left out. when you started teasing him more, he assumed you were simply comfortable. all of those explanations made sense, because they were true.

but jungwon was also beginning to realise there was a difference between how you treated everyone else and how you treated him. you were still yourself, but there were moments. small ones. like the way you sometimes seemed to look for his reaction after saying something funny. like how you remembered things he mentioned once and brought them up weeks later, similar to what he did with you. how you had somehow learned his coffee shop order without him ever telling you, however simple it was.

he noticed. he noticed everything. that was the problem. because the more he noticed, the harder it became to convince himself that you were just being friendly. and he didn’t know what to do with that. jungwon had never been someone who rushed into things. he liked certainty, he liked understanding situations before acting on them. but with you, everything felt slightly unfamiliar. because he understood assignments and he understood programming, he understood problems with clear and correct answers. he didn’t understand why he felt disappointed when you had to leave early, he didn’t understand why he checked his phone more often than usual after sending you a message. he didn’t understand why, whenever everyone was gathered together, he always seemed to know where you were without trying. and he definitely didn’t understand (and was beginning to feel very frustrated by the fact) why he had started looking forward to fucking tutoring sessions of all things even when there was usually very little actual tutoring involved.

“you’re coming tonight, right?”

jungwon looked up from his laptop. you were standing beside the table, your bag already over your shoulder.

“coming where?”

you stared at him.

“jungwon.”

he blinked up at you before realising.

“oh.”

“game night.” you said, smiling at him and pumping your fist with excitement. right. the group had been planning it for nearly a week, he knew that. he just hadn’t connected the reminder to the fact that you were the one asking.

“yeah, sure, i’m coming.”

“good.” you replied, flashing him a toothy grin. your answer came too quickly but you didn’t seem embarrassed by it. if anything, you looked pleased.

“because i need someone on my team.” 

jungwon raised an eyebrow.

“you lost last time.” he deadpanned, glare flat but not devoid of a soft affection behind it, an affectionate which he secretly hoped you wouldn’t miss.

“because everyone cheated.” you whined, before remembering to keep your voice down.

“everyone?”

“everyone.”

“including me?”

“especially you.” you whispered back after hesitating a little.

he shook his head, but he was smiling. and you noticed. of course you noticed. you felt like you noticed everything about him now. however, the thing you didn’t notice was the way he watched you walk away. or the way he smiled slightly to himself when he realised he’d started looking forward to the evening for a reason that had nothing to do with the silly games jake and heeseung put him up to.

by now, nobody questioned where jungwon would be sitting. it wasn’t something that had been decided. there had never been a conversation where someone had pointed at an empty chair and declared it his, or where you had officially claimed the space beside him as yours. it had simply become another one of those small, unnoticed habits that appeared when people spent enough time together. the same way sunghoon always complained about being hungry approximately ten minutes after eating. the same way jay pretended he wasn’t invested in whatever game everyone was playing despite somehow knowing every rule. the same way jake always arrived a little bit late and acted as though everyone else had been waiting up specifically for him. and the same way jungwon always ended up beside you. sometimes you noticed it, sometimes you didn’t. that was probably what made it feel so natural. there was no awkwardness anymore. no carefully choosing where to sit, no wondering if you were bothering him, no hesitation before sending him a message that had nothing to do with coursework. at some point, jungwon had stopped being someone you were trying to get comfortable around. he was just someone you were comfortable with. which was arguably much more dangerous. because once you got used to someone being there, you really started noticing when they weren’t.

game nights had become a regular occurrence in heeseung’s flat. not weekly, because everyone had enough assignments and deadlines to make that impossible, but often enough that it had become part of everyone’s routine. the first few times, you had still felt like you were unwelcome, entering someone else’s space. jungwon, heeseung and riki lived together, and although you were friends with all of them, there had always been something slightly different about being in their home. it was where jungwon existed outside of uni. where he wasn’t the person sitting at the front of lectures with a laptop open and a notebook full of impossibly neat handwriting. here, he was different, softer. he wore old t-shirts and pyjama shorts instead of structured outfits. his hair was usually messy from running his hands through it while studying. he complained more than people would expect, especially when sunoo purposely chose the most frustrating games possible.

it was strange how much you liked seeing those parts of him. not because they were really that surprising, but because they were his. you had spent so long knowing him as someone everyone admired from a distance that getting to see the ordinary parts made you feel oddly special. tonight was no different. you were sitting on the floor between the sofa and coffee table, surrounded by half-finished drinks, snacks and discarded game pieces. everyone was talking over each other, which meant nobody was actually listening properly. except jungwon. he always listened, you had noticed that early on. even when he wasn’t actively involved in a conversation, he was paying attention. he remembered details people mentioned casually. he noticed when someone looked uncomfortable and quietly changed the subject. you had once asked him how he remembered so much. he had just looked genuinely confused, as though he hadn’t realised he did it, it was just so ingrained in his being, to care for others. that was probably one of the things you liked most about him. he never seemed to understand how thoughtful he was.

“you’re overthinking it.”

you looked beside you. jungwon was looking at your cards.

“you don’t even know what i’m thinking.” you frowned.

“yes, i do.”

“you’re very confident.”

“you’ve been staring at the same card for three minutes.”

you looked down, then back at him.

“that doesn’t mean anything.” you pouted, glaring slightly at him now over the top of your deck. he just smiled in response. 

you should have been used to that by now. his tiny grins, just for you. the way he was much funnier than people gave him credit for because most people never stayed around long enough to notice. but you weren’t, not really. because every time he made you laugh, some part of you still felt ridiculously pleased that you were the one who got to see that side of him. which was a thought you tried not to examine too closely.

the thing about liking jungwon was that it hadn’t changed your friendship. that had surprised you. you had expected the realisation to make everything feel different and much more complicated. like suddenly every interaction required careful consideration. instead, you had simply become the tiniest bit more aware. you noticed when he pushed his glasses further up his nose while reading. you noticed how he always checked whether everyone had arrived before starting anything. you noticed that he never took the last of whatever odd snack jake had bought over from the table unless someone specifically told him to. you noticed that he always walked slower when leaving places with you. that last one had taken you a while to figure out because jungwon never made a show of it. he never said he was waiting, he simply adjusted his pace. and somehow, you always ended up walking together. you wondered if he knew he did that. you wondered if he realised how many little things he did that made you feel important. you also used to wonder if you were the only one who noticed, which now you suspected was false after jay’s earlier interrogation. you were right. you realised this when you returned from the kitchen with two drinks and found everyone looking at you. well, not everyone. specifically just jay, sunghoon and sunoo. which was somehow worse.

“what?” you murmured, your voice lacking any real bite because of the probably too loud sigh that followed it.

sunoo immediately looked away too quickly for your liking.

“nothing.” he said, voice an octave higher.

“that was suspicious.” you narrowed your eyes at him.

“you’re suspicious.” he snapped back, sticking his tongue out immaturely.

“that doesn’t even make sense.”

“exactly.”

you stared at him blankly, then forced your gaze upon jay, who seemed like he was trying very hard not to smile.

“why are you all being weird?” you whined.

“we’re not.” sunghoon muttered, wiggling his eyebrows in that annoying way he often did.

“you are.” jay whispered at you, smug expression still pasted onto his sharp features.

before the conversation could continue, riki interrupted from across the room, completely unaware that he had saved you from being questioned further. or maybe he was aware. with riki, it was impossible to tell. you sat back down, handing jungwon his drink without thinking. only after you had done it did you realise you’d remembered exactly what he liked. again. not because he had told you, but because you just knew. jungwon accepted it with a quiet thank you, looking down at the cup before glancing back at you.

“you remembered?”

the question was innocent, he just sounded oddly surprised. you weren't quite sure why when he did the same kind of thing tenfold when it came to remembering your preferences and favourite things. but something about it made you feel a disappointed. because you weren’t sure why it surprised him so much.

“of course i did.” you shrugged forcibly, doing a bad job of feigning nonchalance.

you said it before you could overthink it. for a moment, jungwon just looked at you. then his expression softened.

“right.” he replied, face now weirdly blank other than the remaining fondness in his eyes.

that was all, just one word. not worth overthinking, you repeated in your head like a mantra.

later that night, when everyone had started leaving, you found yourself standing near the front door with jungwon. it wasn’t unusual because he always walked you out. sometimes he walked you home. sometimes he didn’t, depending on how late it was and how much work you desperately urged him to finish. you peeked out of the open door to see that it was raining lightly.

“i didn’t bring an umbrella.” you said sheepishly. jungwon just glanced towards the coat rack.

“i have one.”

“you don’t have to walk me.”

he looked at you. not confused, just slightly surprised. as though the idea had never occurred to him. 

“i know.” he replied blankly.

there was a pause. you immediately thought about backtracking, embarrassment probably evident on your face at how you seemed to just expect him to follow you to your accom, so used to it by now that you didn't even think of the other possibility. a feeling akin to shame burned at the back of your neck. then, he picked up his jacket.

“i want to.”

the relief that spread across your features was palpable. you hoped he didn't notice. jungwon said things like that so naturally, without hesitation, without realising how much weight they carried for you. you just smiled.

“okay.” you said so quietly it was almost a whisper. 

the walk home was quiet. not awkward, never really awkward anymore. you talked about small things. things that wouldn’t matter tomorrow. complaints about assignments. something stupidly funny jake had said to him earlier. a random story sunghoon had told you and sunoo about his crazy ex. ordinary things. you found yourself thinking that ordinary things with jungwon never really felt ordinary. and beside you, jungwon was having a similar thought. he had spent most of his life believing that comfort was something you built alone. in a quiet room, a familiar routine, a predictable schedule. he had never expected another person to become part of that. but somehow, you had. and the strange thing was, he didn’t feel like you had interrupted his life. you felt like you had always been there. when you reached your building, you turned back towards him.

“thanks for walking me.”

jungwon shook his head.

“you don’t have to thank me every time.”

you smiled.

“i know.”

a small pause, which you’d both seemed to be accustomed to by now. then, almost unconsciously, he smiled back. and neither of you noticed how long you stood there before saying goodbye, neither of you noticed that you were both reluctant to be the first person to leave. but maybe that was the thing about something becoming important. you didn’t always notice the moment it happened. sometimes, you only noticed when you realised you didn’t want it to stop.

the dinky coffee shop you two had discovered months ago had become quieter as the afternoon wore on. the lunchtime rush had disappeared almost an hour ago, leaving behind only the occasional student hiding from the rain outside and a few people scattered amongst the tables with laptops propped open in front of them. neither of you had noticed how late it was until one of the baristas began wiping down the empty tables nearby, a subtle reminder that perhaps spending nearly four hours discussing coursework wasn’t entirely normal behaviour. not that either of you minded. you couldn’t remember when studying had stopped feeling like studying when it was with jungwon. assignments still frustrated you and deadlines still came far sooner than they should have, but somewhere along the way, the time between arriving and leaving had started disappearing far too quickly. it was becoming increasingly difficult to separate whether you enjoyed the afternoons themselves or simply enjoyed spending them with him. if you were being honest with yourself, you had known the answer for a while now.

it was still strange thinking about it sometimes. not because it felt wrong or overwhelming, but instead because it felt so obvious in hindsight. you wondered if everyone else apart from jay and sunghoon had figured it out before you had. judging by the increasingly knowing looks from the rest of your friends whenever his name appeared in conversation, you suspected they probably had. you smiled faintly at the thought as you closed your notebook, reaching across the table to collect the loose sheets of paper that had somehow migrated onto his side over the last few hours.

“i think we’ve done enough work for today,” you sighed, stretching slightly in your chair.

jungwon looked up from his laptop, his expression softening into something quietly amused.

“we’ve been here longer than some of my lectures.”

“exactly my point.”

he laughed quietly before also beginning to pack his things away. over the last few months, you had grown used to moments like these. comfortable silences had become second nature between the two of you now. there was no pressure to fill every moment with conversation anymore. it was nice. you had begun to realise recently that your favourite part of the week wasn’t thursday afternoons themselves. it was the fact that they belonged, in some small way, to the two of you. uni was unpredictable and busy and constantly changing, but somehow this, whatever it was, had remained untouched by all of it. you knew that probably meant more to you than it should. probably meant more to you than it did to him.

“everyone keeps asking me about you, by the way.”

the words left your mouth casually as you zipped your bag shut. it wasn’t entirely untrue. all of your friends, not just your mutuals, had become increasingly interested in jungwon’s existence over the last few months, much to your embarrassment.

his eyebrows lifted slightly as he glanced towards you.

“why?”

“i don’t know.” you laughed quietly. “they’re nosey.”

“that’s unfortunate.”

you smiled to yourself at his response before continuing to pack your things away. there was something about talking to jungwon now that felt so easy compared to those first few conversations. you didn’t overthink every sentence anymore. you had long since stopped wondering whether you were bothering him. he was your friend. hopefully more than that, if you were thinking positively. the thing was, lately, you had started wondering whether perhaps you weren’t entirely alone in all of this. there were moments where he looked at you for slightly longer than necessary, moments where he remembered things you were sure you had only mentioned once, moments where he would choose to stay just a little longer when neither of you really needed to. you weren’t foolish enough to assume that meant anything on its own. but, naturally, sometimes you wondered. perhaps that was why you foolishly felt brave enough to continue the conversation.

“you know,” you smiled, resting your chin briefly against your hand as you looked across the table at him, “jay’s like… convinced that there’s something going on between us.” you blurted out as quickly as you could, as if not to give yourself time to immediately regret it.

his expression shifted immediately into something slightly embarrassed.

“i know.”

“it’s getting difficult to convince people otherwise at this point.”

“is it?”

“a little bit.”

there was a brief pause as he packed away the last of his things. you weren’t sure what the fuck possessed you to say what came next. perhaps it was because things had been so good lately. perhaps it was because you were tired of wondering whether you had imagined every small moment between the two of you over the last few months. or perhaps it was simply because you liked him enough to be a little brave! you smiled softly, looking down at your notebook rather than at him.

“i don’t know,” you admitted quietly. “i don’t think i’d mind all that much.”

the words were deliberately vague. gentle enough that you could pretend they meant very little if you needed to. however, you realised they weren’t ambiguous enough to fully shroud your true intentions after mumbling them out. the silence that followed lasted only a few seconds. it felt significantly longer. jungwon seemed to have froze. for a moment, he wasn’t entirely sure he had heard you correctly. his mind immediately began trying to make sense of what you meant, each possibility somehow more terrifying than the last. he knew his friends joked about the two of you often enough. he knew people made assumptions about your friendship. except suddenly, sitting across from you now, he realised there was another possibility he had spent months refusing to acknowledge. you. liking him. the thought shouldn't have felt so shocking anymore. it still did. because if you liked him, then suddenly every feeling he’d spent months carefully ignoring demanded to be acknowledged in return. and jungwon had never been particularly good with uncertainty. friendships made sense to him because they had rules he understood. this didn’t. he didn’t want to lose what the two of you had now. he didn’t want to make things difficult or uncomfortable or complicated. he didn’t want to ruin this.

“i don’t think…” he began quietly before stopping himself, hand reaching up to scratch awkward at the back of his neck. “i don’t think that’s a good idea.”

your smile faltered almost imperceptibly, a grimace attempting to fight its way through.

“oh.”

it was such a small sound that he almost missed it entirely. he rushed to continue, unaware that the conversation the two of you were having had become entirely different ones.

“i just mean…” he paused, struggling to explain thoughts he’d barely managed to understand himself. “things are good how they are.”

you pasted on what you thought was your best smile before he had the chance to notice your expression properly.

“yeah.” you replied, nodding your head almost feverishly so he really understood that you meant nothing by it, ignoring the sinking feeling in your gut.

well, at least you had your answer now. looking back, you supposed you should have expected it. jungwon had never really been someone who sought out change when he was happy. perhaps you had simply allowed yourself to become a little too hopeful over the last few weeks. it was embarrassing more than anything else. how stupid of you to have misread things so badly.

“you’re right,” you smiled quietly, standing from your chair and slipping your bag over your shoulder. “they are.”

jungwon just smiled back, relieved that you seemed to understand him. what he didn’t currently realise was that you’d heard blatant, painful rejection, when he’d simply meant to reassure you, and in turn, himself. somehow, that hurt you far more than if he’d simply said no.

if jungwon was really being honest with himself, he thought things had gone surprisingly well. he had spent the entire walk home from the coffee shop replaying the conversation in his head, wondering whether he had explained himself properly. he hadn’t. he’d hardly gotten out a full sentence, much less explained to you everything that was on his mind like a normal person. he knows why he said what he said, because things are good how they are. it had felt honest. reassuring, even, to him at least. and to you too actually! you had smiled afterwards, you had agreed with him. the conversation hadn’t become uncomfortable or tense or anything he had spent the previous five minutes worrying it might become. so, all things considered, he had gone home thinking he’d done the right thing. for approximately twenty-four hours. because the strange thing about spending so much time with someone was that you became accustomed to all of their little habits without ever consciously meaning to. they simply became part of his own routine before he had realised they were there. jungwon knew exactly how long it usually took you to reply to his messages. he knew that you hated studying in complete silence and always put together strangely specific playlists whenever assignments became particularly difficult. he knew that you had an endearing tendency to become more affectionate when you were excited about something, talking slightly faster and laughing a little louder than usual. he knew that when you were tired, you absentmindedly played with the sleeves of your jumpers while trying to stay focused. he knew these things in the same unconscious way that he knew the walk back to his flat or his coffee order or his timetable for the semester. he simply knew them. which was why he noticed almost immediately when something had changed. not enough for anyone else to pay attention to, just enough that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. the first few days afterwards, he convinced himself he was imagining things. you still smiled at him when you saw him. you still sat right beside him whenever the two of you studied together. you still laughed at his jokes, even the terrible ones that never seemed to land with anyone else. nothing had changed. except, somehow, everything had.

you’d stopped doing that stupid thing where you stole his pens. it was almost like tradition now, like a routine, however childish and intentional you both knew it was. that one shouldn't have bothered him nearly as much as it did. for the last few months, he had found himself bringing extras whenever the two of you studied together because you always seemed to lose yours or decide his were somehow better despite being exactly the same. the first tutoring session you’d had after the coffee shop, he had unconsciously placed two pens beside your notebook before he’d even sat down, like he always did. one of them remained untouched for three hours. he told himself he was being ridiculous for noticing, yet he noticed anyway. you thanked him more often now, which somehow felt worse than if you hadn’t thanked him at all. there was a distance in your gratitude that hadn’t existed before. before, your appreciation had always been accompanied by teasing or laughter or some dramatic declaration that he’d saved your degree. now, they sounded almost formal. 

you were still kind. still yourself. just… quieter around him. nobody else noticed it. of course they didn’t. you were exactly the same around everyone else. he watched you laugh so hard at something jay had said one evening that tears had gathered in the corners of your eyes, heeseung watching you fondly from the other sofa. he’d watched you complain dramatically to sunoo about an assignment you’d been putting off for nearly two weeks, riki mocking you right to your face, much to your feigned annoyance. he’d watched you lean comfortably against sunghoon’s shoulder during a movie when you’d become sleepy halfway through. and then he’d watched you be stirred awake by jake’s constant fidgeting on the other side of you. you hadn’t changed. not really. except somewhere along the way, you had become slightly more careful around him. and that was infinitely worse. he found himself thinking about it far more often than he cared to admit.

“you’ve been staring at absolutely nothing for ten minutes.”

jungwon blinked before looking up from where he’d been sitting at the kitchen table. riki was looking at him suspiciously from across the room, eating cereal directly from the box despite heeseung’s careful placement of perfectly usable bowls right next to the boxes, to try and make it easier for him to just do the normal thing.

“i haven’t.”

“you have.”

heeseung looked up briefly from where he’d been making coffee before glancing between the two of them.

“you have.” he agreed through a grimace, much to jungwon’s dismay.

jungwon frowned slightly. “i’m just tired.”

“you’ve been tired for two weeks.”

“uni is difficult.”

riki snorted loudly from his seat.

“no, y/n is difficult.”

the words caught him so off guard that he nearly dropped his pen. heeseung, as always, looked considerably less surprised.

“i was wondering how long it would take for you to say it.” heeseung muttered, rolling his eyes.

jungwon just stared at both of them.

“…what?”

“you’re moping, won.” riki snapped, his tone of voice not matching the sympathetic look on his face.

“i’m not.”

“you’re staring into space all the time.”

“i do that anyway.”

“you’ve made coffee twice this week and forgotten to drink it.”

he paused.

“…that’s happened before.”

“not because you’ve been thinking about someone.” heeseung finally interjected, annoyingly all-knowing look in his gaze. jungwon went suspiciously quiet after that. because that wasn’t possible. was it? he’d spent so long trying not to think too carefully about his feelings for you that he had somehow missed when they’d become something entirely different. he missed hearing from you throughout the day. he missed the way you’d absentmindedly rested your chin against his shoulder while trying to read something on his laptop screen. he missed the familiarity of knowing exactly what you were thinking before you’d said anything at all. more than that, though, he simply missed feeling close to you. he found himself looking for you whenever he walked into a room before he’d even realised he was doing it. he knew immediately when something had happened that he wanted to tell you. he’d begun associating particular songs with you because you’d insisted on adding them to his playlists weeks ago. you had somehow become woven into the fabric of his everyday life so gradually that he’d never noticed it happening. and now, suddenly, he noticed your absence everywhere. perhaps the cruelest part of all of this was that he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done wrong.

you were still there. you still smiled at him. you still sat beside him every thursday afternoon. but somewhere between two tuesdays ago and now, he had lost something he couldn’t quite name. for someone who had spent his entire life preferring certainty, he had never felt more confused. he was beginning to realise that things were no longer good how they were, and they hadn’t been for a while.

there was something particularly embarrassing about realising you’d been wrong. not devastatingly wrong or life-altering or anything dramatic enough to warrant crying over to your friends at two in the morning. just quietly, painfully wrong in a way that made you wish you could go back and shake yourself from three weeks ago. you weren’t upset with jungwon, you couldn’t be. that would imply he’d done something wrong when, if anything, he’d been much kinder than he needed to be. looking back now, you weren’t entirely sure where your confidence had come from that afternoon. maybe the months of small moments, insignificant accumulating into something bigger in your mind. perhaps it had been everyone else’s comments beginning to blur the lines in your head. or perhaps it had simply been wishful thinking.

whatever it had been, it had been yours. not his. that was the important part. you had offered him an open door and he’d quietly, gently closed it. that was all there was to it. it should have been easy enough to move on from.

the embarrassing part was that you found yourself replaying months worth of memories and wondering how many of them you had gotten wrong. moments that had made your stomach twist pleasantly suddenly felt different when viewed from another perspective.

of course he remembered your coffee order, because jungwon remembered everyone’s. of course he walked you home whenever it got late, because he was simply thoughtful. of course he stayed a little longer whenever the two of you studied together because he enjoyed spending time with his friends.

you hated how quickly your own thoughts began correcting themselves now. there had been a time, not even a month ago, where those moments would have made your heart race for entirely different reasons. now, they simply made your cheeks warm with embarrassment, hot shame burning in your gut.

perhaps that was why you had unconsciously started pulling back. not because you were upset or angry or trying to punish him for anything, but because liking someone who didn’t like you back was difficult enough without making yourself feel disgustingly foolish every time you looked at them.

you still wanted to be his friend. more than that, really. you couldn’t imagine suddenly removing him from your life after everything the two of you had become over the last few months. jungwon had become one of your favourite parts of uni so gradually that you hadn’t noticed it happening until it already had. that hadn’t changed simply because he didn’t feel the same way. you still smiled whenever he sent you something funny. you still looked forward to your thursday afternoons together. you still thought he was one of the kindest people you’d ever met.

you simply couldn’t afford to like him quite so loudly anymore. it was wierd, the little things you stopped yourself from doing without ever consciously deciding to.

you stopped reaching for his sleeve whenever you wanted his attention. you stopped sending him photographs of random things throughout your day simply because they reminded you of him. you stopped sitting quite so close whenever the two of you studied together.

small things. almost insignificant things. except they weren’t insignificant to you. because each one had been an unconscious expression of your affection before you’d realised what it was. you had never meant for him to become so woven into your everyday life.

some days were easier than others. there were moments where you forgot entirely and everything felt comfortably familiar again. then there were moments where he laughed quietly at something you’d said or looked at you with that same soft expression he always wore around you and your heart would ache just a little before settling once more.

you wondered if that feeling would ever completely disappear. hopefully, eventually, it would. for now, though, you thought friendship was enough. it had always been enough before you’d become so greedy for more.

maybe that was why you felt guilty sometimes when jungwon looked slightly confused whenever you thanked him for something or didn’t immediately steal the pen he’d unconsciously left beside your notebook.

because none of this was his fault, he hadn’t changed. you had.

and if protecting your own feelings meant becoming slightly more careful around him for a little while, then you thought that was something you could live with.

jungwon couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt quite so out of place.

looking back, he probably should have refused when heeseung asked him for what felt like the hundredth time if he wanted to tag along. in his defence, it had been a particularly long week and an even longer month. assignments had begun piling up again, he’d somehow managed to spill coffee over half of his notes two days ago, and, perhaps most embarrassingly of all, he’d spent the better part of three weeks pretending he wasn’t miserable whenever he noticed that things between you two had changed.

he was tired of moping around his apartment. riki had become particularly ruthless about pointing it out over the last fortnight and heeseung had long since given up pretending to be subtle whenever he brought your name into conversation.

apparently, staring sadly at your contact for twenty minutes before deciding against sending a message about a video he’d seen was gross and pathetic behaviour. at least according to riki. who was probably right as he knew a whole lot more about these things than jungwon.

despite that, jungwon had still voiced that riki’s assessment of his conduct was unnecessarily harsh. heeseung had wholly disagreed. which was how he’d somehow found himself accepting a drink from jake less than two minutes after arriving.

and then another. and then one he’d accepted entirely because he’d forgotten he’d already had two. he wasn’t drunk. he never really had been. well, at least, he didn’t think he was.

he was simply pleasantly warm and considerably more relaxed than usual, leaning against the kitchen counter while only half listening to whatever story sunghoon was currently telling him. the music was louder than anything he would ever willingly choose to listen to himself and there were significantly more people crammed into the house than he’d initially anticipated, but he was enjoying himself more than he’d expected. granted, he was doing his best to ignore the heavy smell of weed emanating off of jake.

he’d laughed more tonight than he usually did in an entire week. perhaps heeseung had been right after all.

“you should do this more often,” heeseung smiled, nudging his shoulder lightly as he handed him another drink.

jungwon looked down suspiciously at the cup before looking back at him.

“i’ve learnt enough from tonight to know that’s a terrible idea.”

heeseung laughed quietly.

“you’re surprisingly tolerable when you’re tipsy.”

“thank you.”

“that wasn’t entirely a compliment.”

before jungwon had the opportunity to respond, riki appeared between them carrying approximately four different bags of snacks tucked beneath one arm.

“he smiled at a stranger twenty minutes ago.”

jungwon frowned. “i was being polite.”

“you apologised when they walked into you.”

“…that’s also polite.” jungwon muttered back after a moment of hesitation.

“no,” riki laughed, “that’s just wierd.”

heeseung just smirked into his drink. there was something strangely amusing about watching jungwon slightly tipsy. he’d spent so much of uni worrying and overthinking and analysing every situation presented to him that removing even a small amount of that caution left behind him considerably softer than people expected. he laughed easier. smiled more readily. he allowed himself to simply exist amongst conversations rather than constantly listening from the outside of them.

he seemed lighter somehow. it really suited him.

“where’s y/n?” jungwon asked quietly before quickly taking another sip of his drink, pulling his cup up to his mouth with slightly shaky hands.

the three seconds of silence that followed were perhaps the most suspicious seconds of silence he’d ever experienced in his life.

slowly, against his better judgment, he looked up, only to be met with a slightly unsightly view of heeseung and riki garishly grinning at him, their eyes wide but gaze lacking the surprise that usually went hand in hand with this kind of exaggerated expression.

somewhere behind him, he was reasonably certain he could hear jake giggling, although, he could be mistaking it for a cough, courtesy of jake’s persistent tendency to inhale too quick.

“…what?” jungwon snapped, eyebrows furrowed.

“nothing,” riki replied immediately.

“you asked where she was before you’ve asked where literally anyone else is.”

“i asked where you were.”

“after i’d been standing beside you for twenty minutes.”

jungwon chose not to dignify that observation with a response. instead, he just looked towards heeseung expectantly.

“sunoo said she should be here soon.” heeseung said reassuringly, supportively placing his hand on jungwon’s shoulder. although, in hindsight, that may’ve just been to hinder his incessant swaying.

jungwon nodded absentmindedly before returning his attention towards the conversation around him. he didn’t think very much of it. after all, asking where you were wasn’t particularly unusual anymore. he was simply accustomed to knowing whether or not you’d be somewhere.

that was all.

at least, that’s what he’d spent the last three weeks desperately trying to convince himself. it was considerably easier to maintain that delusion when you weren’t standing in front of him.

he heard your laugh before he saw you. 

that wasn’t unusual either.

he thought he’d probably recognise your laugh anywhere now, which was perhaps a more embarrassing admission than he’d ever willingly make aloud. his head turned instinctively towards the front door before he’d consciously registered why and suddenly there you were, laughing quietly at something sunghoon had said as you slipped your coat from your shoulders.

you looked really pretty tonight. the thought came so quickly and naturally that it startled him slightly. you always looked pretty, obviously. he’d realised that a long time ago. he simply didn’t allow himself to think about it very often.

perhaps alcohol was significantly more dangerous than he’d initially given it credit for. he watched absentmindedly as you smiled brightly at everyone gathered in the room before your eyes eventually found his. the smile that appeared faltered slightly, but almost immediately afterwards became softer somehow.

“you’re here?” 

there was something oddly sweet about the genuine surprise in your expression.

“i’m beginning to regret it already,” he smiled quietly, suddenly all too aware of the heat on his cheeks and the smoky smell clinging to his hoodie.

you laughed softly at that before making your way towards him.

“that’s because you’ve only been here for an hour.”

he wasn’t entirely sure why he’d spent the last few days forcibly convincing himself things hadn’t changed all that much between the two of you.

they had. he’d known that. he simply hadn’t realised quite how much he’d missed this. you still smiled at him exactly the same way you always had. you still laughed quietly whenever he made particularly terrible jokes. you still seemed happier somehow whenever the two of you were talking.

the difference was subtle enough that nobody except him would ever notice it. you didn’t touch his arm absentmindedly anymore when you laughed. you left slightly more space between the two of you than before. and perhaps most noticeably of all, you no longer looked at him first whenever something happened that you thought was funny.

they were impossibly small things. he noticed every single one of them anyway.

the rest of the evening passed comfortably enough. conversations blurred together as more people arrived and the music grew louder, everyone splitting themselves into smaller groups before eventually finding their way back together once more.

somewhere throughout all of that, jungwon had unconsciously begun following you around. it wasn’t intentional. at least, not consciously.

if you were in the kitchen, he somehow found himself there five minutes later. if you sat beside sunoo on the sofa, he’d absentmindedly occupy the empty space beside you without thinking very much about it.

he simply preferred being wherever you happened to be.

heeseung had noticed approximately thirty minutes after you’d arrived. riki had noticed considerably faster than that.

“oh my god.”

heeseung looked up from where he’d been talking to jake.

“what?”

riki gestured vaguely towards the living room where jungwon was currently laughing quietly at something you’d said.

“he’s literally following her.”

heeseung just shrugged noncommittally in reply, grin still pasted onto his face.

“no, hyung. look.” riki urged him, poking at his arm before pointing at you and jungwon.

there was something strangely amusing about watching jungwon tonight. he smiled more whenever he was speaking to you. his shoulders relaxed whenever you sat beside him. if somebody asked him a question whilst he was looking at you, there was an unusually chance he’d need it repeated.

he was completely hopeless. his tipsy state wasn’t helping matters, especially considering it was more or less his first time.

“that’s actually insane,” jake laughed quietly as he watched you fix the hood on jungwon’s hoodie where it had folded awkwardly against itself.

jungwon thanked you absentmindedly before immediately continuing whatever conversation he’d been having with you moments earlier. he hadn’t even seemed to notice he’d paused talking entirely whilst you’d fixed it, neck hot as you’d brushed it slightly with your fingers.

sunghoon laughed quietly beside him.

“i don’t think i’ve ever seen him look at another person that much.”

heeseung smiled into his drink.

“i’ve been saying this for months.”

riki looked genuinely offended.

“and nobody thought to tell him?”

“we have.”

“repeatedly.”

the younger boy’s expression somehow became even more scandalised.

“he’s more oblivious than she is.”

perhaps the most ridiculous part of all of this was that jungwon remained entirely unaware of every observation being made about him throughout the evening. he was too busy wondering whether you’d always looked quite so beautiful whenever you laughed.

he was beginning to suspect that perhaps you’d always looked exactly like this and he’d simply spent too much time pretending not to notice. for someone who had spent weeks mourning the small changes in your friendship, he was finding it increasingly difficult to remember why he’d ever thought things were better before.

it was approaching three in the morning by the time people began discussing leaving.

the house had quietened considerably over the last hour or so, conversations becoming softer as people sank further into sofas and armchairs, unwilling to brave the walk back home just yet. somebody had long since changed the music to something significantly quieter and there was something strangely comfortable about the aftermath of nights like these.

jungwon found that he didn’t mind this part nearly as much as he’d expected to.

he was pleasantly tipsy now, the warmth from the alcohol still lingering comfortably in his chest as he sat amongst conversations that seemed to weave together around him. for perhaps the first time since beginning uni, he wasn’t thinking quite so carefully about every little thing he said or did. he simply existed amongst it all.

more importantly, though, he’d spent most of the evening sitting beside you. 

it had been strangely easy to fall back into old habits tonight. somewhere between laughing quietly at your complaints about one of your assignments and listening to sunoo dramatically retell something that had happened earlier in the week, jungwon had almost forgotten that things had ever changed between the two of you at all.

almost.

because every so often, he’d catch himself waiting for you to unconsciously lean your shoulder against his before remembering that you didn’t really do that anymore. looking back, he wasn’t entirely sure when he’d become quite so selfish.

“you seem suspiciously happy tonight.”

jungwon glanced towards riki sitting opposite him before quietly rolling his eyes.

“i’m fine.” he replied, forcing back a pout.

“that’s somehow significantly more suspicious.”

heeseung laughed quietly from beside him before following riki’s gaze towards where you were sitting, your cheeks slightly pink from both the alcohol and your laughter as you listened to jake explain something particularly enthusiastically with his usual accompanying hand gestures.

“…oh,” riki deadpanned. “never mind.”

jungwon frowned slightly. “what does that mean?”

“nothing.”

it meant considerably more than absolutely nothing.

you looked so beautiful tonight. he thought perhaps indulging in so many drinks had simply removed whatever part of his brain usually stopped him from acknowledging thoughts like that because he’d lost count of how many times he’d found himself looking at you throughout the evening.

it wasn’t only physical attraction anymore either, although he’d long since realised he found you beautiful. it was smaller things than that. he liked the sound of your laugh when you were tired because it became slightly quieter than usual. he liked listening to you talk excitedly about things he knew absolutely nothing about simply because you always looked so happy when you did. he liked that you still became flustered whenever somebody complimented you despite spending your entire life being loved so easily by the people around you.

he liked who you were when you thought nobody was really paying attention. which never truly happened. people were just drawn to you in that way, himself included.

you caught him looking at you from across the room and smiled instinctively, lifting your hand slightly in a small wave before continuing your conversation. his expression softened almost immediately. heeseung watched the entire interaction over the rim of red plastic cup before looking towards riki.

“‘s painful to watch.” he whispered into riki’s ear.

eventually, conversations again turned towards leaving. sunoo had somehow managed to fall asleep against sunghoon’s shoulder almost twenty minutes earlier and jake had been unsuccessfully attempting to convince everyone to stay for another hour despite complaining about how tired he was himself.

jungwon had been helping clear empty glasses from the coffee table when he’d heard you shyly giggling beside him. he glanced towards you immediately.

“how much have you had to drink?”

you thought about it briefly before laughing again sheepishly.

“that’s probably not something i should have to think about.”

he just smiled quietly at that. you weren’t drunk, not really. simply pleasantly tipsy in much the same way he was. your movements were slightly slower than usual and your smile was somehow impossibly softer than it had been all evening.

still, it was enough for him to dislike the idea of you walking home by yourself.  you’d always gone out more than he had throughout uni. if he was being honest with himself, he had worried about you walking home late more times than he would ever willingly admit aloud. that wasn’t particularly new. what was new, however, was his willingness to actually voice it.

“i want to walk you home.”

the words came so naturally that he didn’t really think about them before saying them.

“you don’t have to.” you said, not bothering to stifle the way your jaw temporarily dropped open at his words.

“i know.” he whispered, turning quickly before you could see the further flush on his cheeks, half flustered, half guilty at the way you seemed so shocked by the simple words he usually just held back.

i know. you felt your heart ache slightly before reminding yourself that jungwon had always been thoughtful. he would have offered regardless. you smiled softly up at him.

“okay.”

the walk back was quieter than most. perhaps because the world always seemed gentler after midnight or perhaps because the alcohol had left both of you softer around the edges than usual. your fingers brushed accidentally once when the two of you reached for the sleeve of your jacket that had slipped from your shoulder and neither of you commented on it.

somehow, though, neither of you immediately pulled away either.

and for perhaps the first time in weeks, things didn’t feel quite so different between the two of you anymore. not yet, at least.

there was something comforting about walking through the city this late at night. the rush of the evening had long since disappeared, leaving behind little more than the occasional passing car and the sound of quiet conversation spilling from restaurants preparing to close for the evening. you’d always loved nights like this.

perhaps that was why you’d never minded when jungwon walked you home after studying ran particularly late or movie nights stretched far longer than anyone had originally intended. somewhere along the way, walking beside him had become one of the most familiar things in your life. you were very grateful for that.

the last few weeks had been easier than you’d expected them to be. difficult sometimes, certainly, but easier nonetheless. enough time had passed now that the burning humiliation had softened around the edges into something a little more manageable. jungwon was still one of your favourite people and, if you were being honest with yourself, you thought he probably always would be.

beside you, jungwon was unusually quiet. perhaps he was simply tired after an evening spent far more socialising than he usually subjected himself to. still, there was something different about him tonight. he’d spent almost the entire evening beside you. every time you’d looked around the room, he’d somehow found his way back to wherever you happened to be. even now, his hand brushed occasionally against yours as the two of you walked side by side down familiar streets.

it reminded you a little too much of before.

“thank you for walking me home.”

his eyebrows pulled together slightly at that.

“you don’t have to thank me every time.”

you smiled faintly. “it’s still polite.”

“you never used to.” he blurted out, voice dropping an octave. the words were quiet enough that you almost missed them.

for a moment, neither of you spoke. there were some conversations that seemed easier to avoid than begin. you looked down at the pavement briefly before laughing quietly to yourself. “i’m trying to be better.”

“i don’t think you… needed improving.” he slurred his words a little at the edges.

you hated how easily he could still make your heart ache sometimes. the thing about jungwon was that he had always said the kindest things when he wasn’t thinking about them first. before you had the opportunity to reply, he spoke again.

“i’m sorry.”

you frowned slightly as you looked towards him.

“for what?”

he was quiet for longer than usual this time, his attention fixed somewhere ahead of the two of you. he’d spent the last few weeks thinking about very little else besides what he’d said to you that afternoon and every moment that had followed afterwards. he missed things he hadn’t even realised he would notice before they disappeared. he missed you in ways that felt increasingly impossible to ignore despite the fact that you’d never actually gone anywhere.

it had become difficult pretending that nothing had changed when he thought about you constantly. he was tired of pretending.

“everything.”

your expression softened immediately.

“jungwon…”

“i’ve been thinking about it for weeks.”

you laughed quietly. only then did he notice the deep shame behind your eyes before you lowered your head. “that doesn’t surprise me very much.” you mumbled.

that earned a small smile from him before it disappeared just as quickly.

“i lied.”

you felt yourself pause slightly beside him.

“about what?”

his laugh, usually filled with affection, sounded soft and self-deprecating somehow.

“things being good how they were.”

you froze, gaze still locked onto the floor. suddenly, the walk home didn’t feel so quiet anymore.

“i thought they should be,” he admitted quietly. “i thought if i ignored it for long enough it would just…” he trailed off before shaking his head slightly. “i don’t know.”

there was something almost unfair about hearing him say the things you’d spent weeks trying to convince yourself you’d imagined. you let him continue, feeling a prickling in the corner of your eyes.

“i miss you.”

the confession was so quiet that it almost disappeared amongst the sounds of the city around the two of you.

“i’m right here,” you muttered, watery smile still pasted onto your face for as long as you could muster.

“that’s not what i mean.” he cleared his throat, steely gaze locked onto you.

your heart was beating far too quickly now. so much so that it felt like it’d pop out of your throat.

“then what do you mean?”

he wasn’t entirely sure when he’d become brave enough to say these things. maybe the everflowing drinks had simply quietened the part of him that usually overthought every feeling before allowing himself to voice it. or perhaps he was simply tired of slowly losing the bits of you he liked so much.

“i miss the way things were before that day in the coffee shop,” he admitted honestly. “i miss you texting me about things that don’t matter and sitting too close to me whenever we study and stealing my pens even though we both know you’ve amassed such a collection that you could probably make good money selling them.” he babbled out, suddenly feeling like he was speaking at the speed of light.

your eyes softened almost immediately.

“jungwon…”

“and i know i don’t really get to miss those things because this was my fault.”

a long pause. you didn’t want to fill the silence.

“heeseung says i’ve been insufferable for like… three weeks.”

that startled a giggle from you despite yourself.

“only three?”

“apparently riki thinks that’s generous.”

the two of you smiled at each other softly before the moment settled into something quieter once more.

“i was really scared,” he admitted finally. “and i think i still am.”

you waited patiently for him to continue.

“but i’ve realised i’m… significantly more scared of things staying like this.”

the honesty in his voice stole whatever response you’d been preparing.

slowly, he reached for your hand, his fingers slipping carefully between yours as though he was still giving you the opportunity to pull away if you wanted to.

you didn’t.

“i like you,” he smiled quietly. “which is unfortunate because i’m beginning to think i’ve liked you for a really long time.”

“that is unfortunate.” you whispered, unable to hold back your pout now.

there had never really been anyone else who made him feel the way you did. not in the way you had slowly become part of his everyday life without either of you noticing. not in the way he searched for you the moment he walked into a room, or how easily his mood changed simply because you were there. not in the way he had spent weeks feeling the absence of things he hadn’t realised he depended on until they were gone.

and now, standing in front of you, he finally understood just how much he had been avoiding. the moment he finished speaking, there was a quietness between you that felt different from all the others you’d shared before.

then your eyes filled.

jungwon froze.

the guilt hit him almost immediately. he hadn’t expected that. he’d imagined this moment so many times over the last few weeks, but somehow he’d never considered that you might cry. not because he thought you wouldn’t care, but because he hadn’t realised just how much his hesitation had hurt you.

“i’m sorry,” he whispered.

his hand lifted almost without thinking, fingers brushing gently against your cheek as he wiped away the tear before it could fall any further. the familiar gesture felt strangely unfamiliar now, like he was finally allowing himself to do all the things he had spent months stopping himself from doing.

“jungwon,” you murmured, shaking your head slightly.

you weren’t upset with him. that was the worst part. even now, even after he had made you feel like you had imagined everything between you, you were still looking at him like you were worried about him feeling guilty.

because that was who you were. and maybe that was the exact reason he had fallen for you without noticing. you had always been patient with him. you had always made space for him. you had always understood the things he struggled to say. and he had spent weeks convincing himself that keeping things the same was safer, when losing the little pieces of you that had become so important had been far worse. the small smile you gave him was enough to ease some of the tension in his expression.

“you’re so unbelievable,” you whispered, voice still slightly unsteady.

he let out a quiet laugh, relieved despite himself.

“i know.”

and somehow, that was enough.

enough for you to stop worrying about whether you were misunderstanding him. enough for him to stop wondering whether he had ruined everything. because for the first time in weeks, neither of you were holding back.

the hands resting on your shoulders crept up to hold your face again, brushing away another stray tear as jungwon motioned to tilt your head up a little further, his reassuring gaze meeting yours again. he cautiously brought this thumb around to brush over your lip, searching your eyes for any unwillingness. he took note of the way your face fit perfectly in his grasp before leaning in, lips finally meeting yours.

the kiss was hesitant at first, almost like both of you were waiting to make sure this was real. but when you leaned into him, when you didn’t pull away, the uncertainty slowly disappeared. he took your bottom lip into his mouth as you somehow reached between the little space between you two to wrap your arms around his head, fingers resting at the nape of his neck, softly carding through the dark hair at the bottom.  

to your dismay, the tears you had tried to hold back slipped free anyway, caught between relief and the overwhelming feeling of finally getting what you had spent so long trying not to want.

jungwon noticed immediately. of course he did.

he pulled back, despite your unintentional and somewhat embarrassing whine at the loss of his soft lips against yours. his hand stayed against your cheek, thumb brushing gently beneath your eye as his expression softened with that same guilt from before.

but before he could apologise again, before he could turn this moment into another thing he needed to fix, you kissed him again. softer this time, a quiet reassurance. the way you pressed against him serving as a reminder that he didn’t have to keep apologising for caring about you.

The party’s been going on so long that the air has turned moist and the alcohol has begun to taste more like water instead of something dangerous.

Yunjins laughing at something next to you, her eyes half lidded and her limbs moving languidly. If it’s from the weed or the sheer gallons of vodka you’re sure she’s consumed tonight you aren’t entirely sure. What you are sure of though, is that you have definitely far surpassed the thin line between tipsy and black out drunk.

The weed makes your thoughts jumble together like some weird jigsaw puzzle, and every word that you manage to punch out takes way more effort then it probably should.

“But, seriously,” Jungwon starts, his words languid and low, “sex is kind of transactional. At least in this day and age.”

Yunjin attempts to smack his arm but instead she misses him completely and her hand lands between the couch cushions. She doesn’t bother moving it.

“That is sooo not true,” she drags out. “Sex is, like, sacred. Your body is a temple and all that bullshit.”

Jungwon laughs. “Maybe for other women, but I’m not sure if your body could be considered sacred anymore, Yunjin.”

She scoffs, her eyebrows furrowing in what might look like offense, but you know deep down she enjoys the easy banter her and Jungwon always seem to have. “Says the one who sticks his dick into anything that has a pulse!”

You are perfectly content to just listen to their conversation, as it would seem is Sunghoon.

You’d met Sunghoon your freshman year of university when you were still a small town girl in a city that felt way too big for you. He’d sat next to you in your freshman econ class and helped you around the city without so much as a whisper of a complaint, and the two of you had been inseparable ever since.

He’s always been the quiet brooding type, even when you’re around your mutual friends, and that’s become something you’ve found yourself finding comfort in more often than not. His presence is a consistent force in your life, and now that you’re nearing graduation and heading into unknown territory, it’s nice to have something so steady in your life.

That’s why you didn’t argue when he threw his arm around your shoulders and insisted you sit next to him. It’s why you didn’t argue when he offered you the blunt despite knowing you always get way too clingy when you’re high.

Sunghoon is your best friend. You trust him, and you know he feels the same way towards you.

You lean back into his arm, continuing to nurse the beer you’d had for the last hour. It makes your head feel warm and fuzzy in all the right ways, especially after whatever the fuck midterms had been. A disaster would be putting it lightly.

Sunghoon glances at you, his lips still enclosed around the blunt. He takes a drag of it, letting the end glow a bright orange before he pulls it away from his lips and offers it to you.

You accept it graciously, letting the smoke fill your lungs until you’re positive they’ll burst. You’ve never really been a big stoner, not like Ni-ki and Jungwon, but when you do let yourself indulge you always enjoy it.

Sunghoon watches when you exhale, his eyes following the cloud that forces its way from your lips and disperses around the room. For a moment, you think he almost looks impressed.

You laugh, your hand reaching out to shove at his chest gently. “What?” You ask.

He blinks, the movement slow, like he’s working overtime to process that you’d said anything at all. “What?” He echoes.

“You’re looking at me weird,” you mumble, dragging your eyes back to Yunjin and Jungwon. They’re still arguing over whether or not sex is transactional or whatever, and Ni-ki is just watching them like he can’t decide if he’s interested or if he wants them to shut up completely.

Sunghoon chuckles, the sound low and deep. You bring your gaze back up to him and watch as his lips curve up into that same lazy smirk he always seems to wear. Sometimes you wonder if that’s just his natural resting face.

“Was I?” He mumbles, choosing to play dumb. 

You’re not in the right headspace to argue with him, so instead you just sigh and let yourself sink further into the curve of his arm. His thigh is right against yours, the fabric of his jeans rubbing against the thin lining on your tights. If it was anyone else, you’d probably feel a little self-conscious at being so close, but this is Sunghoon. He’s never shied away from physical touch, and at some point it just became another factor in your friendship.

The sound of your name forces your thoughts about Sunghoon to fade into the background, and when you look up Yunjin is staring at you like you’ve said something shocking. Which is weird, because you don’t remember saying anything at all.

“Huh?” You manage, your eyebrows furrowing as you try to work through the cloud in your mind.

Yunjin rolls her eyes but repeats herself anyway. “Do you think sex is transactional?” She asks before throwing a fiery glare at Jungwon. “Or is Jungwon just a grade A asshole?”

…Sex? She’s asking you about sex?

Usually you wouldn’t mind indulging in her less than ethical questions, especially when you’ve had a few drinks, but this one feels a little personal.

It’s not that you haven’t had sex, you have! Plenty of times actually, with a plethora of different men. Boyfriends, casual hook ups, one night stands – you’ve really done it all.

There’s just one teeny, tiny problem.

You can’t finish.

You used to blame it on the men you were seeing. They clearly had no idea how to please a woman and thus you were the one suffering for it. But then you’d tried to get yourself off with your hand and, well…nothing happened. So then you tried a toy and still – nothing.

It didn’t take you long to realize that it was clearly just something wrong with you. You’d self-diagnosed yourself as one of those unlucky women that simply couldn’t orgasm, and yeah, it sucked, but it was your life. How could you miss something you’d never even had anyway?

And it’s not like the buildup isn’t enjoyable, because it definitely is. It just never goes where you want it to, and you always end up feeling dissatisfied after. So you’d stopped trying completely after yet another failed attempt last year and that had been that.

You hadn't sworn off sex completely, you just stopped actively searching for it. And it was nice to not have to fake reaching your peak with every man that found his way into your bed, but that didn’t make the subtle jealousy you felt whenever Yunjin talked about her experiences disappear completely. It just made it more bearable.

You choose to just shrug, taking another sip from the bright red solo cup in your hand. “I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask that question.” You snort.

Yunjin raises a brow, genuine confusion washing over her features, before she seems to finally remember. “Ah,” she breathes, slumping back down into her seat. “Right. I forgot.”

Yunjin is the only person you’d confided in about your problem. She was supportive, of course, but she still sometimes told you that she thought it was all in your head. That you had some kind of mental block when it came to orgasming, but you couldn’t help but feel like that was a little silly. Why would your mind keep you from reaching what most women described as the ultimate pleasure? If it was, then that was just plain cruel.

The conversation starts to move on again, but Sunghoon glances at you and then swiftly brings it back around. 

“Hold on,” he starts, eyebrows furrowed. “What was that about?”

“What was what about?” Yunjin asks.

He pulls his arm away from your shoulders and uses his now free hand to gesture between you and Yunjin. “That,” he insists. “You asked her her thoughts on sex and then just blew past it.”

Yunjin glances at you, meanwhile your cheeks suddenly feel like they're burning. Why does he even care what your thoughts on sex are? It’s a silly question, one that you’ll probably forget anyone even asked in the morning, and yet he’s choosing to focus on the one minute thing you said in the entire debate.

Which wasn’t even anything ground breaking! You just said you wouldn’t be the right person to ask, that was it.

So why is he taking such an interest in it?

“Um,” Yunjin starts, her gaze finding yours before returning to Sunghoon. “Why do you care?”

He doesn’t even falter like you’d expected him to. Instead, he leans back and pulls you closer into his side. “Am I not allowed to be worried for my best friend?”

You swallow and attempt to put some distance between you, but he doesn’t let you. If anything, he just pulls you even closer. All the way until you’re sure you can taste the remnants of cologne on his clothes and the weed on his breath. 

“Sunghoon,” you laugh, the sound coming out more nervous than anything else. “It’s nothing. Don’t get so worked up about it.”

But he doesn’t seem to like that answer either. “So something happened?”

You shake your head. “No, it’s not that–”

“Then what?”

You pause, your mouth suddenly feeling dry. If you had all your inhibitions in check, you probably would’ve resisted telling him in such an open space. Because even though Jungwon and Ni-ki are trying to make it seem like they aren’t listening, you know they are. At least Yunjin doesn’t try to hide her nosiness.

You know that realistically Sunghoon is just worried for you, he is your best friend after all. You’d be worried for him too if he suddenly got weird when the topic of sex got brought up, but still, you wish you were admitting this to him somewhere with a little more privacy.

You lean back into the cushions, your bottom lip finding its way between your teeth. Sunghoon, always so in tune with your emotions, immediately reaches a hand over to smooth down your hair. 

“What is it, sweet girl?” He asks, his voice lowered so that only you can hear him. “You know you can tell me.”

And that’s the thing, you do know. And it should be easy telling him, because you know it’s not like he’ll judge you. If anything, he’ll probably be more sympathetic towards you then Yunjin is.

But, still. There’s something about telling him that makes shame burn deep in your cheekbones.

You shrug, your fingers toying with the edge of your skirt. “It’s embarrassing.”

He grins, all teeth and crinkled eyes. He’s staring at you like you’re something precious, like you’re something he has to handle with care. Not like you’re a grown woman who can make her own decisions when it comes to her sex life – or lack of one.

“Nothing about you is embarrassing.”

That’s what finally breaks you. You sigh, words slightly jumbled together and voice so quiet you’re shocked he can even hear you. “I can’t,” you gesture with your hand lazily. “You know. Finish, or whatever."

He blinks. One moment passes, and then two. You’re on the verge of thinking you’ve somehow made him uncomfortable when suddenly he’s laughing like you’ve said something hilarious. “What?”

Yunjin tosses a pillow at him, but he just lets it hit him square in the chest and doesn’t spare her a glance. “It’s not funny, Sunghoon!” She defends. “It’s a serious condition.”

You roll your eyes, but you don’t have time to focus on her because Sunghoon is quickly invading your senses again. “I’m not making fun of you, baby,” he mumbles, lips dangerously close to your ear. “It’s just…cute. That’s all.”

It most definitely is not cute. It’s humiliating, if anything. The one thing you’re supposed to be able to count on your body to do for you, it refuses to. What kind of woman can’t even orgasm?

“No, it's not,” you groan, running a hand down your face. “It’s weird.”

Sunghoon doesn’t say anything to that, but you can tell something in his expression has shifted. He’s eyeing you now like you’re some kind of anomaly he wants to figure out. Like your condition is something that’s piqued his curiosity.

You aren’t entirely sure how you feel about that.

The night continues easily – everybody's too drunk or high to focus on whatever little blip it was you’d had. Even you forget about it after another round of drinks.

But Sunghoon doesn’t. He can’t. 

Even when he goes to bed that night, every time he closes his eyes all he can see is you. His pretty little best friend. Sexually frustrated and somehow thinking there's something wrong with you.

To Sunghoon, that’s utterly absurd. Clearly these men you’ve been with don’t know how to handle you, and that’s not your fault! No, what you need is someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone who will actually listen to what your body needs and doesn’t just chase his own pleasure.

What you need is…him.

And Sunghoon is a good best friend. He always has been. All he’d be doing is helping you, really. Just a friend helping out a friend.

Nothing more, nothing less.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖༄

The next week passes by just like it normally does. You go to class and try not to think about the fact that you definitely bombed your exams. Everytime you walk into a lecture, fear creeps up your spine at the thought of your teacher handing over a test with your name on it.

Sunghoon is there to help you through the anxiety though. He comes to your dorm every night with a bag of nerds gummy clusters and his laptop. 

You always start the night exactly how you plan to. Sunghoon helps you study, you both pretend to give a fuck for an hour or two, and then you end up side by side in your bed watching reruns of your favorite sitcom. It’s a simple routine that you’ve come to cherish, one that you don’t even remember starting. It honestly felt like one day he’d started showing up and then he just…never stopped.

“You know,” you mumble, popping another cluster into your mouth. “I think we’ve watched this show so many times we could probably recite the whole thing.”

Sunghoon shrugs, his glasses hanging off of the bridge of his nose. He reaches up and pushes them back into place without a second thought. “Modern Family is a classic.”

You hum. Modern Family is a classic. “Yeah, true.”

You both lull into silence again after that, your eyes following the screen as one of the characters does something stupid. It makes you laugh despite the fact that you know it’s coming. Sunghoon lets out a huff of breath too, but he seems on edge.

His hand keeps fisting the sheet until his knuckles turn white, and he only does that when something's bothering him. He doesn’t even seem to be paying as much attention to the show as he usually does.

It’s like his thoughts keep wandering and he’s trying to make the stop.

It worries you. The last time you’d seen Sunghoon this anxious was sophomore year, right before he broke up with his girlfriend. He never told you why he did, just that something about the relationship didn’t feel right. 

But, last you checked, he doesn’t have any girlfriends he’s wanting to break up with right now, which means something else is bothering him.

You nudge his shoulder gently, your eyebrows furrowed with concern. “What’s wrong?” You ask.

He blinks, his eyes glued to the laptop before they slowly slide over to you. “Hm?”

You huff out a laugh. “I said what’s wrong? You’ve been acting off ever since we turned the show on. Did something happen?”

You watch as he swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing with the movement. He doesn’t move his gaze from yours, but for some reason you wish he had. He’s looking at you so intensely, eyes searching yours like they hold the answer to the meaning of life.

Sunghoon gets like this sometimes. It’s almost like he’s…holding something back. And whenever you question him on it, he usually just pats your arm and tells you not to worry your pretty little head about it. You stopped questioning it a long time ago.

But he doesn’t do that tonight. Instead, he lets his tongue drag over his lips, and you can’t help the way your eyes flicker down to the movement.

You’re not blind. You know your best friend is ridiculously handsome. You know plenty of girls have gotten jealous and wished that it were them in your place. But your relationship with Sunghoon isn’t like that, he’s just your friend.

Besides, even if you did want him like that, you’d never want to risk your friendship with him. 

His lip's part for a moment, and then close, and then part again. “I…” He trails off, takes a deep breath, and then starts again. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

You raise a brow. When did you say something? You try to rack your brain, but you come up empty. You can’t recall anything you said that would be worth bringing it up again. 

“Did I say something?”

His lips break out into a small smile, the curve threatening to reveal the tip of his fangs. “Do you not remember?"

You try to think back to anything you might’ve said, but still, you come up blank. You tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, expression scrunched in confusion. “Should I?”

Sunghoon is silent at that. He just looks at you, looks back down at his hands, and then straightens himself up so suddenly he feels like he’s towering over you in bed.

“If you don’t remember,” he murmurs, “then I’ll remind you.”

He leans on the tiniest bit closer, and suddenly it feels like all the air has been sucked from your lungs. You and Sunghoon have been close plenty of times before, but this feels different. This feels almost…intimate.

You swallow, your eyes widening the tiniest bit as you attempt to scoot closer to the headboard. “Hoon…”

“You told me,” he starts, his voice low in that sultry kind of way. “That you’ve never had an orgasm. That you can’t, actually.”

The memory dawns on you then. The party, the alcohol, the weed. You’d somehow unknowingly buried it all the way to the back of your mind without even realizing, and now you’re dealing with the consequences of your big mouth.

You wince. It’s almost embarrassing to hear the words coming out of Sunghoons mouth. Even though you know it’s true, that doesn’t make it any less humiliating.

“Oh,” you mumble. “I did?”

“You did.”

You clear your throat and attempt to look at least a little unbothered. “Well, it’s true so…you don’t need to bring it up again. It’s already embarrassing enough having my best friend know there’s clearly something wrong with me.”

His eyebrows furrow, and for a split second, he almost looks angry. Like the thought of you thinking there’s something wrong with you enrages him.

“Embarrassing?” He scoffs. “It’s not embarrassing. And there’s nothing wrong with you. You just haven’t been with the right kind of guys.”

You probably would’ve agreed with him if you hadn’t also attempted to get yourself there. You literally just cannot do it. It’s not the guys you’re with or anything like that, it’s just you.

“But that’s the thing!” You insist. Any shyness you might’ve had towards the topic before suddenly disappears. “It’s not just the guys. I can’t…I can’t finish on my own either.”

For what it’s worth, that looks like it genuinely makes Sunghoon pause. His eyes widen the tiniest fraction, his movements pausing before he resumes them.

“You can’t…” He glances down to your hands in your lap. 

You roll your eyes, cheeks practically blistering. You’re positive your ears are the same color as a tomato at this point. “No, I can’t. It’s whatever. Can we just finish the show?”

But Sunghoon doesn’t back off. Instead, he reaches behind him and shuts the laptop completely, cutting off whatever noise it was making. He pushes it off of the bed, not even flinching when it clatters violently onto the floor.

“So, let me get this straight,” he starts. You have to resist the urge to roll your eyes. “You’ve never had an orgasm? Like, ever?”

He knows you said at the party that you can’t finish, but he assumed you meant with other guys. Not that you can’t finish at all.

“Yep,” you say, popping the P. Your arms cross over your chest in frustration. You don’t understand why he won’t just let the topic go. Yunjin doesn’t even hound you this much about it! “I’m one of the only girls in the world who can’t finish. Are you done making fun of me now?”

He leans back slightly, his pupils suddenly dilated and his tongue sweeping over his teeth. The tension in the air builds quickly, until it feels like you’re definitely going to choke on it.

Slowly, Sunghoon crawls over until he’s seated right in front of you. He leans back on his heels, studying your face like you’re some kind of expensive art piece. Usually, you don’t mind when he looks at you. In fact, you bask in it. But this feels different. This feels almost hungry.

“You think that there’s something wrong with you?” He asks, voice hushed. Deep.

You swallow, suddenly feeling silly for even admitting that to him. But what other explanation is there outside of you being biologically engineered differently than how you were supposed to? Maybe your mother drank a cup of coffee when she was pregnant and now you’re being forced to suffer for it.

You shrug. “What other explanation is there?”

He brings a hand up to your calf, the tips of his fingers brushing over the skin lightly. The touch feels like ice against your warm skin, and you can’t help the way your breath nearly catches in your throat.

He doesn’t look at you, but you’re staring at him. At the curve of his jaw. The way his bangs fall over his forehead like he styled them to be that perfect. At the freckles dotting his soft skin.

You know your best friend is attractive. You’ve always known.

But this…there’s something about it now that makes your stomach twist with arousal.

His fingers pause at the bottom of your knee, his thumb rubbing soft circles into it. You’re suddenly thankful that you took the time to shave last night.

He shifts, leaning forward just enough that you can smell his cologne. “I think you just…haven’t listened to what your body wants. To what it needs.”

You scoff lightly, but it sounds forced. Honestly, you’re too focused on how his touch feels against your skin to even think about whatever it is he’s saying to you.

“I think I would know what I need.”

He shrugs, tongue flickering out to wet his lips before it slides back into his mouth. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

You pull your legs out of his grip and hug them towards your chest. He doesn’t look shocked when you do it — he just lets his hand land on the bed and looks up at you.

“Why are you bringing this up?” You ask. You hate that you can hear the way your voice sounds so quiet. Shy. You’ve never felt shy around Sunghoon.

He doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Just lets his gaze trail from your eyes down to your chest, to the curve of your hip and all the way back up to the plump of your lips.

He scoots closer slowly, and suddenly his chest is right against your calves. Breathing suddenly feels difficult – like a task instead of something you just do on autopilot. His very presence feels mind consuming.

He’s hesitant for only a moment, something flashing in his eyes, and then he’s tossing it out the window and speaking so clearly you’d almost think there were other people in the room.

“I want to help you.”

You blink. “Help me?”

“Yeah.” He says easily, like those five words hadn’t just changed the trajectory of your friendship in a way you hadn’t been prepared for. “We’re best friends, aren’t we? Best friends help each other.”

Your cheeks flush at the implication. There’s a line between helping your friend and doing something like that for them. This isn’t just him letting you borrow his notes, this is unexplored territory. This is your body, your pleasure – all of it in his hands.

You’d be lying if you said the idea didn’t excite you.

But Sunghoon is your best friend, you can’t do that with him. It’d be wrong, and it’d change your relationship completely. You don’t know if you’d ever even be able to come back from something like that. The idea in general sounds good, even if you’re positive he’s not going to change anything about your condition, but the consequences are too great. You can’t do it. You can’t.

Right?

“What?” You splutter, a nervous laugh forcing itself from your throat. “I’m sorry, are you telling me you want to help me,” you clear your throat, your voice lowering into a hushed whisper, “...orgasm?”

Sunghoon smirks, his canines on full display like he’s some type of predator. “Yeah, I am.”

You blanch, your eyes wide as you stare at him like he’s grown two heads. At this point, you think an extra extremity would probably be less shocking than the words coming out of his mouth.

“Absolutely not,” you say, arms forming an X across your chest. “That’s…I can’t do that with you. It would change too much. Besides, I already told you, I physically cannot do it. I really doubt you’re going to be the one to change that.”

Sunghoon leans back on his hands, his smirk widening just a fraction. Like he’s taking your words as some kind of challenge. It scares you and makes heat swirl in your abdomen just the same.

“So, you're scared?” He asks, tone light and teasing, but there’s an underlying smoothness to it that makes a chill crawl up your spine. “You’re scared that I’ll prove you wrong.”

“I’m not scared.” You scoff.

Sunghoon just shrugs. “You are, and that’s okay. If you want to go the rest of your life without having an orgasm, then that’s your prerogative."

Your eyes narrow at that. You know he’s just trying to rile you up to get what he wants, but you can’t help falling for it anyway. You aren’t scared of what he’ll show you, you just don’t want to mess up your friendship for something you’re positive isn’t possible. It doesn’t matter how big his fucking ego is.

“I’m not scared,” you repeat. “I just know that you aren't going to miraculously be the guy that suddenly helps me finish.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yes.”

His eyes bore into yours – challenging you. Teasing you. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he knows exactly how this is going to play out, even if you haven’t fully caught up to it.

He has to bite his cheek to keep his smile from getting any bigger. “Prove it then.”

“What?”

He leans forward again, his hands coming up to rest at the top of your knees. Slowly, he forces them apart and makes space for himself between your legs. He doesn’t move into it, just leaves it there like an unspoken promise. “If you really think I’m just going to end up like every other guy, then prove it to me. Prove me wrong.”

You know what he’s doing. You know he knows how competitive you can get. He’s trying to push you into the direction he wants, to mold you like clay into his hands. And you don’t want to fall for it, you really don’t.

But there’s something about the way he’s looking at you – all smug and so sure of himself. You’ve heard the rumors around campus, you know Sunghoons never shied away from his experience in the bedroom, but experience doesn’t matter for you. It’s just your biology.

And if he wants you to prove him wrong so fucking badly, then you will.

You don’t remember surging forward to kiss him – not until your teeth clash and he lets out the smallest sigh of approval. His hands are everywhere immediately – gripping the flesh of your hip, tracing up the line of your spine. 

He kisses you like he’s been waiting for it, like he’s a man starving and you’ve depraved him from any sort of substance. His tongue slides into your mouth easily, and you let out the slightest whine at the feeling.

He groans, his eyes squeezing together tightly. For a moment, you almost think he’s in pain.

“Fuck, that’s right,” he mumbles against your lips. “Prove it to me, baby.”

You kiss him harder, saliva beginning to pool at the corners of your lips. Sunghoon licks it up without a complaint. In fact, you think he’d thank you for it if he could.

His hands under your shirt and onto your hips, rubbing circles into your skin, and then he’s dragging you onto his lap without breaking away from the kiss.

You gasp when you feel his bulge through his sweatpants, the imprint pressing right against your folds. He’s big, you can tell that without even seeing it. The thought of your best friend carrying that around makes butterflies fly somewhere in your stomach.

Sunghoon kisses you deeper, his tongue licking into your mouth. Your mind is spinning from the sensation, and he’s barely touched you outside of kissing. It makes you feel like you’re in high school all over again.

Most men don’t waste their time kissing you like this. They just give you a few pecks and then get right to work using you to chase their own high. It’s become something you’ve learned to expect. But Sunghoon is kissing you like it’s the main event – like he’s been waiting his entire life to do it.

Slowly, he uses his grip on your hips to grind you against his cock, and instant pleasure bursts low in your tummy. The fabric between you does little to dull the feeling of his tip nudging against your clit – if anything, it almost makes it all the more intimate.

“Fuck,” you sigh out, your hands gripping his shirt like you’re trying to ground yourself.

He lets out a chuckle, the sound rumbling from his chest. “Hm?” He hums, moving from your lips to your jaw. “You say something, Sweetheart?”

You bite on your lip to keep yourself from spitting some kind of insult at him. Of course he’s enjoying watching you fall apart from a few measly kisses. But that doesn’t mean anything. You still haven’t cum, and you’re positive you aren’t going to.

“Shut up,” you mumble. Your hands slide up from his chest to his hair, gripping his black locks as he sucks at the sensitive skin around your neck. 

You can feel him smile against your skin, but he doesn't say anything else about it. Instead, he nips gently at your collarbone and then basks in the whimper it pulls from you.

His hips push up into yours again, and the feeling is enough to force your lips to part in pleasure. Hesitantly, you begin to grind into him on your own, your movements erratic compared to the preciseness of his thrusts.

He clicks his tongue, tightening his grip and forcing your hips to still. You immediately whine – completely forgetting that you’re supposed to be embarrassed – but he just shakes his head.

“Is that what you think pleasure is?” He asks, letting his fingertips drag across the bare skin of your stomach. “No wonder you can’t cum.”

You furrow your brows. You have no idea what he’s talking about. “What?” You murmur, the word breathless and whiny. If the entire point of this is to bring you to your peak, you don’t understand why he’s forcing you to stop.

He licks his lips, and you can’t help but notice how red and raw they are. Completely kiss-bitten. It makes you proud that he looks just as wrecked as you’re sure you do.

“You’re not letting yourself get any actual build up,” he explains, tucking a stray piece of hair behind your ear. “You’re chasing something that hasn’t even gotten the chance to form yet.”

You part your lips to respond, maybe fight back, but nothing comes out. Because that’s the closest thing you’ve ever got to an explanation as to why you can’t seem to do something everybody else can. 

You swallow, your posture turning into a slight slouch. “I don’t understand.” You admit quietly.

You’re half expecting him to judge you – maybe laugh. It’s definitely something other men would do. But he doesn’t do any of that. Instead, he pecks you softly on the nose and gently lays you down until your back is flat against the bed.

“You’re thinking too much,” he mumbles, softly tapping your forehead.

You don’t know how to tell him that you don’t know how to not think about it without sounding like a complete loser. But, then you remember that this is your best friend. And if tonight has shown you anything, it’s that he won’t judge you. You could say the dumbest thing and he would still look at you like you mean something to him.

“I don’t know how to stop.” You admit shakily, the words feeling like a losing battle as they come out.

But they seem to catch Sunghoon off guard. He’s hovering above you, eyes staring into yours with so much emotion you nearly choke on it.

This is different from the teasing Sunghoon you’d seen earlier. This Sunghoon genuinely wants to help you. He wants you to be able to experience something as trivial as an orgasm just to help you feel normal. 

This Sunghoon is your best friend.

He kisses you again, but this time it’s slower. Deeper, somehow. This time it feels like he’s kissing you just because he can, and for some reason, you like that.

“Do you trust me?” He asks, his breath ghosting against your wet lips.

You nod at him without a second thought.

He crawls off of you, and the loss of his body is enough to force a breathless whine from your throat. He just shushes you and disappears out of your room. He’s been in your home enough times to know where everything is, but it still leaves you feeling slightly embarrassed at the thought of him looking around your apartment without you. You cleaned yesterday, right? You really hope so.

When he reemerges, he’s holding something long and black. It dangles from his fingers clearly, and the closer you look you realize it’s a piece of black cloth.

“Where’d you find that?” You ask. You probably should be asking what he plans to do with it, but your brain is having trouble processing actual thoughts right now.

He doesn’t respond. Instead, he climbs back into bed with you, and ever so carefully presents the fabric to you.

“You said you don’t know how to turn your brain off, right?” He mumbles, bringing a hand to your thigh. His fingertips ghost over the skin, bringing goosebumps in their wake. “Maybe…Maybe this will help.”

You still aren’t understanding, and he seems to be able to tell by the look of genuine confusion on your face. He chuckles and scoots closer, but this time it seems his confidence has faded the tiniest bit. He looks almost nervous, like he’s riding a bike without training wheels for the first time.

“I don’t get it.” You mumble, letting out a nervous laugh. “How is a piece of fabric going to help?”

He balls up the fabric, eyes lingering on it before he finds your gaze again. “Just let me try something?” He asks.

Part of you is screaming at you to say no. You have no idea what’s going through his mind or what strange fantasy he’s planning to play out with you, and you’re terrified to find out.

But the other part of you…the smaller, braver part, wants you to say fuck it. You’ve already come this far with him, what’s a little more push? Besides, what could it hurt?

Slowly, your head nods up and down. Sunghoon, for what it's worth, doesn’t look smug or happy. He just swallows, his adams apple bobbing as he does, and cautiously makes his way so he’s chest to chest with you.

You watch as he brings the piece of fabric towards your head, and then suddenly your vision is cut off completely. You let out a breath of air as he ties the fabric at the back of your skull gently, his fingers working carefully to make sure he doesn’t catch any of your hair.

The vulnerability makes your core ache something awful. The thought of not being able to see him, not being able to know what his next move is…it’s exhilarating.

Your hands clench your sheets from anticipation, knuckles going a vivid white. 

You hear Sunghoon chuckle, the sound low and breathy, and then he’s moving somewhere you can’t see. You can feel his hands on your thighs still, like he’s trying to keep you grounded. To reassure you that he’s still here. That he’s not leaving.

“You’re so beautiful, you know that?” He murmurs. You feel his hand slowly slide up until he’s reaching the hem of your shorts. He doesn't go under it – just keeps it there. Like he’s teasing you.

You feel yourself flush. “Don’t say things like that.”

His fingers slide up the fabric until he reaches the waistband, and then slowly he slips his fingertips under it and tugs. “Why?” He asks. You can practically feel the smirk that you’re sure is radiating from him. “It’s true.”

You just let out a breath, too focused on the feeling of him dragging your shorts and underwear down the soft skin of your legs. You hear him toss them aside somewhere, and then the room goes very still. 

You swallow uncomfortably, legs closing on instinct. You hate that you can’t see him or even try to guess what he’s thinking. Is he disappointed? Does he not want to do this anymore?

Your hands reach for the blindfold to pull it down, but a sudden grip on your wrist stops you.

“Don’t.” Sunghoon murmurs, his voice low and breathy. 

You freeze, arousal begins to pool in your core, and you listen to him. Your hands fall back to your sides and leave you encased in darkness and anticipation.

Ever so slowly, you hear him move. His hands find your knees and push them apart, exposing your glistening folds to him, and you feel him settle between your thighs.

“Poor baby,” he teases, leaving featherlight kisses on the inside of your thighs. “Never been taken care of properly, huh? No wonder this pretty little pussy is practically dripping for me.” He runs the tip of his finger over your slit, and you shiver at the contact.

“Hoon,” you pant, trying to ignore that it sounds more like a beg than anything else. “Just–Just hurry up and touch me so we can get this over with.”

He has the audacity to chuckle, but makes no move to help subside the growing ache in your stomach. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he thinks this entire thing is funny. 

“So impatient,” he says, clicking his tongue as he does. “This is why you’ve never cum, princess. You’re rushing things. How’s your pretty pussy supposed to finish if you never let her start in the first place?”

You don’t have a reply for that. If anything, it just irritates you that he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. He totally doesn’t, but still. It’s annoying that he thinks he knows more about your body than you do.

Slowly, he begins to spread your lips, his thumb spreading your arousal. The pad of it catches on your clit for just a split second, but the jolt of pleasure it gives you is enough to force a gasp out of your throat.

He pulls back for just a moment, before finally his mouth is on you fully, licking a stripe from your hole all the way to your clit. Your back arches without warning, a moan pushing its way from your lungs. The suddenness of it forces your brain to go on temporary pause, and all you can focus on is the feeling of his mouth.

He licks you like a man starved, grunts of pleasure falling from his lips as if he's the one being pleasured. “There you go, baby,” he mumbles against you, the noise drowned out by the wet sounds of your sopping pussy. “Feels good, hm?”

You just moan in response, unable to form any actual thoughts. Suddenly you’re almost grateful for the blindfold, because you aren’t sure you’d be able to handle seeing him in between your legs – making a home for himself there as if he always knew he’d end up there.

His hand grips your hip suddenly, fingers digging into the plush skin so hard you’re sure there’ll be marks in the morning. “Tell me,” he gasps, punctuating it by a tug at your clit. “Tell me exactly how good it feels.”

“So–So good,” you manage. “Fuck, it’s good.”

You’ve had men go down on you before, but never like this. Never like it was something they were doing for their own pleasure and not just because they felt obligated.

“I know it is, pretty girl.” He says. You feel his free hand slowly run up your calf and your inner thigh, before his finger is prodding at your entrance and pushing through the tight ring of muscle.

Your head goes fuzzy, hips lifting off the bed and chasing the heat of his mouth and the thrusts of his finger. It’s an overwhelming sensation, one that you’ve never really experienced before. And for one fleeting moment, you think that Sunghoon might have just done the thing he set out to do.

Prove you wrong.

“Fuck,” you whine, your hand searching blindly for his in an attempt to slow him down. “Hoon, slow down–”

He doesn’t listen. Instead, he forces another finger into your hole, stretching you out deliciously and now giving you a moment to breathe.

“I know, baby, I know,” he mumbles, giving your clit another harsh suck. “It’s gonna feel real good here soon.”

Slowly, the coil in your stomach builds and builds. Usually, this would be when you stop, accidentally edging yourself and thinking it was because you just couldn’t orgasm like a normal woman can. But Sunghoon doesn’t. Instead, he works you through it like there’s no place you’d rather be.

You gasp, reaching up and tugging the blindfold off. It falls to the side slowly, and when you look down you see Sunghoon between your legs, his cock in his hand and jerking himself off with slow, languid strokes.

It’s probably the hottest thing you’ve ever seen a guy do.

“Shit, I’m gonna–oh, fuck–”

Sunghoon doesn’t go faster or harder, he just keeps the same pace, until finally you’re spilling over and releasing all over his face, your hole spasming against his fingers. He drinks your release like it’s his own personal ambrosia, groaning through it.

“That’s a good girl,” he murmurs, voice raising in pitch. “Cum all over my face.”

He finishes shortly after you with a small cry, his cum painting your sheets and his hand a milky white.

When it’s over, you're panting like a dog in heat, thighs twitching and sweat beading across your forehead. You don’t even know what to do or say. Your best friend just made you finish for the first time after you’d spent years thinking it just wasn't possible for you. And not only did he bring you to orgasm, he did it without even using his fucking dick.

You could seriously kill him.

Slowly, he climbs up next to you, his own chest heaving from his own orgasm.

“So?” He murmurs.

You glare at him. “Don’t say it.”

He puts his hands up in surrender. “I wasn’t going to say anything.” But the smirk on his face says otherwise.

You’re having a lot of thoughts right now. Mostly that you can’t believe you just let your best friend eat you out.

But mostly that you can’t wait for him to do it again.

the bedroom is dimly lit, soft purple leds glowing around the room. your shared phone sits on a small tripod at the foot of the bed, already recording. heeseung stands at the edge of the mattress in nothing but black boxers, his dark hair messy, eyes hungry as he looks down at you.

you’re lying on your back, completely naked, legs spread and knees bent. your heart races as he picks up the toys he laid out earlier: a thick realistic dildo, a powerful wand vibrator, a smaller vibrating plug, and a bottle of lube.

“look at the camera, baby,” heeseung murmurs, voice low and smooth. “show them how pretty you are when you’re waiting to get used.”

you bite your lip and tilt your head toward the lens, spreading your thighs wider. heeseung smiles, that cocky little smirk that always makes your stomach flip. he climbs onto the bed between your legs and runs his hands up your inner thighs, thumbs brushing teasingly close to your already wet pussy.

“so eager,” he teases. he leans down and drags his tongue slowly up your slit, tasting you. you whimper, hips twitching. he pulls back and reaches for the wand vibrator first.

he clicks it on to the lowest setting. the strong buzz fills the room as he presses the head right against your clit. your back arches instantly.

“fuck— hee—”

“shh. let them hear you,” he says, eyes flicking between your face and the phone screen. he circles the vibrator slowly, watching your pussy flutter and leak. your moans climb higher as he turns the speed up.

your thighs start to shake. heeseung keeps one hand on your hip, holding you open while he plays with the intensity. just as you’re about to tip over the edge he pulls the wand away.

“not yet,” he chuckles darkly.

he reaches for the lube next. you watch, breathing hard, as he coats the smaller vibrating plug generously. heeseung taps your thigh.

“turn over for me. ass up.”

you obey, getting on your hands and knees, arching your back so the camera gets a perfect view. heeseung groans softly at the sight.

“such a good girl for the camera,” he praises. one hand spreads your cheeks while the other presses the slick tip of the plug against your tight hole. he moves slowly, letting you adjust as he works the toy inside you. the stretch burns sweetly. when it finally pops in and he turns on the vibration, you moan loud into the sheets.

“feel that?” he asks, twisting the plug gently. the low buzz radiates through your body, making your pussy clench around nothing.

he doesn’t give you time to settle. he grabs the thick dildo next — long, veiny, and girthy. he runs the head up and down your dripping folds, coating it, then pushes it inside you in one slow, steady thrust.

the fullness is overwhelming. the plug buzzing in your ass and the thick dildo stretching your pussy make you feel impossibly full. you cry out, fingers gripping the sheets.

heeseung starts fucking you with the toy in deep, rhythmic strokes while his other hand brings the wand back to your clit. the combination is devastating.

“look how well you take it,” he growls, angling the dildo so it hits your g-spot with every thrust. “taking both holes for our followers. bet they’re so fucking jealous right now.”

your moans turn into broken sobs of pleasure. the vibrations, the stretch, his filthy words — everything pushes you closer and closer. heeseung speeds up the dildo, pounding it into you harder, the wet sounds echoing obscenely.

“gonna cum— please—”

“cum then, baby. show them how you fall apart when i play with you.”

the orgasm crashes over you hard. your whole body shakes, pussy gushing around the dildo, ass clenching around the vibrating plug. you nearly collapse onto the bed, but heeseung keeps fucking you through it, drawing it out until you’re whimpering and oversensitive.

he finally slows down and pulls the dildo out, leaving your pussy open and pulsing. he removes the plug next, setting the toys aside. then he flips you onto your back again and climbs over you, kissing you deep and hungry.

“we’re not done yet,” he whispers against your lips.

he reaches for the wand once more, pressing it firmly against your swollen clit on a high setting. at the same time he slides two fingers into your soaked pussy, curling them against your g-spot while his thumb teases the rim of your ass where the plug had been.

you’re so sensitive it almost hurts, but the pleasure is blinding. heeseung’s fingers fuck you fast and deep, the vibrator relentless on your clit. another orgasm builds lightning fast.

“again,” he demands. “give me one more. want the video to end with you squirting for them.”

you scream his name as you cum again, thighs clamping around his hand, clear fluid soaking his fingers and the sheets. heeseung groans in satisfaction, slowing his movements but not stopping until you’re trembling and gasping.

he finally turns everything off and pulls you into his arms, kissing your forehead, your cheeks, your lips. the phone is still recording, so he looks straight at the lens with a smug, satisfied smile.

“that’s our girl,” he says, voice rough. “say goodnight to the followers, baby.”

you manage a weak, blissed-out wave at the camera before he reaches over and ends the recording.

heeseung sets the phone aside and pulls you tighter against his chest, stroking your back gently.

“are you okay?” he asks softly, the dominant tone gone, replaced by the sweet boyfriend voice you love just as much.

you nod against his neck, smiling. “more than okay. god… that was intense.”

he chuckles and kisses the top of your head. “good. because after we edit that video… i’m fucking you for real while we watch it together.”

you shiver at the promise, already excited for the next round.

later that night, after you’ve both cleaned up and cuddled under the covers, heeseung posts a short teaser clip — just enough to drive your followers crazy. the caption is simple:

“toys on her tonight 🖤 who wants part 2?”

the likes and comments explode almost instantly.

you laugh softly as he shows you the screen, then bury your face in his chest.

“you’re addicted to this account,” you mumble.

heeseung grins, fingers tracing lazy patterns on your hip. “nah. i’m addicted to you. the account’s just an excuse to wreck you on camera.”

you kiss him slow and deep, already thinking about what toys he’ll use next time.

and the time after that.

© jongst4r, 2026

two tiny silver studs nestled right in the soft dips of his dimples — new, still a little flushed at the edges, catching every stray bit of light like they were made to be noticed. they’re delicate but impossible to ignore. every time the corners of his mouth twitch, the piercings wink, turning his usual sweet smile into something sharper, prettier, almost sinful.

he catches you staring immediately. of course he does. jungwon has always been too good at reading you. his head tilts, that signature playful glint in his eyes, and the left dimple deepens just enough for the silver stud to flash.

“what?” he asks, voice low and teasing, the kind that always slips under your skin. “you’ve been sitting there spacing out since i walked in.”

you don’t answer right away. your gaze keeps drifting back to those two little studs — how they sit so perfectly in the natural creases of his cheeks, how they make his dimples look like they were designed for hands and mouths and teeth. the right one shifts when he speaks again, a tiny bead rolling with the movement.

“come here,” he says softly, patting the floor beside him as he slides down the wall to sit. his legs stretch out in front of him, ankles crossed like he has all the time in the world. when you don’t move fast enough, he reaches out, fingers brushing your wrist, and tugs you closer until you’re kneeling between his spread legs.

up close it’s even worse. the metal is cool against his warm skin. the left piercing has the faintest hint of redness around it, like it was done recently — maybe today. you can’t stop imagining the needle going in, the way his face must have scrunched up for a second before he smiled through the sting because that’s just who he is.

“do you like them?” jungwon murmurs. he’s watching you with that half-lidded stare, the one that makes your pulse trip over itself. when you nod, he smiles wider — both dimples popping fully now, silver glinting like stars trapped in shallow crescents. “got them three days ago. thought about you the whole time.”

his thumb brushes your lower lip absentmindedly, like he can’t help touching you when you’re this close. you lean in without thinking, pressing your thumb gently against the right dimple. the stud is smooth and surprisingly cold. jungwon’s breath catches, but he doesn’t pull away. instead he leans into the touch, cheek pressing firmer against your hand.

“they’re still healing,” he whispers, but there’s no real warning in it — only invitation. “but it doesn’t mean you can’t be gentle… or not so gentle.”

your heart is beating too loud in the quiet room. you trace the curve of the piercing with the pad of your thumb, feeling the tiny ball shift. jungwon’s lashes flutter. a soft sound escapes him, not quite a moan but close enough to make heat pool low in your stomach.

you can’t resist anymore. you lean forward and press your lips to the right dimple first — right over the silver stud. his skin is warm, the metal cool against your mouth. jungwon exhales shakily, one hand coming up to cradle the back of your head, fingers threading gently through your hair.

“fuck—” he breathes, the word barely audible. the dimple deepens under your kiss and the piercing presses firmer against your lip, a perfect contrast of hard and soft.

you move to the left one next, kissing slower this time, letting your tongue flick lightly against the tiny stud. his fingers tighten in your hair instantly. another soft, helpless noise slips out of him — half laugh, half groan — and the vibration travels straight through the metal into your mouth.

“you’re gonna kill me,” he says, but he’s tilting his head to give you better access anyway, cheeks flushed pink, dimples carved deeper than you’ve ever seen them. the silver catches every tiny movement, flashing like it’s daring you to keep going.

you pull back just enough to look at him properly. jungwon looks wrecked already — lips parted, eyes dark and glassy, those two delicate studs framing the prettiest, most dangerous smile you’ve ever wanted to ruin. his chest rises and falls quicker now, the half-zipped hoodie slipping off one shoulder to reveal more warm skin.

“good,” you whisper, thumb stroking one stud again, feeling the way his cheek jumps under the touch. “because i’m nowhere near done with these.”

he laughs then — low, breathless, the sound vibrating against your palm. the dimple piercings flash once more as he leans in, capturing your mouth in a slow, deep kiss. you can feel the cool metal of the studs brushing your own cheeks when he smiles into it, like even his kisses are marked by them now.

jungwon pulls back only far enough to rest his forehead against yours, silver still glinting in the low light every time he breathes.

“keep looking at me like that—” he murmurs, voice rough, “and i might have to get more.”

his dimples deepen again with the promise, the tiny studs winking like they already know exactly how much trouble they’re about to cause.

and you know, without a doubt, that you’re going to let them.

every single time.

© jongst4r, 2026