avi ★

Juhoon stared at the screen.

Then sighed.

'Right.'

It's that.

The soft launch.

He unlocked his phone and was immediately greeted by likes, replies, comments, and an alarming number of people expressing surprise, all of them which were variations of ‘You can pull a baddie?’ in increasingly creative ways, some nicer, some that made him question himself. 

Someone had even replied to the story telling Juhoon to blink twice if he was forced to do this. 

Juhoon liked the message.

 He also got one from someone saying that they always thought he was an aroace. 

Juhoon liked that message too.

Unfortunately, the story had also reached his friends. This was significantly worse and a disaster for several reasons. The primary one being that none of them knew how to behave. The replies had him stare at his phone for a moment.

moka: ouuu shii i almost believed that for a second there 😹✌🏻😹✌🏻

y/n: method acting ahh bf😭 sry fake bf😹✌🏻

keonho: bro unlocked a feature i didn't know he had 🥹‼️

sean: bro think he on pinterest 😭💔

james: me when i spread misinformation online ☕

martin: the song choice and heart emoji is taking me OUT 😭 FAKE dating btw.

Juhoon considered blocking all of them. 

After that, the morning proceeded normally. Or at least, as normally as it could when Martin and James had discovered fresh material.

He got dressed, made coffee, and attempted to mind his own business. Martin and James had other plans. They teased him from the moment he stepped out of his room to the moment he finally escaped the apartment. Leaving, therefore, took slightly longer than usual.

The walk to work was quiet. The city had fully woken up by now, commuters moving through the streets with coffee cups in hand and expressions that suggested they'd rather be elsewhere.

The pharmaceutical company occupied three floors of a glass building. By now, he knew the routine well enough to complete most of it on autopilot. The project he was assigned to was already years old. His role in it was considerably less glamorous than people imagined when he told them he worked in pharmaceutical research.

Mostly, he followed protocols.

Recorded results.

Repeated experiments.

Then documented everything so thoroughly that future generations could reconstruct his entire morning.

By three o'clock, he'd finished everything he actually needed to do. Which was weird, because he almost never had so much free time. It felt suspicious, so he decided to wait around in case they had more work.

By three-fifteen, he was still sitting there.

By three-thirty, he was staring out the window.

One of his seniors walked past, "You're still here?"

Juhoon looked at the clock, "Apparently."

"Go home."

And so, he left the building. He didn’t really have anywhere to go after that, which only became obvious once he was already outside.

Martin was probably at the studio, James was at work, Seonghyeon and Keonho had classes, so there wasn’t even anyone he could conveniently drift toward under the excuse of existing nearby.

He walked anyway.

For a while, it was just that.

Walking. 

No direction that made sense, just enough movement to avoid standing still and thinking too much about why he left in the first place. People passed him like normal people do, with actual places to be and probably better decisions in general, and he kept going mostly because stopping would’ve meant admitting he had nothing else to do.

Somewhere around then, a thought showed up. Before he could examine it too closely, he was already walking. 

───────

There was no real reason for Juhoon to end up outside Camille's lecture hall. Yet, somehow that was exactly where he found himself fifteen minutes later.

At this point, he could technically leave. That would be the normal thing to do. So naturally, he didn’t. Instead he stood there like he was waiting for something important, even though the only thing he was waiting for was his own brain to stop asking questions.

Students slowly started overflowing out of the lecture hall, all looking equally tired of the day. Amidst the crowd, he spotted Camille, her hair tied in a messy bun, hands full with chargers tangled between her fingers, notebook tucked under one arm, pens, her phone and a lip balm she was actively trying not to drop.

It took her a second to notice him. And when she did, she stopped so abruptly she almost did drop everything.

“--Oh, shit.”

Juhoon let out a small, amused chuckle at the exact moment she recovered, shifting everything in her hand.

She walked closer, still visibly confused. “Why are you here?”

Juhoon blinked once, not having an explanation. “Work ended early. I had nowhere else to go.”

“Home?” 

He ignored that entirely, eyes dropping to her hands. “Put all those back into your bag before you drop them again, catastrophe.”

“Hey,” she shot back, already starting to shove things in, “I almost dropped them. Don’t miss the keyword there.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, tone flat but clearly amused. “Alright.”

She huffed, still reorganising everything, and for a second it went quiet between them. Just the noise of students passing, footsteps fading into distance.

Then Juhoon spoke again. “Do you want to get coffee?”

Camille paused mid-zip. Looked up at him.

“…you’re paying?"

He nodded once. “I’m paying.”

She hummed in response.

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s obviously a yes,” she said, finally zipping her bag shut. “I’m not turning down free coffee, I have principles.”

“Good principle to have.” 

“I know,” she replied, falling into step beside him. “I’m very principled.”

They walked away from campus without really deciding where they were going.

Camille mostly just followed him because he said “coffee” and she wasn’t emotionally strong enough to reject free caffeine.

“You know,” she started after a few steps, adjusting her bag, “I think university is just a long experiment in how much exhaustion a human can tolerate before becoming unwell.”

Juhoon glanced at her. “That bad?”

“I had a professor speak for ninety minutes straight today and I still don’t know what he said. I think I ascended halfway through.”

“That sounds like a skill issue.”

“No, it sounds like a hate crime.”

Juhoon listened the way he usually did.

Not interrupting. Not reacting too loudly. Just occasional glances sideways when she said something particularly dramatic, like he was deciding whether she was exaggerating or just clinically like this all the time.

She kept going anyway.

The café came into view a few minutes later. It was small, tucked slightly off the main road, warm light spilling out through the front windows. Inside, it was quieter.

They ordered without much discussion. Camille hovered briefly over the menu like she was about to make a life-altering decision, then defaulted to something iced anyway because “consistency mattered more than curiosity when tired”.

Juhoon didn’t ask.

Her ranting didn’t stop. Juhoon didn’t interrupt at first.

He just listened while his hot vanilla latte arrived, then hers, watching the way she wrapped both hands around the cup

At some point, his own day slipped into the conversation without him really meaning it to.

Work. Labs. Equipment that rarely cooperated. Colleagues who communicated through sighs. The quiet pressure of things that were always fine but never simple.

Camille, for all her complaining energy, shifted into listening. He noticed it halfway through talking, a small pause in his own thoughts where he registered that she hadn’t interrupted him once. Even when there was a natural opening for it. Even when most people would have.

She just stayed there, occasionally sipping her drink, occasionally nodding.

And without really deciding to, he kept talking a little longer than he usually would.

───────

The next day, Camille had decided to lock in.

This decision had lasted long enough for her to read exactly one page of molecular biology before she started questioning the meaning of education and her place in the universe.

Without thinking, she reached for her phone and texted Juhoon.

camille: WHY TF IS MOLECULAR BIO SO FUCKING HARD i am being humbled on a molecular level ts not funny anymo 💔

The response came within seconds.

juhoon: what topic?

camille: huh? oh right you’ve studied ts too protein folding

juhoon: 👍

camille: 👍????? 👍??!??!?!?? ragebait is so real rn DON'T EVER 👍 ME AGAIN 

The message was left on delivered.

As it should be. Because if Juhoon responded to that with another thumbs up, Camille was prepared to commit a misdemeanor.

She tossed her phone onto the table and looked back at the textbook.

Protein folding looked back. Hostilely.

Twenty minutes passed and Camille had only read the same paragraph four times.The protein folded. Then it unfolded. Then folded incorrectly. Then apparently caused severe diseases.

Another ten minutes passed.

A guy at the next table had somehow finished an entire worksheet, a coffee and was in, what appeared to be, a healthy relationship.

Camille, on the other hand, was still on the same page. She secretly prayed for his downfall before looking back at her textbook.

Honestly, what bothered her most was that the textbook seemed so confident about it. Every sentence was written with the assumption that she already knew what it was talking about.

Another five minutes passed.

Then another.

At some point, she stopped studying and started staring aggressively at the page instead. And to be entirely honest, it achieved roughly the same results.

A notification buzzed. Camille looked down so fast it was embarrassing.

Email.

She hated email.

Another few minutes crawled by and her phone buzzed again. This time she grabbed it immediately.

Still not Juhoon.

Moka had sent her a reel.

She hated Moka too.

Ten minutes later, the chair across from her scraped against the floor. Camille didn't look up.

"There’s someone there."

The person sat down anyway. Camille frowned and lifted her head, muttering under breath; "...what the fuck?"

The complaint died almost immediately. Because sitting across from her was Kim Juhoon.

For a second, Camille genuinely thought she'd imagined him. Which would've been concerning, but not nearly as concerning as the fact that he was apparently real.

“Here you go, catastrophe.” He said, sliding the notebook towards her.

Camille stared at him, “I’m so confused right now.”

Juhoon looked mildly confused by her confusion, which only made the situation worse.

“You said molecular biology was hard.”

“Yes,” Camille said slowly. “I did. Through text. Like a normal person. You responded with a thumbs up and disappeared for almost an hour. I assumed you were gone. I assumed you had abandoned me.”

“I was looking for that.” He pointed towards the notebook.

Camille stared at him for another second before dropping her head into her hands.

This was absurd. She had sent one dramatic message about protein folding and somehow the situation had escalated into Juhoon physically appearing at her table with study material.

When she finally looked up again, the notebook was still sitting there between them.

“What even is this?”

“My notes.”

Camille blinked.

“You kept your notes?”

“Most people do.”

“No, they don't. Normal people finish an exam and immediately start deleting evidence.”

For the first time, something that looked suspiciously like amusement crossed his face.

“Just use it, catastrophe.”

Camille narrowed her eyes at him, but reached for the notebook anyway. 

The first thing she noticed was that it was actually organized. The notes were neat enough to follow, with diagrams, arrows connecting concepts together, and explanations written in a way that seemed a little easier to grasp.

Camille flipped through a few pages.

Protein folding.

Chaperone proteins.

Things she vaguely remembered reading thirty minutes ago before her brain had started leaking out of her ears.

There were little notes scribbled in the margins too.

Previously asked question.

Learn this.

Important.

A few pages later, the notes became less professional.

If they ask this again I am dropping out.

Another page.

WHO NAMED THESE THINGS????

Another.

I have seen this diagram six times and I still don't like it.

Camille laughed. Across the table, Juhoon looked up, "What?"

She turned the notebook around and pointed.

His expression immediately flattened. "Oh."

"'Whoever discovered this should've been required to explain it to me personally,'" Camille read aloud.

"I stand by that."

She continued flipping through the pages. The notes alternated between genuinely helpful explanations and evidence of Juhoon’s brain rotting in real time.

One page had a detailed summary of an entire chapter.

Directly underneath it was written:

This section is stupid and I hate it.

Another had three neatly written bullet points followed by:

If confused, panic later.

Camille laughed again, this time hard enough that she had to put the notebook down.

"You were crashing out."

"I was studying."

"Those are not the same thing."

"They absolutely are."

That earned another laugh from her.

Honestly, she hadn't expected this. The notes and the amount of effort hiding between the pages. The colour-coded sections. The references to past papers. The little reminders scattered everywhere for things students usually forgot.

It was obvious he'd spent a lot of time making them.

The notes turned out to be annoyingly useful.

Things were starting to make sense. Not completely, but enough.

She spent the next few minutes reading through a section on protein folding while Juhoon sat beside her.

The café continued around them. Cups clinked against tables. Somebody laughed near the counter. Music drifted quietly from overhead speakers.

About twenty minutes into studying, Camille discovered that her issue wasn't protein folding itself.

She understood the definitions. So why, Camille wondered, was she still staring at the page like it had personally betrayed her?

She read through the paragraph again. Then again.

By the fourth attempt, she was beginning to suspect the textbook was changing itself when she wasn't looking.

Across from her, Juhoon glanced up from his phone.

"What’s wrong?."

Camille looked up.

"What I'm not getting," she said, tapping her pen against the page, "is where one stops and the next starts. They're all describing the same protein."

Juhoon leaned forward slightly and looked at the diagram. A few seconds passed.

Then he reached over and drew four small boxes in the margin.

"The way I remembered it," he said, "was that each level answers a different question."

Camille immediately looked down.

"Primary structure answers what amino acids are present."

He wrote beside the first box.

"Secondary structure answers what local patterns form."

The second box.

"Tertiary structure answers what shape the entire chain takes."

The third.

"And quaternary structure answers whether it's interacting with other chains."

The fourth.

Camille stared at the boxes for a moment, "...Wait."

She paused before narrowing her eyes.

"Oh, wait. No, because why did that make more sense than the entire chapter?"

A smile threatened at the corner of his mouth.

Camille hated that too.

For the next hour, the pattern repeated itself. She would read. Juhoon would explain.

She would understand for roughly forty seconds. Then she would find something else to be confused about.

Occasionally he'd grab her notebook and draw a quick diagram.

Occasionally she'd interrupt him halfway through an explanation because she'd finally connected two ideas together.

Once, she got so excited about understanding something that she accidentally pointed at him with her pen.

"I got it."

"Congratulations."

"No, seriously."

"Congratulations."

"I'm being serious."

"So am I, catastrophe."

"This makes so much more sense now."

The grin appeared before Camille could stop it. Across the table, Juhoon looked at her for a moment, “Ayy.”

Then he held out a hand.

Camille blinked, her eyes dropping to it.

A dap.

It took her a second to understand.

Like she'd done something worth celebrating.

Like he'd been waiting for her to get there.

A quiet sort of pride sitting beneath the gesture, like he was genuinely pleased she'd gotten there, and wanted to appreciate her efforts, but in his own, stupid ways.

Like he'd been rooting for her the entire time.

Then Juhoon's gaze flickered to the notebook in one of her hands and the pen in the other. A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth.

The hand lowered. Before Camille could think too much about it, he leaned forward slightly.

His hand settled gently atop her head.

His fingers brushed through her hair on the way there, light enough that Camille almost thought she'd imagined it.

"You did really well, catastrophe."

The words were simple and the touch lasted barely a moment. Yet somehow the world seemed to go strangely quiet around it.

And the worst part was that Juhoon had already pulled away, completely unaware that Camille had forgotten every single thing she'd learned in the last hour about protein folding.

Because apparently her brain had decided there was no room left for protein structures once it had stored the fact that Juhoon did things like that. 

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

Camille had spent twenty minutes trying to explain that she and Juhoon were fake dating and another twenty trying to explain why she had said Juhoon's name in the first place. Nobody had accepted any of her explanations.

At one point Moka had actually pointed at her and said, "See, this is why I don't trust people."

“What did I do?”

“You accidentally acquired a boyfriend.”

“Fake boyfriend.”

“See? You're doing it again.”

The conversation had deteriorated from there. By eleven thirty, Camille had escaped to her room under the guise of being tired. This was technically true. She had experienced enough embarrassment in one day to power a small city.

Camille shut the door behind her with relief. The room was blissfully quiet. No Moka. No questions. No one saying the words ‘fake boyfriend’ with entirely too much enthusiasm.

She changed into an old university hoodie, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and attempted to convince herself that her life had not become significantly more complicated.  The attempt failed.

By the time she collapsed onto her bed, all she wanted was eight uninterrupted hours of sleep and perhaps temporary amnesia. Her phone lit up on the bedside table. With a sigh, she reached over and picked it up. The notification made her blink. And then, despite herself, smile fondly. 

juhoon: hey

camille: yes? juhoon: we should meet tomorrow to discuss our fraudulent activities 

camille: no

juhoon: okay

camille: wait not okay

juhoon: ?

camille: why did you agree that fast

juhoon: you said no??

camille: yeah but you were supposed to fight for us

juhoon: us 😭

camille: don't piss me off

juhoon: mb mb

camille: i need you to understand this is not a normal situation for me

juhoon: it is also not normal for me

camille: wrong you're chill

juhoon: i'm literally involved in your lie

camille: but like emotionally you're weirdly stable in this

juhoon: i don't know if that's a compliment

camille: it's not

juhoon: okay

camille: anyway i keep forgetting you exist as my boyfriend and then remembering and wanting to die

juhoon: that's new

camille: it's not new it's recurring

juhoon: how many times

camille: like 6

juhoon: that's impressive

camille: don't praise me

juhoon: i'm not

camille: you're smiling through the screen i can feel it

juhoon: 👍

camille: get that thumb out of my face

juhoon: anyway meet tomorrow

camille: bro you're like a dog with a bone

juhoon: i don't think that's the saying

camille: wtv we need relationship lore

juhoon: wow relationship lore we have reached levels of fraud previously thought impossible 

camille: realest shit have i ever heard

juhoon: tmr 6, bookstore cafe?

camille: sure

juhoon: 👍

camille: oh brother

juhoon: what

camille: this mf

juhoon: ?

camille: every time EVERY TIME

juhoon: what did i do

camille: i pour my heart out i bare my soul i share my deepest fears and this bitch hits me with the 👍

juhoon: okay

camille: goodnight juhoon, i hope both sides of your pillow are warm.

—------------

The next morning arrived far too early. Camille became aware of consciousness in stages.

First came the sunlight.

Then the uncomfortable realization that sunlight implied morning.

Then the even more uncomfortable realization that morning implied responsibilities.

She kept her eyes closed. Perhaps if she ignored the problem long enough, it would leave. To her dismay, the problem remained.

Sunlight filtered through the dorm window. It slid in through the thin dorm curtains and settled over the desk, the chair, the pile of clothes she had abandoned there last night. Her blanket had somehow wrapped itself around her legs during the night. The room was pleasantly cool everywhere except the patch of sunlight stretching across her bed. 

Somewhere down the hall, a door slammed. A burst of laughter followed. Then the muffled sound of someone complaining in a voice that suggested they had been wronged by the morning. 

Camille stayed still for a second longer, one arm draped over her face, listening.

There was something peaceful about the first few seconds after waking up. Peaceful in the sense that reality had not fully caught up yet and was still deciding whether to bother her today. She believed that it was the perfect in-between.

With a sigh, Camille finally pushed herself upright. Her hair immediately fell into her face.She moved toward the bathroom, shoulders still heavy with sleep.

Camille stared at her reflection for a second.

Her hair was doing something unhelpful. Her face looked exactly like it felt: half-awake, mildly annoyed, and not ready for the kind of day where she would have to look Juhoon in the eye and pretend this whole thing had not already become the most ridiculous item on her list of responsibilities.

The shower helped, as it usually did, though mostly in the sense that warm water made the world feel temporarily less hostile. Steam softened the glass. By the time she got out of the shower, she had let her thoughts drift into useless little circles.

Camille stood in front of the wardrobe and stared into it for far too long. After trying on several outfits, she decided on a striped fitted shirt and jeans. She was adjusting her cuff when she heard Moka say:

“I think I'd become evil if I had money.”

“You already become evil when you have twenty dollars.” Y/N says without looking up

“Exactly. Imagine if I had billions.”

“You'd be dead within six months.”

“What?”

“You'd buy a submarine.”

“I would NOT.”

“You absolutely would.”

“I literally wouldn't.”

Camille finally looks up, “You bought an air fryer because it looked lonely.”

Moka freezes. “...That feels unrelated.”

“It isn't.”

“You named it.”

“It needed a name.”

“YOU NAMED IT.”

“Kevin gets nervous.”

“Oh my God.” Y/N looks up at Moka

“Okay but what's your billionaire scandal then?”

“I wouldn't have one.” Her answer comes fast, fast enough it makes Camille chuckle.

“You absolutely would.” Moka defended

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Y/N points. “Okay. Name one scandal I would do.”

“You know how rich people fund research?”

“No.”

“You're already defensive.”

“I'm not.”

“You'd fund some weird penguin study.”

“I WOULD NOT.”

“You absolutely would.”

Camille was now very invested. She set down her makeup and focused on the rest of the explanation Moka had come up with.

“No, because imagine opening the news. ‘Local graduate student receives thirty million dollars to investigate whether penguins experience workplace drama.’”

Camille folds forward laughing.

“THAT'S NOT A THING.” Y/N tried to defend herself.

“How do you know?”

“Because they're PENGUINS.”

Camille climbs onto Moka's bed.

“No, because imagine being a penguin. You show up to work.”

“What work?”

“Penguin work.”

“THAT'S NOT A REAL JOB.”

“Maybe not to you.”

Camille was already losing it.

“You show up and you see Gary.”

“Who the fuck is Gary?”

“The penguin.”

“There wasn't a Gary.”

“There is now. Anyway, Gary stole your fish."

“What?”

"Gary stole your fish."

“Okay?”

“You hate him. And then some random researcher is taking notes.”

Moka pretends to type. “‘Subject appears engaged in interpersonal conflict.’”

Camille immediately joins in, “‘Potential fish-related power struggle.’”

“‘Gary remains a bitch.’” 

The rest of the day passed in fragments. Camille spent most of it moving from one building to another.

A lecture in a room so cold it felt personally targeted. Another in a classroom with broken blinds that let sunlight hit her in the eyes for an hour straight. A seminar where one guy raised his hand every five minutes and somehow managed to say absolutely nothing each time.

University, in other words.

By lunchtime the campus was crowded.

Students drifted between buildings in clusters. Music leaked from somebody’s speaker near the fountain. A group of first-years sat on the grass.

Camille ate lunch with Moka and Y/N.

By three o’clock, Camille was in the library. By four, she was pretending to work. By four-thirty, she was actually working, mostly out of guilt.

Outside the windows, the afternoon slowly softened into evening.

Weak sunlight stretched across the floor between the shelves. Conversations grew quieter. Students started packing up their things. Camille always loved this time of the day. 

Camille finished the last paragraph of her notes and glanced at the time.

5:08.

At 5:27 she gave up. She packed her bag, slipped her notebook inside, and headed out.

The bookstore wasn’t far from campus. The walk took about ten minutes.

The evening air was pleasant. Warm enough that nobody needed a jacket, cool enough that walking felt nice. The sidewalks were busy with students, commuters, and people who were in a rush to keep up with their schedules.

The bookstore came into view near the end of the street.

Large windows.

Warm lights.

The familiar sign hanging above the entrance.

Camille pushed open the door. A small bell chimed overhead. The scent of coffee and paper hit immediately.

Something about bookstores always felt quieter than they actually were. Conversations became softer. Movements slowed down. Even the sounds of cups being set down seemed gentler.

She ordered an iced latte and claimed a table near the back.

Then she checked the time.

5:46.

Camille stared at the screen when the bell above the door chimed. She looked up automatically and there he was.

Juhoon stepped inside, paused just long enough for the door to swing shut behind him. The bell above the entrance was still settling into silence when his gaze moved until it landed on her. 

“You’re early, catastrophe.” he said as he settled into the chair across her.

Camille moved her bag off the table and on to her lap. “Oh, yeah…Being early and waiting seemed more tempting than studying, so.”

That earned a chuckle from him, “Right, you still have to do that.”

“Absolutely no need to rub it in my face like that.”

“I wasn’t rubbing it in,” he said, leaning back slightly. “I was just..recollecting that fact.”

Camille narrowed her eyes at him before deciding to drop it, which felt like a bad decision because she didn’t know what else to say. She spoke after a long silence.

“So, uh, how was work?”

“Work?” Juhoon echoed, trying to suppress his amusement.

“You don’t need to laugh at that, you jerk.” she said, rolling her eyes.

Juhoon leaned back in his chair. “Anyway, we should probably start…brainstorming?”

She cleared her throat once. Right. Fake dating. Relationship lore. Fraudulent activities.

“Uhm okay, let’s start with how we met.”

“What about the same thing but a little tweaked? Childhood friends. Lost contact. Met again here.”

Camille blinked. “That was… suspiciously smooth.”

A beat.

She tapped the table once. “Then at the bookstore café. I’m reading. You show up, pretend you don’t see me.”

Juhoon nodded. “That’s believable.”

Camille continued. “Then we start talking again.”

He added, “We text that night.”

Camille nodded. “Just a ‘what are you doing now’ that somehow turns into five hours of talking about nothing important.”

“Then again the next day.”

“And the next.”

He leaned back slightly. “We meet here again.”

Camille looked around the café like it was suddenly part of the story instead of just furniture. “And it becomes… our place.”

Juhoon hummed. “Regular spot.”

Camille tapped the table lightly. “And then we actually start dating for real, right?”

Juhoon didn’t answer immediately, just looked at her.

“…Yeah,” he said finally. “That’s good. Seems believable.”

 “Classic us.”

There was a brief pause before Camille narrowed her eyes. “Who confessed?”

“You did,” he replied immediately.

Camille snapped her head up. “Excuse you, I would never.”

“You would be more believable as the impulsive one.”

“I am not impulsive.”

“You told someone I was your boyfriend.”

“I think that falls into that category of ‘survival instinct’.”

“That’s impulsive.”

Camille leaned back. “No. I think YOU confessed.”

“That doesn’t sound accurate.”

“It’s vibes, you know?”

“I don’t think that’s a category.”

“It is now.”

Juhoon exhaled. “Fine. I confessed.”

“Good. I knew you had it in you.”

“I didn’t.”

“What else do we need?” Camille took a sip of her coffee as she thought. 

The crowd had become thicker now, with more people coming in as the sky turned gray. There was a steady bustle, with the thick smell of coffee and that comforting smell every bookstore had. 

“Maybe an anniversary date?” Juhoon suggested.

“Right. How do we get that?”

He shrugged, “Just pick a date from the last month.”

After a few minutes of arguing, they decide on October 13th. Mostly because Camille had found it a ‘pretty’ date and because the others Juhoon suggested weren’t ‘actual’ dates.

Juhoon gave a tiny shrug, like he was already regretting agreeing to any of this. “Good. Now we need the rules.”

That pulled her attention right back. She straightened in her chair, “Right. Rules. Because apparently we are now running a fully licensed fraud operation.”

“We are not calling it that.”

“Too late. It has a name now.”

He looked at her, expression flat but eyes very amused. “Have you ever been normal for one minute, catastrophe?”

“No.”

That was enough to get them both properly into it. Camille reached for her drink.

“Okay,” she said, “rule one. We need to know what we’re allowed to do in public.”

Juhoon paused. “So like PDA?”

“...I guess?”

“Okay, tell me what you’re comfortable with.”

Camille suppressed the weird feeling in her stomach and said, “Okay maybe… handholding? For public. That’s fine right?”

Then immediately regretted having a mouth.

Juhoon looked at her for like half a second. Then just nodded. “Yeah. That’s good with me, catastrophe.”

No hesitation. No debate. Just accepted it like it was on a checklist.

Camille went very still.

“…cool,” she said, way too quickly. Like she had not just offered her entire nervous system for inspection.

She reached for her drink immediately, because suddenly the table was very interesting and her brain had decided to pack up and leave. Handholding. Normal thing. Extremely normal. People did it. Frequently. 

Juhoon, meanwhile, was just sitting there like this was all very reasonable. “So handholding is allowed.”

“Yep,” Camille said, voice slightly delayed, like it had to travel through traffic.

“Okay.”

That one word. Okay.

Camille nodded again, a little too hard. “Okay.”

And then she had absolutely nothing else to say, which was criminal considering she usually had too many opinions about everything. So she just stared at her drink like it might start talking first.

Juhoon glanced at her once, like he noticed the pause, then didn’t comment. Just leaned back slightly. “Next rule?”

Camille blinked. Still mildly buffering.

“…yeah,” she managed. “Next rule.”

“You have to meet my parents, every two weeks.”

“What?”

“Mhm.”

“Don’t mhm me.”

“Deal’s a deal, catastrophe.”

“You fucking suck.”

Juhoon hummed. “Good. Then we should probably think about telling people.”

That made her look up. Not in a dramatic way. More like the sentence had simply wandered into the room and sat down.

“Yeah,” she said after a beat. 

They both went quiet for a second, not because it was awkward, just because it was one of those things that suddenly felt real enough to take up space. Camille poked at her drink, then glanced at him. “I mean, we could do the whole soft launch thing.”

Juhoon nodded like he had already been circling the same thought. “Letting people connect the dots.”

“So we’d basically be telling people without telling people.”

“Exactly.”

She looked at him, then let out a tiny breath that was almost a laugh. “That is so stupid.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I kind of like it.”

Juhoon smiled. “I knew you would.”

Camille pretended not to notice that and sat up a little straighter. “What kind of post though? Because if we do this, it cannot be cringe.”

“Agreed.”

“Like no giant paragraph. No ‘so grateful for this person’ nonsense.”

“No.”

“And no weird hand photo with fifty hearts.”

He glanced at her. “That was never on the table.”

“Good. Because I would have denied knowing you.”

That got the smallest laugh out of him, and Camille, annoyingly, felt that in her ribs for no good reason. She looked back down at her drink, then said, quieter, “Maybe just something normal. Café picture. Something where people can see us and go oh.”

Juhoon nodded once, already on the same page. “That works.”

Camille stared at him for a second, then gave a tiny nod of her own. “Okay. That feels less stupid.”

“Still stupid,” he said.

“Yeah,” she admitted. “But less.”

They got to work quickly. Work as in Camille had taken over his phone and taken a photo of herself, only half of her visible, her face turned away from the camera, the bustling bookstore behind her. Row of books behind her, and her coffee in front of her. Juhoon stay simply watching, he knew better not to interrupt her, so he happily sipped his coffee.

Camille handed him the phone after she decided on a picture from the ten she took and told him that the rest was ‘up to him’. 

Juhoon looked down at it. Then at her. “Up to me how?”

“Caption. Posting. Whatever people do.”

He hummed, thumb hovering over the screen. “You’re not supervising?”

“I refuse. I have dignity.”

He opened the gallery. Stopped at the one she picked. Simple. Café light doing most of the work.

“Don’t make it weird,” she added, softer this time.

“I won’t.”

She picked up her phone and started scrolling pleasantly.

Juhoon stared at the picture for a few minutes. Then typed something, then scrolled to find music. Finally, when he was done, he looked at Camille and showed her the story like a small child showing his mother a drawing.

Camille stared at the phone. The photo she took stared back at her, on which Juhoon had typed: “soft launch? @camillemntrl ❤️”

Music played from the phone’s speakers. She recognised the song instantly. Superpowers by Daniel Caesar. Her stomach did somersaults inside her body.

She just stared at him. For a long second, the café noise filled the gap where her thoughts used to be.

Juhoon tilted his head slightly. “Too much?”

Camille looked back at the screen. The caption. The tag. The stupid little heart. The song like it had been carefully selected to ruin her entire ability to act normal.

Then she sighed.

“…no,” she admitted, quieter. “It’s actually kind of perfect.”

Juhoon nodded once, like that was the only acceptable outcome and hit upload.

And Camille, against all her earlier rules about dignity and emotional stability, just went back to scrolling her phone like nothing in the world had changed.

Which was the funniest lie of all.

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───