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Summary: Jeongin does everything he can to prove to you that you were never even a bet to him in the first place.
Warnings: angst, panic attacks, anxiety
Word count: 16.8k. [I got carried away and there will STILL be a part 3 of 13k words ha ha haha ha]
a/n: I did NOT expect the reaction that part one got and all I can do is thank you guys from the bottom of my heart! I've basically spent the past week writing this round the clock when my holiday failed dramatically lmaooo
[Part One]
The bell was still echoing through the corridor when you finally moved.
You didn’t move because either of you wanted to end the conversation, but because if you stayed in that little music room much longer, someone was bound to come looking for the spare key Jeongin had borrowed, and the thought of being found like this—eyes red, emotions skinned raw, your whole relationship cracked open in front of you—made your stomach twist.
You scrubbed at your face with your sleeve one last time and looked at the floor. “I should go to class.”
Jeongin nodded immediately, eyes roaming your face carefully. “Yeah. Okay.”
You felt your heart break all over again at the sound of his voice. It was rough, like he’d spent the last half hour swallowing glass.
For a second, neither of you moved. The room still felt too full of everything that had just been said—too many confessions, too many apologies, too much pain still hanging in the air for either of you to know how to step around it. Eventually, though, Jeongin reached past you for the door handle, careful not to brush your shoulder. It made your chest ache because you realised that he was already trying. He opened the door and stepped back to let you out first.
The corridor outside was mostly empty now, just a few stragglers hurrying to lessons, voices echoing faintly off the walls. You could feel Jeongin behind you, not close enough to touch, but not far enough to disappear either. It was strange, suddenly, after six months of him always at your side or with a hand on your back or his fingers curled loosely around your wrist to steer you through crowds.
Now there was just space. Careful, deliberate space.
You made it halfway down the corridor before he spoke again.
“Do you want me to walk you to class?”
The question was soft, cautious in a way it never had been before, making you stop. Your first instinct was to say no. To put distance between you before this strange, fragile truce could start feeling too familiar, before you forgot even for a second why your chest still hurt.
But then you pictured Jisoo by the benches. The way the whole courtyard had gone quiet when you approached. The possibility of everyone staring if you walked back out there alone with your face still blotchy from crying.
You didn’t want that, didn’t want to give people another reason to laugh and to stare, so after a second, you nodded.
Jeongin looked almost startled by the yes, like he’d braced himself for rejection and hadn’t quite adjusted in time. But all he said was, “Okay.”
He fell into step beside you - not with you, exactly - but slightly behind, giving you room to move away if you wanted to. He kept his hands in his pockets and his gaze mostly on the floor, and if you hadn’t known him so well, you might’ve missed the tension in his shoulders - the way he was clearly thinking too hard about every step, every breath, every inch of space between you.
You hated that you knew him well enough to see it.
The walk to English felt surreal. Students moved around you in little clusters, laughing, complaining about homework, shoving books into lockers. Normal Monday morning chaos, as if the world hadn’t shifted on its axis inside the music room half an hour ago. The contrast was clear when neither of you spoke. There was too much left to say, but it all felt too big for a hallway between first and second period, too sharp and fragile to touch in public.
When you reached your classroom, you stopped outside the door and tightened your grip on your books. Jeongin stopped too, leaving the same careful distance he’d kept the whole walk. He looked like he wanted to say something - a hundred things, probably – but he settled on something simple instead.
“Are you okay to go in?”
The question made something twist in your chest. It was such a Jeongin thing to ask - so instinctive, so familiar, so horribly normal.
You swallowed around the lump in your throat before you replied, “Yeah.”
He nodded before adding after a pause, “If you need to leave class, text me.”
Your eyes flicked up to his face. He looked almost embarrassed the second the words were out, like he knew he didn’t really have the right to offer anymore but couldn’t quite stop himself.
“I’m not saying you have to,” he added quickly, scratching at the back of his neck awkwardly. “Just - if it gets too much, or if anyone says anything, or if you need me to come get you, I will.”
You stared at him for a second too long before looking away.
“Okay.”
It was barely more than a whisper, but the relief on his face was immediate.
“Okay,” he echoed softly.
A group of girls pushed past you into the classroom, forcing the moment to break. You stepped back automatically, and Jeongin moved with the same instinctive awareness he always had, shifting out of the way before you could be crowded.
Your throat tightened at the instinctual consideration.
“I should go,” you murmured.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t try to stop you. He didn’t reach for your hand or your sleeve or your bag like he usually would. He just stood there, eyes fixed on your face with that same careful, aching expression, and let you leave. You felt him watching you until you slid into your seat.
The rest of the day was awful. No-one said anything—not to your face, anyway—but now that the conversation had happened, you couldn’t stop replaying it. Every answer. Every flinch. Every apology.
Fifty quid.
It stopped before I asked you out.
I loved you every day.
You spent all of Maths staring at the same half-finished equation without understanding a single number. In history, your teacher called on you twice, and both times you had to ask her to repeat the question because you’d been too busy thinking about the look on Jeongin’s face when you stepped away from him.
By lunchtime, your head was pounding. You escaped to the library with the excuse of homework and sat tucked into the corner behind the nonfiction shelves, picking at the label on your water bottle and trying not to cry from sheer emotional exhaustion.
Your phone buzzed once against the table, and you looked down to see a text message from Jeongin on your screen.
Jeongin: You don’t have to reply. Just checking you’re okay.
Your chest tightened as a second message came through almost immediately after.
Jeongin: Minjae tried to apologise to me at lunch. I told him not to come near you.
You stared at the screen. There was no pressure, no please answer me, and no desperate flood of messages demanding reassurance. It was just information. A check-in.
Slowly, you typed back, settling on a simple I’m fine.
The three little dots appeared so quickly that it was almost ridiculous, before they vanished, just to come back again immediately.
Jeongin: Okay.
Do you want me to leave you alone for the rest of today?
The question caught you off guard, and you had to read it a few times to believe it, because Jeongin, for all his many flaws, had never been good at leaving things alone when he was worried about you. If you were upset, he hovered. If you were anxious, he checked in every ten minutes. If you looked remotely overwhelmed, he’d find an excuse to appear at your elbow with water or snacks or that stupid little frown between his brows.
And now he was asking, actually asking.
You swallowed and typed back slowly.
You: No. Just… don’t hover.
The reply came a few seconds later.
Jeongin: Okay. I can do that.
You stared at those four words for a long moment before you locked your phone and shoved it face down on the table, refusing to overthink it.
He did, in fact, stick to his word.
He didn’t come to the library, and he didn’t wait outside your next lesson or materialise at your locker with that soft, worried look that always made your pulse do stupid things, but every time you glanced up in class or crossed the courtyard or moved through the hallway between periods, you had the strange, prickling awareness that if you needed him, he was there.
He wasn’t close enough to crowd. He was just… there.
At one point in the afternoon, as you were heading to the toilets between classes, you caught sight of Jisoo at the far end of the corridor talking animatedly to two girls from your year. She looked up, spotted you, and visibly opened her mouth.
Before she could say anything, Jeongin - who you hadn’t even realised was nearby - stepped directly into her line of sight. He didn’t touch her or make a scene; he just looked at her with such a cold, flat warning that her mouth snapped shut. He then turned and kept walking without even glancing at you.
Your pulse stuttered. It was ridiculous, really, how much that tiny moment affected you. He hadn’t done anything dramatic. Hadn’t marched over to make a speech or demand an apology. He’d just made it clear, in the quietest possible way, that she wouldn’t be getting another shot at you if he could help it.
By the end of the school day, you were exhausted.
Not the normal kind of tired. The deep, full-body exhaustion that came after too much adrenaline and too many emotions and an entire day spent trying to hold yourself together in public. You just wanted to go home.
You were halfway through shoving books into your bag when your phone buzzed again.
Jeongin: I’m outside by the bike racks.
You absolutely do not have to let me walk you home. I just didn’t want to leave without asking.
You stared at the message.
Then, because apparently your life had become a long series of emotionally catastrophic decisions, you typed back Okay.
By the time you got outside, he was exactly where he said he’d be- leaning against the low wall by the bike sheds, hands shoved deep in his blazer pockets, tie loosened, hair falling into his eyes. He straightened the second he saw you, nervousness flashing across his face so openly it almost made your chest hurt. He didn’t come towards you, just waited.
You adjusted your bag higher on your shoulder and walked over.
“Hi,” he said quietly.
“Hi.”
He looked surprised that you’d even answered before nodding towards the gate. “Ready?”
You fell into step beside him, and again, he kept his distance. There wasn’t as much space as there had been in school—there were fewer people on the pavement, less risk of being overheard—but still enough that you could’ve put another person between you. It was strange, that distance. Unnatural. You kept noticing it in tiny, awful ways: when you stepped off the curb and his hand twitched at his side before he stopped himself reaching for you, when you moved closer to avoid a cyclist and he immediately gave you space again, when a gust of wind blew your hair into your face and he looked like he had to physically stop himself tucking it behind your ear.
You wrapped your arms around yourself in an attempt to hold yourself together.
The silence stretched for nearly half the walk before you finally broke it.
“Did you mean it?”
Jeongin looked at you immediately. “Which part?”
You kept your eyes fixed on the pavement when you responded, “When you said you loved me every day.”
The words felt stupid the second they were out of your mouth. Too vulnerable. Too close to asking for reassurance when you still weren’t even sure you had the right to want it.
But Jeongin didn’t laugh or hesitate when he answered.
“Yes.”
Your throat tightened at the certainty in his voice.
“All of it?” you asked quietly. “Even after we’d been together for months and you knew it was getting worse the longer you left it?”
“Yes.”
You stopped walking, and Jeongin stopped too, turning to face you fully on the pavement. There was no one else around this stretch of road, just the hum of distant traffic and the wind tugging at the trees overhead.
“If you loved me,” you said, and your voice shook despite your best efforts, “how could you stand there and let your friends joke about me like that?”
Jeongin’s face crumpled at your question.
“I didn’t let them joke about you,” he said hoarsely. “Not really. Not once I realised how serious this was to me.”
You stared at him, and he dragged a hand through his hair, visibly frustrated with himself. “That sounds bad. I know it sounds bad. What I mean is—if they said anything about you now, I shut it down. Every time.”
“Clearly not every time.”
His eyes squeezed shut.
“No,” he whispered. “Not every time.”
The wind shifted around you. Jeongin opened his eyes again, and the guilt in them was almost hard to look at.
“I got too used to trying to act normal around them,” he admitted. “I’d spent so long pretending the bet had never happened that when they made comments, I’d just tell them to piss off and move on because I didn’t want to turn it into a bigger conversation. I thought if I ignored it, it would die.”
He laughed bitterly at his own words, looking away from you as he continued. “It was cowardly. All of it. I know that.”
He took a breath before turning back to you, but you couldn’t bring yourself to meet his eye.
“I should’ve cut them off sooner,” he said. “I should’ve told them exactly what you meant to me and made it very clear that none of it was funny. I should’ve told you. I should’ve done about a hundred things differently.”
His voice softened. “But I need you to know this one thing, even if you don’t believe anything else right now. When they talked about you like that, it made me feel sick.”
Your fingers tightened around the strap of your bag, and you could feel the tears threatening to fall again.
“I’m not saying that to make myself look better. It doesn’t. I still stood there and let it happen too many times. But none of them ever understood what you were to me.” His voice roughened. “They were laughing about a version of you that didn’t exist to me anymore. Not after the first few weeks. Not after you started trusting me.”
You swallowed hard as he took a tiny step closer, before he remembered and stopped himself.
“I know I don’t deserve it,” he said, “but I’m asking you to believe that part.”
The worst thing was that you did. Or at least, you believed he believed it. Somehow, it just made it all the more confusing.
You resumed walking without a word, and Jeongin followed. He didn’t push for more conversation after that. He just stayed beside you, quiet and careful, matching your pace all the way back to your building.
Chan was sitting on his front steps when you turned the corner. He had a textbook open on one knee and a packet of crisps in his hand, but the second he saw you with Jeongin, his eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline. He studied your face, took in the fact that you didn’t look actively panicked or devastated, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased.
“Well,” he drawled, snapping the book shut. “This is new.”
You shot him a look that was half warning, half exhausted plea.
Chan lifted both hands innocently. “I’m just saying. Last time Romeo here was on this pavement, I had to physically send him away.”
Jeongin, to his credit, looked like he knew better than to rise to it, choosing to respond politely, “I’m just walking her home.”
Chan looked between the two of you, clearly clocking the careful distance Jeongin was keeping, and his expression softened by a fraction.
“Mm,” he said. “I can see that.”
You shifted your bag higher on your shoulder, suddenly desperate to get inside before either of them said anything else.
“I’m tired.”
“Right,” Chan said immediately, standing up and scooping his textbook under one arm. “Inside, then.”
Jeongin’s gaze flicked to you. “I’ll go.”
You nodded, then felt weirdly rude for doing only that.
“Thanks,” you said, voice quiet.
The effect of that one word on him was almost painful to witness. He looked like someone had punched all the air out of his lungs.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Always.”
Chan made a face like he deeply regretted having functioning ears, and you would’ve laughed if you weren’t so tired. Instead, you watched as Jeongin stepped back from the path, giving you room to reach the front door. He didn’t try to follow. Didn’t ask for one more minute or one more conversation or one more chance to explain something he’d already explained. He just stood there with his hands in his pockets and watched you like he was memorising the fact that you were still willing to let him walk you home at all.
“Text me if you need anything,” he said.
Then, before you could panic at the implication of having to answer, he added quickly, “Or don’t. Sorry. Ignore me.”
Chan snorted, and you bit the inside of your cheek to stop yourself smiling and fished your keys out of your bag. When you looked back, Jeongin was still there, waiting to make sure you got inside safely.
The sight of it did something unpleasantly soft to your chest.
You unlocked the door and stepped into your house. Chan followed you in, but before he let the door swing shut behind him, he glanced back over his shoulder at Jeongin.
“Go home,” he called. “You look like death.”
Jeongin gave him a tired, unimpressed look before the door closed on him.
That night, after a shower and half a mug of tea you were too drained to finish, you sat cross-legged on your bed in oversized pyjamas and stared at your phone.
You’d been trying to read the same page of your English homework for ten minutes and hadn’t absorbed a single word. Your mind kept drifting back to the walk home, and to Jeongin stopping himself from reaching for you. To the way he’d answered every question like he was trying to hand you something fragile and precious without cutting you on the edges of it.
To the fact that when you’d thanked him, he’d looked like you’d given him oxygen.
Your phone buzzed in your hand, and you smiled wryly. Speak of the Devil.
Jeongin: Thank you for letting me walk you home.
You stared at the message when another came through.
Jeongin: I meant what I said earlier. You can ask me anything. Any time. Even if it’s 3am and it’s something horrible.
A third bubble appeared, then vanished before another message came through.
Jeongin: Also, I blocked Jisoo.
Your eyebrows rose despite yourself, but before you could ask him about it, another message followed.
Jeongin: And I told Minjae that if he comes near you without your permission, I’ll actually kill him.
You snorted before you could stop yourself and laughed outright at the ones that followed.
Jeongin: Not literally. Probably.
I know murder would be unhelpful right now.
You bit your lip before typing back.
You: Chan says murder is a disproportionate response.
The reply came so quickly, it was obvious he’d been staring at the screen.
Jeongin: Chan’s just upset he didn’t think of it first.
You huffed another laugh and curled further into your duvet. For a moment, your thumb hovered over the keyboard, debating on whether you should send your next messages before doing it anyway.
You: Thank you for today.
For not pushing.
This time the dots took longer. It was long enough that you wondered if he’d gone to rewrite the message five times before sending it. When it finally came through, it was enough for your chest to tighten.
Jeongin: I’m going to keep trying. Even if all I can do right now is get it right in the small things.
You read the message three times. Then, before you could lose your nerve, you sent one back.
You: Good.
It wasn’t forgiveness or trust. It wasn’t even close to okay.
But it was something.
And judging by the way Jeongin’s reply took nearly a full minute to arrive—as if he’d needed that long to get his hands to stop shaking enough to type—it was enough to keep him going.
Jeongin: Goodnight, Y/N.
You looked at the words on your screen for a long time before answering.
You: Night.
Then you put your phone face down on the pillow beside you and lie back against the headboard, heart still bruised, still uncertain, still nowhere near healed, but no longer entirely convinced that everything between you had been broken beyond repair.
The week after Monday settled into something strange. It wasn’t normal, and it definitely wasn’t okay, but it wasn’t unbearable either. It was a limbo of half-healed things and careful distances, of glances across classrooms and texts that came without pressure attached. You still woke up every morning with that heavy ache in your chest - the one that reminded you, before you were even fully conscious, that something had broken between you and Jeongin and you still hadn’t figured out whether it could be fixed.
But alongside that ache now was something else: expectation.
Because every day, Jeongin showed up. Not in the overwhelming, desperate way he had on Friday - chasing after you, following you, trying to force a conversation you weren’t ready to have. This was different. Quieter. More deliberate. Like he’d taken your hurt and your boundaries and built his whole week around proving he could respect both.
On Tuesday morning, you found a bottle of water and your favourite lemon sweets on the corner of your desk before registration. There was no note, no dramatic gesture. Just the two things sitting there, like they’d appeared by magic.
You turned around automatically, scanning the classroom. Jeongin was two rows back, pretending very hard to be interested in a worksheet he absolutely hadn’t been looking at ten seconds ago. But the second he felt your eyes on him, his gaze flicked up.
Then, almost shyly, he mouthed, “For your headache.”
Your chest tightened. The headache had been real yesterday. You’d spent half of chemistry rubbing at your temple and trying not to let the fluorescent lights split your skull in two. You hadn’t mentioned it to him. Hadn’t texted him. Hadn’t even looked at him much.
He’d just noticed.
You stared at the water for a second too long before unscrewing the cap and taking a sip. When you looked up again, Jeongin had gone back to his worksheet, but there was something softer in the line of his shoulders. Something relieved.
On Wednesday, Minjae tried to approach you outside the library.
You saw him before he reached you - hands shoved into his blazer pockets, expression pinched with the kind of guilt that had probably been chewing him alive since Friday. He hesitated when you looked at him, like he wasn’t sure if you’d walk away immediately, then took another step anyway.
“Y/N, can I just—”
“Minjae.”
The voice came from behind him. Jeongin wasn’t loud, but he didn’t need to be. Something in the flatness of his tone made Minjae stop dead. You looked up to find Jeongin halfway down the corridor, school bag hanging from one shoulder, face unreadable in a way that immediately made your stomach dip.
Minjae turned. “I just want to apologise.”
“I know,” Jeongin said. “Do it somewhere she can choose to leave.”
The corridor went quiet, and Minjae’s face flushed as people turned to watch the drama unfold. “I’m not trying to upset her.”
“Then stop cornering her when she’s alone.”
Something about the way Jeongin said it - calm, but absolutely immovable - made Minjae take a step back. His eyes flicked to you then, properly taking in the way you’d gone tense at being trapped between the library doors and his body, and guilt flashed across his face.
“Right,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
He looked at you again, shoulders slumping. “I am sorry, by the way. For all of it.”
You didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know if you wanted his apology or if hearing it from one of the boys who’d stood there laughing would only make everything worse. So, you just nodded once.
Minjae looked like he wanted to say more, but one glance at Jeongin seemed to change his mind. He muttered another apology and left.
The silence he left behind stretched awkwardly. Jeongin stayed where he was. He didn’t come closer or ask if you were okay. He just gave you the space to decide whether you wanted him there at all.
After a second, you exhaled shakily. “Thanks.”
He shrugged one shoulder, trying for casual and failing completely. “He should’ve left you alone.”
You looked at him properly. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did.”
The answer came so quickly that it caught you off guard. Jeongin seemed to realise it too, because he rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, suddenly awkward.
“I mean…” He swallowed. “I know I can’t fix it. But I can at least stop them from making it worse.”
Your throat tightened as he gave you a tiny nod and headed for his next class before you could think of a response.
By Thursday, Mia had noticed.
She hadn’t noticed the details, obviously. You still hadn’t told anyone the full truth except Chan, and even then, half of it had come out through tears and panic and the kind of emotional exhaustion that made coherent storytelling impossible.
But she noticed the distance.
The way Jeongin still walked you to class sometimes, but never touched you. The way he’d appear with coffee or snacks or a spare pen when you forgot one, only to leave them on your desk and disappear before anyone could make a thing of it. The way he watched you in the hallway was like he was constantly checking whether you were about to bolt.
“You two are weird,” she announced at lunch, shoving a forkful of pasta into her mouth and narrowing her eyes at you over the table. “Not bad weird. Just… weird.”
You nearly choked on your drink at her bluntness. Across the cafeteria, Jeongin was standing by the vending machines with Hyunwoo, visibly not listening to a word the other boy was saying because his eyes kept drifting back to your table every few seconds. You looked away quickly.
“We’re fine,” you lied.
She snorted. “You are many things, babe. Fine is not one of them.”
You kicked her lightly under the table, but she only grinned and stole one of your chips.
The thing was, she wasn’t wrong. You weren’t fine, because every tiny kindness from Jeongin made things harder, not easier. It would’ve been simpler if he’d been sulky. Defensive. If he’d acted like you were punishing him unfairly or expected forgiveness because he’d cried in a music room and told you he loved you. It would’ve been easier to stay angry if he’d made this about getting you back instead of proving he could be what you needed, even if what you needed right now was distance. Instead, he kept doing things like leaving your favourite sweets on your desk. Like texting only once in the evening to ask if you’d eaten after a bad day, and accepting “yes” as a complete answer without trying to turn it into a conversation.
Like waiting outside your maths class on Thursday because he knew presentations made you anxious, only to fall into step beside you and say, very casually, “You looked pretty. I mean—confident. Not pretty because you always—” He stopped, mortified with himself. “Forget I said anything.”
You’d laughed before you could stop yourself. It was a real laugh, sudden and startled and impossible to hold back, and Jeongin had gone completely still at the sound of it, staring at you like he hadn’t expected to hear it again. Then his whole face softened in that awful, lovely way that made your stomach twist.
“There you are,” he murmured, so quietly you almost didn’t catch it.
The words hit you like a punch because Chan had said the exact same thing. You looked away immediately, throat tight, and Jeongin’s smile faded at once.
“Sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t. Because for the rest of the afternoon, all you could think about was the way his face had looked when you laughed. Like relief. Like homesickness. Like something inside him had finally unclenched after days of holding itself rigid.
And you didn’t know what to do with the fact that it had made your chest hurt.
Friday was the worst day of the week, and nothing particularly bad even happened. It was just one of those horrible, low-level anxiety days where your skin felt too tight, and every sound seemed a fraction too loud, and you couldn’t shake the sense that you were one wrong word away from crying in public. You’d slept badly, had a nightmare about the party that left your heart racing before dawn, and by lunchtime, your hands were trembling so badly you nearly dropped your tray in the cafeteria.
You abandoned food altogether and escaped to the old courtyard behind the art block, where hardly anyone ever went in winter because it was too cold and the benches were damp from the morning rain. You sat on the low stone wall with your knees pulled to your chest and tried to breathe.
In for four.
Hold.
Out for six.
You did it again and again, but the anxiety in your chest wouldn’t ease. You were spiralling further when your phone buzzed in your pocket. You ignored it at first, but a minute later, it buzzed again. Then once more.
Something in your chest tightened painfully. You dragged the phone out with clumsy fingers, half convinced it would be Chan telling you to come round after school, or Mia asking where you’d gone. You were mildly surprised to see it was Jeongin.
Jeongin: You left your bag in chemistry.
Then, thirty seconds later:
Jeongin: I’m not hovering. I swear. Mr Evans noticed and gave it to me.
And finally:
Jeongin: I’m outside the art block. I can leave it by the door if you don’t want to see me.
Your eyes burned unexpectedly, and you looked up, eyes scanning. Sure enough, through the old glass door at the end of the corridor, you could just make out Jeongin’s shape inside the building, your bag hanging from one hand. He wasn’t trying to come out. Wasn’t peering around for you. Just standing there and waiting, giving you the choice.
Your fingers shook as you typed back.
You: You can bring it.
A few seconds later, the door opened, and Jeongin stepped into the courtyard with your bag slung over one shoulder and a cup of something steaming in his free hand. He stopped the second he saw your face properly. You weren’t quite crying, but you were close enough for his whole expression to change. He didn’t come any closer than a few feet.
“Hey,” he said softly.
You hated how much gentleness there was in that one word.
He held out your bag first, then, after a tiny hesitation, the paper cup.
“Tea,” he said. “Chamomile. I know it’s not magic, but…”
Your throat tightened, and you took both from him with trembling hands. “Thanks.”
Jeongin’s eyes flicked to your face, to the way you were trying too hard to keep your breathing even, then back to the ground.
“Do you want me to stay,” he asked quietly, “or go?”
The question cracked something open in your chest, because he was asking instead of deciding for you. He wasn’t assuming or hovering because he thought he knew better than you what you needed.
You stared at the steam curling from the lid of the cup as you thought about it.
“I don’t know.”
Jeongin nodded as if that were a perfectly reasonable answer.
“Okay.” He glanced at the wall beside you. “Can I sit there? Not close.”
You swallowed and nodded, and he moved to sit at the opposite end of the stone wall, leaving enough space between you for two more people. Then he just… stayed there. Quiet. There were no questions, no pressure. No what’s wrong? or talk to me or you’re scaring me. Just his presence beside you while you tried to drag your breathing back into something manageable.
You tried to focus on the tea warming your hands through the cup, and on the air, damp and cold, like rain-soaked brick and wet leaves. Somewhere in the distance, you could hear the muffled thud of a basketball in the sports hall and the faint chatter of students heading back to class.
Still, Jeongin said nothing, and after a while, that silence stopped feeling heavy. It just felt… safe.
Your breathing slowed first, then your shoulders started to unhunch from around your ears. The awful, buzzing pressure under your skin eased enough that you could unclench your jaw without realising you’d been grinding your teeth. You took a shaky sip of tea as you weighed up what to say.
“It was a nightmare,” you said eventually.
Jeongin went very still. “About Friday?”
You nodded, and for a second, he looked like he might apologise again, but whatever he saw on your face made him stop himself. Instead, he just said, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
You glanced at him, but there was no disappointment or hurt. Just acceptance. He was looking straight ahead, elbows on his knees, fingers loosely laced together between them. From here, with the winter light catching the side of his face, he looked tired enough to drop.
“You can sleep, you know,” you muttered before you could stop yourself.
Jeongin blinked and turned to you. “What?”
“You look awful.”
For one terrifying second, you thought you’d crossed some line - that the words had come out too intimate, too much like the old you, the girlfriend who noticed when he was tired and nagged him into bed before midnight. Then Jeongin huffed a tiny laugh.
“So do you.”
You stared at him, and his mouth twitched, just slightly. “Sorry. That was probably not the right response.”
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it. It was soft and breathless, barely there. But enough.
Jeongin’s face changed all over again. There wasn’t that open, aching relief from before, but something quieter this time. More fragile. Like he’d stumbled across a wild animal in the woods and knew better than to move too quickly in case it bolted.
“Sorry,” you muttered, looking away.
“For what?”
“For being a mess.”
The words slipped out before you could catch them, ugly and automatic and familiar in the worst way. Jeongin’s expression sharpened instantly.
“No.”
You blinked, and he shook his head once, eyes fixed on you now with a kind of quiet intensity that made your pulse trip.
“No more saying that about yourself.”
You felt the lump in your throat at the passion in his voice.
“I mean it,” he said, voice softening but no less firm. “You’re having a shit day. That’s not the same thing.”
You looked down at the tea in your hands. It was so Jeongin of him. Such a painfully familiar thing - drawing a line between you and whatever your brain was doing to you, refusing to let you blur them together. This was the same boy who’d sat on his bedroom floor with you months ago and told you your panic didn’t make you weak. The same boy who’d stroked your hair back from your face and called you strong when you’d felt anything but.
Your eyes burned, and you swallowed hard and changed the subject before you could embarrass yourself.
“Why were you outside the art block?”
He hesitated, then, with the tiniest hint of sheepishness, “I know Fridays are usually bad.”
Your chest ached. Of course, he knew that. Of course, he’d noticed the pattern somewhere along the line - the way the end of the week always left you more wrung out, more brittle, less able to pretend you were fine. He’d probably been watching for signs all day.
You looked at him then, really looked at him, and something in your expression must’ve given too much away because Jeongin’s shoulders tensed.
“I wasn’t spying,” he said quickly. “I just—when you left chemistry without your bag, I figured you were overwhelmed, and I thought if you wanted to go straight home after school, you’d need it, so—”
“I know.”
He stopped, and the silence stretched, but apparently, your self-preservation instincts had given up for the day, so you asked the question that had been sitting in your chest since Monday.
“Does it hurt?”
Jeongin frowned slightly. “Does what hurt?”
“Not touching me.”
The words were so quiet you almost hoped he hadn’t heard them, but he had. You saw it in the way his whole body went still. For a second, he just looked at you, before he laughed once under his breath - not because it was funny, but because the truth of it had apparently caught him off guard.
“Yeah,” he said softly.
Your heart stumbled at his words.
“Yeah,” he repeated, gaze dropping to the tea in your hands. “It does.”
You didn’t know why you’d asked. Maybe because you’d noticed every aborted movement this week - every time his hand twitched toward your back in a crowded corridor, every time he caught himself reaching for your wrist or your bag or the strand of hair blowing into your face. Maybe because some selfish, wounded part of you needed to know that this distance hurt him too.
Jeongin rubbed his thumb over the seam of his blazer sleeve as he chose his next words carefully.
“But I’d rather it hurt than make you feel trapped,” he said.
The simplicity of it knocked the breath out of you, and he glanced at you then, hesitant.
“I miss you,” he admitted, so quietly it was almost lost to the wind. “Like… physically, I mean. Holding your hand. Tucking you into my side when you’re cold. All the tiny things I used to do without thinking.” His mouth twisted. “But if I don’t get to do any of that again, I’ll live.”
Your eyes stung. “Jeongin—”
“I mean it.” He looked at you properly now, all softness and exhaustion and terrible sincerity. “I’ll take whatever version of this you can give me. Even if it’s just sitting on opposite ends of a freezing wall while you drink tea and pretend not to like me very much.”
A watery laugh escaped you, and his expression softened instantly at the sound.
“You don’t make it easy to hate you,” you muttered.
Jeongin’s smile disappeared as quickly as it had come.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s sort of the problem.”
You stayed in the courtyard until the bell rang for the last period, not talking much. Just enough. A few questions, a few answers. The kind of soft, careful conversation that felt less like repairing a relationship and more like testing whether the floor beneath it might hold your weight again one day. When the bell went, you stood and slung your bag over your shoulder, and Jeongin rose too.
“Do you want me to walk you to class?”
You looked at him. At the careful distance he was still keeping. The way he hadn’t once tried to touch you, even when your hands were shaking so badly you nearly spilt the tea. At the quiet patience in his face.
And before you could overthink it, you said, “You can walk me home instead.”
Jeongin froze, and you immediately wanted to die. That had sounded too loaded, too hopeful. Too much like an invitation to something you hadn’t meant. But then you looked up and saw his face, and he was staring at you like he’d misheard.
“Home?” he repeated, very carefully.
You tucked your hands into your sleeves and looked away. “If you want.”
The relief that flooded his features was so naked it made your chest ache.
“Yeah,” he said, voice rough. “Yeah. I want to.”
So, he walked you home. And this time, halfway down the pavement, when a gust of cold wind made you shiver hard enough for your teeth to knock together, you stopped. Jeongin stopped too, and you looked at the ground.
Then, very quietly, you said, “You can hold my hand. If you still want to.”
The silence that followed was absolute, and you could feel him staring at you.
“You don’t have to if you don’t mean it,” he said, and his voice had gone almost frighteningly careful. “I’m serious. I don’t want you saying yes because you feel bad for me.”
You swallowed and forced yourself to look up. “I’m not.”
Jeongin’s face did something you never wanted to forget. It wasn’t outright joy on his face, but something softer than that. Smaller. Like hope trying not to scare itself away. He held his hand out slowly between you, palm up, giving you the final choice. Your chest hurt so badly it was ridiculous, but you slipped your fingers into his anyway. Jeongin inhaled sharply at the contact, but his hand closed around yours like it was something precious, something he was terrified of crushing. He didn’t squeeze too hard. Didn’t tug you closer or act like the tiny permission meant more than it did. He just held your hand, and it was warm and familiar, but careful.
By the time you reached your building, your fingers were curled around his so tightly you weren’t entirely sure who was holding on to whom.
The following Monday should’ve felt easier, but it didn’t. If anything, the weekend had made everything worse. You couldn’t explain it exactly. It wasn’t in a bad way, exactly. Not in the catastrophic, world-ending way it had all felt after the party. But in the quieter, more insidious sense that now there was hope where there hadn’t been before, and hope was dangerous.
Hope meant overthinking every little thing.
It meant replaying the feeling of Jeongin’s hand around yours all through Sunday night until you could still feel the warmth of his palm when you woke up on Monday morning. It meant catching yourself checking your phone before school, wondering if he’d texted, and then getting annoyed at yourself for wondering at all. It meant remembering the way he’d looked when you let him hold your hand - like he’d been handed something breakable and precious and had no idea what to do except protect it - and feeling your chest ache with something that was definitely not safe.
So, by the time you got to school, you were already on edge.
The sky was dull and grey, the kind of miserable winter morning that made the school grounds look washed out and tired. Students drifted through the gates in little clusters, coats pulled tight against the cold, breath misting in front of them as they talked too loudly for eight in the morning.
You spotted Jeongin almost immediately. He was leaning against the low brick wall near the main entrance, school bag slung over one shoulder, hands shoved into his coat pockets. He looked up the second you came through the gate, like he’d been waiting for the exact moment you’d appear, and something softened in his face when he saw you. It wasn’t enough to be obvious to anyone else; it was just enough that you felt it.
You walked over, trying not to think too hard about the fact that your pulse had kicked up at the sight of him.
“Morning,” he said softly.
“Morning.”
His eyes flicked over your face, checking, cataloguing, the same way they always did. Tired? Anxious? Hungover on panic and too little sleep? You could practically see him running through the list in his head. Then his gaze dropped briefly to your hands, like he was wondering whether he was allowed to reach for one of them this morning and already knew the answer was probably no, so he didn’t try.
“Did you sleep at all?” he asked.
You huffed a little laugh. “That obvious?”
“A bit.”
You rolled your eyes, but there wasn’t much heat in it. “Rude.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. It was small, barely there, but it was enough to settle something fluttery and uncomfortable low in your stomach.
You fell into step beside him toward the building, not touching, but close enough that your shoulders nearly brushed when someone cut between you on the path. For a few minutes, it was… nice. Dangerously nice. Jeongin told you he’d failed a practice question in maths so badly over the weekend that his dad had stared at him for a full minute and then asked if he’d hit his head. You laughed, and he looked absurdly pleased with himself for getting the sound out of you before first period had even started.
Then you reached the corridor by the lockers, and the day went to hell.
Hyunwoo was there, and so was Minjae. Two other boys from Jeongin’s team were there, too -Sungho and Jaemin, both standing by the windows with coffees from the canteen, halfway through a conversation that cut off the second they saw you.
The silence hit first, that horrible, instant silence. The guilt came after. You saw it flash across Minjae’s face. Saw Sungho look away too quickly. Even Jaemin, who had always been loud and obnoxious and generally allergic to shame, suddenly looked very interested in the floor tiles. Hyunwoo, at least, had the decency to look uncomfortable.
Your stomach dropped anyway, and you slowed without meaning to. Jeongin felt it instantly, and he looked at you, then at them, and the softness vanished from his face so quickly it was like a door slamming shut.
“Morning,” Minjae said, voice too careful, too measured. Like he was approaching a skittish animal.
You didn’t answer. You couldn’t. Your throat had closed up.
The corridor felt too narrow all of a sudden, the air too thin. You were aware of every pair of eyes on you, every shift of movement, every memory trying to claw its way back to the surface - the kitchen, the laughter, the words shy girl curling around your spine like something rotten.
Jeongin took half a step in front of you before you’d even realised you’d gone still. It wasn’t enough to block you in, but it was enough to block them out.
“What do you want?” he asked flatly.
Minjae swallowed. “Nothing. We were just saying hi.”
“You’ve got no reason to say hi to her.”
“Jeongin—”
“No.”
The word cracked through the corridor hard enough that a couple of students at the far end glanced over. Minjae’s mouth shut, and Jeongin didn’t raise his voice again, but somehow that made it worse. The anger in him had gone cold, compacted down into something much sharper than shouting.
“You don’t get to act normal,” he said. “Not with her.”
Hyunwoo shifted uncomfortably against the lockers. “Mate, we’re not trying to start anything.”
“You already did that,” Jeongin snapped.
Your fingers tightened around the strap of your bag. The corridor was too full. It felt too bright, both too loud and too quiet all at once. You wanted to leave. You should’ve left. But something rooted you to the spot, some horrible combination of dread and morbid curiosity and the sick need to know whether Jeongin really meant what he’d been saying for the last week. Whether he’d still mean it when it was inconvenient, or when it was his friends, or in public.
Minjae scrubbed a hand over his face. “Can we not do this here?”
Jeongin laughed once, sharp and humourless.
“Where would you prefer?” he asked. “Somewhere private, like a kitchen at a party?”
The words sliced clean through the air, and Minjae flinched like he’d been slapped.
Hyunwoo swore under his breath. “Jesus, Jeongin.”
“No, go on,” Jeongin said, eyes fixed on Minjae now with a kind of terrifying calm. “Tell me where you’d be more comfortable discussing the fact that you all thought it was funny to make her the punchline of some pathetic little game.”
“Stop acting like we forced you into it,” Jaemin muttered.
The second the words left his mouth, the whole corridor seemed to still. Jeongin turned to look at him slowly. You had never seen his face look like that before. It was anger in the explosive sense, not the kind of anger that brought shouting or wild, out-of-control actions. It was worse.
It was a quiet anger. White-hot. The kind of fury that had gone so still it felt dangerous.
“You really want to say that in front of me?” he asked.
Jaemin lifted his chin, clearly trying to act braver than he felt. “I’m just saying, you were part of it too.”
“I know I was.” Jeongin’s voice was frighteningly even when he spoke again. “That’s why I’m not speaking to myself right now, isn’t it?”
Jaemin blinked, unsure of what to say, and Minjae muttered, “For fuck’s sake,” under his breath, but Jeongin was already stepping forward. Again, not aggressive, not enough for anyone to call it threatening, but just enough that Jaemin straightened instinctively.
“I know exactly what I did,” Jeongin said. “I know what I’m guilty of. I’m the one who has to live with the fact that I hurt her. But don’t stand there and use my guilt to excuse your own.”
Jaemin opened his mouth, but Jeongin cut him off before he could speak.
“You stood there and laughed about her like she wasn’t a person. Like she was something to win. And then when it got serious—when you knew I actually cared about her—you kept going because it was funny to you.”
Jaemin’s jaw clenched, and he stared at the floor at his feet, avoiding eye contact with the furious man in his face.
“You knew I loved her, and you still talked about her like that.”
The words hit the corridor like a dropped glass. For a second, nobody moved. You felt your breath catch at the fact he’d said it out loud. In public. In front of them. No hesitation, no embarrassment, no attempt to soften it or hide it or protect himself from what it might cost him.
Hyunwoo looked away first, and Minjae’s face had gone pale, but Jaemin gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You’re seriously trying to make us the villains here?”
Jeongin’s expression didn’t change, though.
“No,” he said. “I’m saying you’re not my friends.”
There was silence as the words hung there, ugly and final.
Sungho looked up sharply. “Come on, man—”
“No.” Jeongin didn’t even look at him. “I’m done.”
Minjae stared. “Done with what?”
“With all of you.”
Your heart kicked hard against your ribs at the finality in his voice, but Jeongin just stood there in the middle of the corridor, school bag hanging off one shoulder, one hand curled so tightly at his side you could see the knuckles whitening, and looked at the boys he’d spent years with like he didn’t recognise them anymore.
“Do not talk to me,” he said. “Don’t text me, don’t wait for me after practice, don’t ask me to cover for you with teachers, don’t come to my house, and for the love of God don’t come near her unless she decides she wants to hear from you.”
“Jeongin,” Hyunwoo said, finally sounding genuinely rattled, “don’t be stupid.”
Something in Jeongin snapped, and every word after came edged in something raw.
“Don’t call me stupid when you’re the one who stood in that kitchen and let her hear you talk about her like she was some fucking joke.”
The corridor had gone completely silent now. Students were staring openly, and a couple of people had stopped by the stairwell to watch. Somewhere behind you, a classroom door opened and shut, but no one in this stretch of hallway seemed to breathe.
Hyunwoo ran a hand through his hair, looking increasingly panicked. “We were drunk—”
“And?”
“That’s not an excuse,” Minjae muttered, glaring at Hyunwoo.
“No, it’s not,” Jeongin said. “Because you’ve all had a week to apologise properly and somehow you’re still making this about how uncomfortable you feel.”
Minjae flinched at that.
“Jeongin,” he said quietly, “I know I fucked up.”
Jeongin laughed again, but it sounded tired now. Hollow.
“You think?”
Minjae looked at you then, properly. It wasn’t like before, when he’d tried to catch you alone outside the library. Not guilty in that vague, self-pitying way people get when they know they’ve done something awful but haven’t quite let themselves feel the full weight of it. This was different.
He looked ashamed.
“I am sorry,” he said, voice low. “Not because Jeongin’s angry at me. Because I was cruel, and you didn’t deserve any of it.”
The corridor was so quiet you could hear the heating clicking in the walls. You stared at him, your pulse thudding unsteadily. It should’ve felt satisfying, but it didn’t. It just felt exhausting. Like every apology was another reminder that this had happened at all.
You swallowed and looked away, and Jeongin noticed instantly.
“That’s enough,” he said.
Minjae shut his mouth just as the bell rang. The sound tore through the corridor like a starting gun, jolting everyone back into motion. Students started moving again, muttering to each other, throwing curious looks over their shoulders as they headed to class. The spell broke all at once. You should’ve moved, too, but your legs still felt strangely unsteady.
Jeongin turned to you immediately, the fury dropping out of his face so fast it made your chest ache. He looked at you like he’d nearly forgotten you were there in the middle of all that anger and was only just now remembering that you were the one who had to stand through it.
“Hey,” he said softly.
The gentleness of it after everything else nearly undid you.
“You okay?”
You nodded automatically. It was a lie. A terrible one, judging by the way his eyes narrowed with worry. But before he could say anything else, Jaemin scoffed behind him.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered. “You’re throwing away your mates over a girl you’ve been dating for six months.”
Everything in the corridor seemed to stop again. Jeongin went still, and then he turned around. When he spoke, his voice was quiet enough that Jaemin actually had to lean in slightly to hear it.
“That ‘girl’,” Jeongin said, “is more important to me than every single one of you put together.”
The breath left your lungs. Jaemin’s face drained of colour. Jeongin stepped closer, deadly serious in a way that made the whole thing worse.
“So, if you ever talk about her like she’s disposable again,” he said, “I won’t stop at not being your friend.”
“Jeongin,” you said, alarmed despite yourself.
His head snapped toward you immediately, and the second he heard your voice, all that cold fury faltered. It was just a crack, but it was enough for you to see the boy underneath it again—the one who’d sat on a freezing wall with you on Friday and handed you tea like it was a peace offering, the one who’d held your hand like it was something sacred. You shook your head once. Not because Jaemin didn’t deserve it, but because you couldn’t handle any more. Jeongin understood instantly, and he stepped back, looking at you. Without sparing any of the others another glance, he picked up your bag where you’d nearly dropped it in the middle of all the chaos and held it out to you.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “We’ll be late.”
Your fingers brushed his as you took the bag. The contact lasted less than a second, but still, his eyes flicked to your face as if checking whether it had been too much. You nodded once, just to let him know you were okay with it, before you followed him down the corridor.
You could feel the eyes on your back the whole way, but you didn’t look behind you.
By lunch, everyone knew something had happened. They didn’t know the details, but they knew enough to know that Jeongin had blown up at his team in the hallway and walked out with you while Hyunwoo looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him.
You spent the whole morning in a daze. You weren’t panicking exactly, just… off-balance. Every time you closed your eyes, you saw Jeongin standing there in front of all of them, face hard with anger, saying You knew I loved her like it was the simplest fact in the world. Like there had never been any shame in it. Like loving you publicly wasn’t something he needed to hesitate over.
It shouldn’t have mattered, not after everything. But it did.
It mattered so much that it made your chest hurt.
By lunchtime, you couldn’t sit in the cafeteria. It was too loud, too full of people staring and whispering and pretending not to stare and whisper. You ended up on the back steps behind the science block with Chan, who had somehow appeared at school during his free afternoon and was now eating crisps beside you like he hadn’t just strolled onto campus for the sole purpose of checking whether you were okay.
“I’m telling you now,” he said, kicking his heel against the step below, “if this boy has started a public fight for your honour, I reserve the right to be smug about it.”
You shot him a flat look, but Chan just grinned. “That’s not a no.”
You leaned your head against the brick wall behind you and stared at the grey sky. “He cut them off.”
Chan’s expression shifted, the teasing dropping out of it immediately. “All of them?”
You nodded.
“Bloody hell.”
There was no triumph in his voice. Just surprise.
You picked at the sleeve of your jumper. “I didn’t think he’d actually do it.”
Chan was quiet for a second, considering his next words, before he asked the one question you didn’t know how to answer.
“Did you want him to?”
You opened your mouth, then promptly closed it again.
Part of you had wanted exactly that. Had wanted proof that Jeongin understood the scale of what had happened, that he knew he couldn’t keep people like that in his life and still ask you to believe he was sorry. But another part of you - the part that had spent the last six months watching him laugh with those boys in the corridor, the part that knew these were his oldest friends, the people he’d grown up with and played football with and spent half his life around - felt sick at the thought of being the reason all of that had just imploded.
Chan seemed to read enough of that on your face, because he sighed and nudged his shoulder lightly against yours.
“You’re not responsible for his choices.”
You swallowed hard, willing the tears that had gathered in your eyes away. “I know.”
“You sure?”
“No,” you admitted.
Chan hummed like he’d expected that answer. Then, because he was Chan and apparently incapable of leaving any emotional wound unattended, he asked, “How did he look?”
You frowned. “What?”
“When he did it.” Chan crunched another crisp thoughtfully. “Angry? Regretful? Like he was trying to impress you? What?”
You thought about it. About the set of Jeongin’s shoulders. The coldness in his voice. The way he hadn’t looked at you once while he was speaking to them, as if this wasn’t a performance and never had been, as if he was doing it because he genuinely couldn’t stomach being around them anymore.
“He looked…” You trailed off. “Done.”
Chan’s expression softened at that.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That sounds about right.”
You looked at him, but he just shrugged one shoulder. “I know boys like that. Not the exact situation, obviously, because thank God none of my mates have ever been that spectacularly awful. But the whole… realising the people you’ve been calling your friends are not actually people you want near someone you care about.” He paused. “That kind of clarity usually comes with a pretty ugly breaking point.”
You thought of Jeongin’s face in the corridor. The fury. The disgust. The finality of You’re not my friends. Your chest tightened in pain for him.
Chan crumpled up his empty crisp packet and stood, stretching his arms above his head. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“You’ve got ten minutes before afternoon registration, and you look like you’re halfway to a stress-induced coma. I’m getting you a hot chocolate.”
You snorted. “You can’t just wander into my school and bribe me with sugar.”
“Watch me.”
He held a hand out to haul you up, and you took it, rolling your eyes, and let him drag you toward the canteen.
You didn’t see Jeongin again until after school. He was waiting by the gates, hands shoved into his coat pockets, looking tired enough to drop. The second he saw you with Chan, some of the tension in his shoulders eased.
Chan, naturally, noticed and made it his mission to be insufferable.
“Look who it is,” he said under his breath as you approached. “Your emotionally compromised boyfriend.”
“He’s not—”
“Mm.”
“Chan.”
“Mm,” he repeated, entirely unrepentant.
Jeongin stopped in front of you, gaze flicking from your face to Chan and back again.
“Hi,” he said softly.
“Hi.”
He hesitated before asking, “Can I walk you home?”
Chan made a thoughtful sound, as if he were considering whether to sell tickets. You elbowed him in the ribs without taking your eyes off Jeongin.
“Yeah,” you said.
The relief in his face was small, but there.
Chan clapped his hands together. “Brilliant. I’m off before I have to witness any yearning.”
“Go away,” you muttered.
He winked at you, then pointed at Jeongin. “No making her cry.”
Jeongin, to his credit, only nodded solemnly. “That’s the plan.”
Chan gave him a long look, as if trying to decide whether he believed him, before he squeezed your shoulder once and headed off toward the station.
You and Jeongin started walking, and for a while, neither of you said anything. The street was busy with students and parents, with buses crawling past in the late-afternoon traffic. Your shoulder brushed Jeongin’s coat once when someone jostled past you on the pavement, and he shifted away immediately, giving you space without making a thing of it. Eventually, you broke the silence.
“You meant it.”
It wasn’t really a question, and Jeongin just looked at you. “About what?”
“Cutting them off.”
He was quiet for a moment before he nodded. You stared at the pavement when you asked your next question, unable to stop thinking about how close he was to his friends, but one in particular.
“Even Minjae?”
Jeongin exhaled slowly through his nose. “Minjae’s the only one I can even vaguely stand to look at right now, and that’s mostly because he at least seems to understand he was a dickhead.”
You huffed a laugh despite yourself, and Jeongin’s mouth twitched faintly.
“But yes,” he said. “Even Minjae.”
“Why?”
The question came out before you could stop it, and Jeongin glanced at you, clearly hearing the thing underneath it.
Why would you give up people you’ve known for years for me?
He looked ahead again as he answered.
“Because every time I looked at them after Friday,” he said quietly, “all I could think about was you hearing that.”
You winced slightly at the memory but didn’t interrupt.
“I kept replaying it,” he went on. “The idea of you standing there, listening to them talk about you like that while I wasn’t there to stop it.” His jaw clenched. “And then I’d see them in school acting like everything was normal, and it made me feel sick.”
The honesty of it made your chest ache.
“I know I’m the one who started all of this,” he said. “I know that. But I can’t ask you to trust me while I’m still laughing with people who helped turn you into a joke.”
You looked at him, but he still wasn’t looking at you, which somehow made it feel more true.
“I should’ve done it sooner,” he admitted. “Honestly, I should’ve done it months ago. The first time one of them made a comment about you that made me want to hit something.”
You blinked. “Months ago?”
Jeongin gave a humourless little huff. “Hyunwoo made some joke in October about me disappearing every Friday because I was ‘too busy babysitting my girlfriend’s panic attacks.’”
You stopped walking, and Jeongin stopped too, looking immediately alarmed.
“What?”
Your stomach twisted. “He said that?”
Jeongin’s face darkened. “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I told him to shut the fuck up and then I went home and held you for three hours while you cried over your biology coursework.” His expression tightened. “It didn’t even occur to me to tell you. I didn’t want you thinking about him.”
The image hit you all at once - October, your room, mascara on his hoodie because you’d had a complete meltdown over a test score and your own stupid brain. Jeongin sitting cross-legged on your bed with you tucked into his chest, one hand rubbing slow circles between your shoulders while he told you that one bad mark wasn’t the end of the world.
And somewhere before or after that, Hyunwoo had made a joke about it.
Something cold and ugly moved through your chest, and Jeongin saw it happen and swore softly under his breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I shouldn’t have told you like that.”
“No.” Your voice came out strange, strangled almost. “No, I’m glad you did.”
He looked unconvinced, but you wrapped your arms around yourself against the words wind.
“Did they all know? About my panic attacks, I mean.”
Jeongin’s face changed. He didn’t look defensive, just… Ashamed.
“Not details,” he said quietly. “I never told them details. But they knew you struggled sometimes. Mostly because I’d leave things early if you texted me, or I’d skip parties to stay with you.” He swallowed. “And I didn’t shut down the jokes hard enough.”
The honesty of it stung, but not as much as it should have. Maybe because you already knew. Maybe because at least now he wasn’t trying to soften anything for his own sake.
You nodded slowly and started walking again, the rest of the journey passing in silence. It wasn’t a bad silence – it wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable – but it was full. Full of thoughts and new worries left unsaid.
By the time you reached your house, the sun had started to set, turning the windows orange at the edges. Chan was nowhere in sight for once, which felt suspicious in itself. You stopped at the bottom of the steps and turned to Jeongin, who looked exhausted. More than exhausted, actually. Drained in that deep, emotional way that made him seem slightly too still, like if he moved too quickly, everything he’d been holding together all day might finally come apart.
“You didn’t have to do it for me,” you said quietly.
Jeongin frowned, and you clarified. “The friends thing.”
Understanding flickered across his face before he shook his head. “I didn’t do it for you.”
You frowned in doubt.
“I did it because of you,” he corrected softly. “There’s a difference.”
You looked at him, not sure what to say. Jeongin shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets, suddenly looking awkward in a way that felt wildly at odds with the boy who’d nearly torn strips off four football players in the corridor that morning.
“You made me realise I was surrounded by people I don’t actually like very much,” he admitted. “That’s not your fault. It’s just… true.”
The corner of your mouth twitched, and some of the heaviness in his face eased.
“Also,” he added, “Jaemin’s been irritating me for years. This was honestly just efficient.”
A laugh slipped out of you, startled and impossible to stop, but Jeongin stared at you like he’d just been punched in the chest, his whole face softening. And because apparently the universe had decided you weren’t allowed one single uncomplicated emotion anymore, the sight of it made your eyes sting.
You looked away quickly, murmuring a quick, “I should go in.”
“Yeah.” His voice gentled immediately. “Okay.”
Neither of you moved. The evening air pressed cold against your cheeks. A car passed at the end of the road, tyres hissing over damp pavement. Somewhere upstairs, someone was playing music too loudly through open windows. Jeongin glanced at your hands, then back up at your face.
“I’m not asking for anything,” he said quietly. “Just so you know.”
You blinked. “What?”
“Today.” He gave a tiny shrug. “I’m not expecting it to… earn me anything.”
The ache in your chest sharpened. “I know.”
He nodded before he added after a pause, “I’d still do it again.”
He definitely wasn’t helping the stinging in your eyes. You stood there for another second, caught between too many feelings and not enough language for any of them. Then, before you could think better of it, you stepped forward. Jeongin went very still, waiting to see what you’d do. You only meant to do something small – a thank you, a peace offering. Something that wasn’t forgiveness but wasn’t nothing either.
Your fingers caught lightly on the sleeve of his coat near his wrist. It wasn’t quite his hand, but it was just enough to stop him from pulling away too quickly.
His breath caught on a breathless, “Y/N?”
You looked at the fabric between your fingers instead of at him.
“Just for a second,” you muttered, suddenly mortified, but Jeongin didn’t move. Didn’t breathe, from the sound of it. Then, very slowly, like he was handling something fragile, he turned his hand beneath your grip until his fingers brushed the inside of your wrist. It was a question, not a demand. You swallowed and let your hand slide down into his.
Jeongin made the smallest, shakiest sound in the back of his throat. His fingers closed around yours carefully, reverently, like he still couldn’t quite believe he was allowed. And there, on the front steps of your house with the sky fading dark around you and the wreckage of the morning still sitting heavy in both your chests, you stood holding his hand in silence.
You didn’t kiss, didn’t make any grand declarations. You just shared your warmth - an apology and trust and grief and love all tangled together in the quiet pressure of his palm against yours.
Jeongin looked at your joined hands for a long moment before lifting his eyes to your face.
“Thank you,” he said, voice so soft it barely reached you.
You didn’t answer, but you didn’t need to. This wasn’t forgiveness, at least not yet, but it was the first time since the party that it felt possible.
Your worst panic attack to date hit three days later.
It wasn’t immediate. You think that that would’ve been easier, almost - something sudden and sharp that you could point to and say there, that’s the reason, that’s what did it. But this one built slowly, quietly, until by the time you realised what was happening, it already had its hands around your throat.
It started in history, the trigger a stupid group presentation. It was nothing cataclysmic, just you standing at the front of the classroom with cue cards trembling in your hands while thirty pairs of eyes stared back at you, and your teacher smiled encouragingly from the corner like that was somehow supposed to help. You’d done presentations before. You hated them, but you’d survived them. Usually, by speaking too fast, sitting down, shaking, and then spending the rest of the lesson wanting to crawl out of your own skin.
Today should’ve been the same.
Except halfway through talking about the economic impact of post-war rationing, one of the boys at the back whispered something to his friend, and both of them laughed. You knew that it probably wasn’t about you, and it probably wasn’t even about your presentation.
But your body didn’t care about logic.
Because suddenly you were back in that corridor, hearing Jaemin’s voice - You’re throwing away your mates over a girl you’ve been dating six months - and all at once the shame came roaring back, hot and humiliating and impossible to outrun.
Over a girl.
Like you were some temporary thing. Some mistake. Some pathetic little detour in Jeongin’s life before he came to his senses and went back to people who didn’t make everything difficult.
Your mouth dried up, the words on your cue card blurring. You forced yourself to keep talking anyway, pulse thudding too hard in your ears. You got through the rest of the presentation on autopilot, barely hearing your own voice, then sat down so quickly you nearly missed the chair. Mia shot you a concerned look from beside you.
“You okay?”
You nodded, but it was another terrible lie, because by the time the bell rang, your skin felt too tight and your heartbeat was somewhere up in your throat. You packed your bag with clumsy hands, every laugh in the classroom sounding too loud, too sharp, too much like it might be about you.
You needed air.
You needed somewhere quiet.
You needed—
“Y/N?”
You flinched so hard you nearly dropped your phone.
Jeongin was waiting outside your classroom like always. You’d mentioned, offhand, that you had a presentation in history today. He must’ve remembered. He must’ve come to check how it went.
The sight of him should’ve helped, but instead, something in your chest tightened even harder. Because all you could hear was Jaemin’s voice.
Over a girl.
Jeongin’s expression changed immediately.
“Hey,” he said softly, taking one look at your face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
The answer came too fast, too thin, but Jeongin didn’t call you on it. He just stepped out of the flow of students pouring into the corridor and tilted his head toward the quieter side hall near the music rooms.
“Come here a sec?”
You should’ve said no. Should’ve gone to the toilets and locked yourself in a cubicle until the worst of it passed, or texted Chan, or done literally anything other than follow the boy who had become both your safest place and the source of half your confusion. But your feet moved anyway.
The side corridor was mostly empty, the sounds of the school muffled by thick walls and closed classroom doors. Jeongin stopped near the window at the far end and turned to face you fully.
“What happened?”
You hugged your arms around yourself. “Nothing happened.”
“Y/N.”
The way he said your name - quiet, careful, full of concern that he wasn’t even trying to hide - made your eyes sting immediately. You looked away, and Jeongin took half a step closer before he stopped himself.
“Was it the presentation?”
You nodded once.
“Did something go wrong?”
“No.”
“Did someone say something?”
“No.”
His brow furrowed in confusion, asking, “Then what is it?”
You pressed your lips together. How were you supposed to explain something this stupid? This ugly? That one offhand comment from Jaemin had lodged itself in your ribs and now every act of kindness from Jeongin felt tangled up in guilt, like each soft look and patient touch was another thing he’d eventually regret giving you.
Jeongin waited, and when it became obvious you weren’t going to answer, he lowered his voice even further. “Are you panicking?”
That was all it took for your breath to catch sharply in your throat. Jeongin’s whole face softened with alarm.
“Okay,” he said immediately, holding both hands up a little like he was trying not to startle you. “Okay. That’s fine. We’re fine.”
You hated how your eyes burned at that. We’re fine. Like this was a shared problem. Like he was already standing beside you in it.
“I’m not panicking,” you lied, even as your fingers started to shake.
Jeongin glanced down at them, then back up at your face.
“Right,” he said gently. “And I’m the Queen.”
A watery, offended laugh nearly escaped you, but it got swallowed by the tightness in your chest before it could become anything real. Jeongin seemed to take that as a win anyway.
“Come sit down with me?” he asked, nodding toward the little alcove by the music practice rooms—an old bench tucked beneath the trophy case, half-hidden from the main corridor.
You stared at it, then at him. And suddenly the thought of being alone with him in a quiet corner while your chest caved in felt unbearable.
Because what if he touched you?
What if you let him?
What if Jaemin was right and this—this constant orbit of your panic and your needs and your mess—was exactly what was ruining his life?
You took a step back, and Jeongin stilled.
“I can’t,” you whispered.
His face tightened. “Can’t sit down?”
“I can’t - I can’t do this with you right now.”
The words were barely out before you wished you could take them back when you saw something quieter than hurt flicker across Jeongin’s face.
“Okay,” he said at once. “That’s okay.”
But he didn’t leave. He stayed right where he was, close enough that you could see the worry gathering in his eyes, far enough that you couldn’t accuse him of crowding you.
“Do you want me to get Chan?”
The fact that he offered nearly broke you, and you shook your head too hard. “No.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t-” Your breath hitched. “Don’t call anyone.”
“I won’t,” he soothed.
Your pulse was everywhere now. In your wrists, your throat, behind your eyes. The corridor suddenly felt too bright, the fluorescent lights too sharp against the polished floor. You dragged in a breath, and it didn’t go deep enough.
Jeongin noticed instantly.
“Look at me.”
You shook your head.
“Y/N.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” His voice stayed soft, but there was a steadiness to it now, something firm enough to cut through the static. “Just for one second. Look at me.”
You forced your eyes up. Jeongin was watching you with that same infuriating, unwavering focus he always had when you were falling apart. Like nothing else in the world existed but getting you through the next thirty seconds.
“Good,” he said quietly. “Can you tell me five things you can see?”
You almost laughed at him. Almost cried. Maybe both.
“Jeongin—”
“Five things.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
He took a tiny breath, like he was fighting his own panic down with his teeth. “But I need you to do it anyway.”
Your chest clenched.
Need.
Not because he was making this about him. Not because he was asking you to perform wellness for his comfort. Because he was scared. You could hear it under the calm, and you looked away from him, scanning the corridor with blurred eyes.
“The… trophy case.”
“Good.”
“The piano room sign.”
“Good.”
“The window.”
“Mmhm.”
You swallowed hard. “Your stupid shoes.”
To your horror, Jeongin snorted. “Bit harsh, but I’ll allow it. One more.”
Your lips trembled around something that wasn’t quite a smile. “The fire extinguisher.”
“Perfect.”
He nodded once, like you’d just solved something much more difficult than basic grounding.
“Now, four things you can feel.”
You stared at him. “Jeongin.”
“Please.”
The word gutted you. He sounded so tired and worried and earnest that your stupid heart lurched anyway. You squeezed your eyes shut for a second.
“The floor under my shoes.”
“Good.”
“My sleeves.”
“Good.”
“The strap of my bag.”
“Yeah.”
You hesitated, but Jeongin waited patiently.
“The air,” you whispered. “It’s cold.”
“Good girl,” he murmured automatically.
Your breath caught, and Jeongin froze wide-eyed like he’d only just heard himself. For one awful second, you both just stared at each other, before you saw the colour climb up his neck.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, horrified. “Sorry. That just came out.”
Under any other circumstances, you might’ve laughed. As it was, the sudden rush of warmth in your face only made everything feel more unsteady. You looked away first; your heart was pounding too hard now for reasons that had nothing to do with the presentation. Jeongin dragged a hand through his hair, clearly trying to recover.
“Three things you can hear,” he said, a little too fast.
You answered because it was easier than thinking: the hum of the lights. Voices in the corridor outside. Jeongin breathing.
The last one slipped out before you could stop it, and silence followed. Your stomach dropped as Jeongin went so still it was almost comical. You wanted the floor to open up and eat you. Instead, your chest tightened again, harder this time, because now embarrassment was piling on top of panic and guilt and all the other things already clawing at your ribs.
You pressed the heel of your hand to your sternum.
“I can’t do this,” you said, and your voice cracked on the last word. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”
“Hey.”
Jeongin’s voice sharpened - not harsh, but immediate – and your gaze snapped to his. He was closer – not by much, still giving you the choice to back away.
“Breathe with me.”
You shook your head frantically. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t, Jeongin, I can’t—”
“You can.” He swallowed hard, and for the first time, you heard the strain under his calm. “You’ve done this before. You know how. In through your nose, baby, come on.”
Baby.
The pet name hit somewhere deep and vulnerable and far too raw, and your eyes flooded. And then, because apparently your brain had decided to save the worst of it for now, Jaemin’s voice came back all over again.
You’re throwing away your mates over a girl you’ve been dating for six months.
The words tangled with baby and good girl and Jeongin’s worried face and the memory of his hand in yours outside your house, and suddenly, all you could think was that maybe Jaemin was right. Maybe this was pathetic. Maybe Jeongin was standing here talking his girlfriend through another panic attack in a school corridor while his whole life burned around him, and one day he’d wake up and realise you were never worth the cost.
The thought hit so hard you physically recoiled, and Jeongin’s expression changed instantly.
“What?” he asked, eyes frantically scanning you.
You shook your head, backing up another step. “No.”
“Y/N—”
“No, don’t.” Your voice came out high and thin and wrong. “Don’t be nice to me right now.”
Jeongin blinked, stunned, before he frowned, confusion cutting through the worry. “What?”
“I can’t—” You sucked in a breath that scraped on the way down. “I can’t tell if you actually want to be here or if you just feel bad, and I can’t—I can’t be the reason you lose everything and then just—just let you—”
The rest dissolved into a horrible, breathless sound, but he didn’t need to hear the rest. Understanding hit his face all at once.
“Jaemin,” he said flatly.
You covered your face with both hands, pacing now on wobbly legs. “Forget I said anything.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.” This time, there was steel under it. Not anger at you- never that. Anger on your behalf. “Look at me.”
You shook your head harder, and there was a beat of silence before Jeongin said, very carefully, “I’m going to come a little closer, okay?”
You froze in your pacing. You should’ve told him no, but you were already losing the fight with your own lungs, already shaking so badly your knees felt wrong, and some weak, traitorous part of you wanted him close enough to prove this wasn’t pity.
So, you didn’t say anything, and Jeongin took another step before he stopped, close enough now that if you reached out, you could grab his blazer, but still not touching.
“Listen to me,” he said.
You kept your face hidden in your hands.
“Y/N.” His voice gentled, “I did not lose anything worth keeping.”
Your breath hitched, and he waited until your hands lowered just enough for you to look at him through your fingers.
“Those boys?” he said, jaw tight. “That wasn’t me losing my life. That was me finally realising who didn’t belong in it.”
Your eyes burned. “But—”
“No.” He shook his head, fierce in a way you didn’t think you’d ever seen directed at you before. “Do not stand there and tell me I gave up something valuable when the thing they were laughing about was you.”
The tears spilt over, and Jeongin’s face softened immediately, but he didn’t back down.
“I’m here because I want to be,” he said, quieter now. “I’m here because you’re shaking and you can’t breathe, and the thought of leaving you like this makes me feel physically sick. Not because I pity you. Not because I owe you. Because I love you.”
The words cracked something open in your chest, and you saw his throat bob as he swallowed hard around the next words.
“And if you decide you don’t want me near you, I’ll go. I mean that.” His voice roughened. “But don’t rewrite this into me being trapped. I am choosing you. I have been choosing you.”
You made a broken sound that might have been a sob, and Jeongin’s hands twitched at his sides. He was so obviously fighting the urge to reach for you that it hurt to look at him.
“Can I touch you?” he asked, the words low and careful and so unlike the chaos in your own head that you almost cried harder. “Just your hands. Nothing else. Can I help you breathe?”
You stared at him. Every instinct in your body screamed yes, whilst every insecurity screamed no.
What if you let him and regretted it?
What if you let him, and he regretted it?
What if the second his arms were around you, all you could hear was Jaemin’s voice sneering over a girl like you were some burden Jeongin would eventually put down?
Jeongin must’ve seen the war on your face, because he took one slow breath as he held his hand out between you, palm up. He wasn’t reaching for you, just offering you support on your own terms.
“You don’t have to let me hold you,” he said softly. “I know that’s a lot right now. But give me your hands, yeah? Just that. We’ll start there.”
Your vision blurred again. He was still giving you a way out, still making this easy for you, even when he was the one standing there looking half-sick with worry. Your fingers trembled where they hovered near your chest, and then, before you could think better of it, you reached out. Jeongin took your hands so gently that it made your throat ache. His palms were warm, grounding, solid around your freezing fingers. He didn’t squeeze hard. Didn’t tug you closer. He just held on and lifted your joined hands between you.
“Breathe with me,” he murmured.
You tried. Failed. Tried again. Jeongin counted under his breath, matching his inhales to yours, his thumbs moving in tiny circles over your knuckles every time you started to shake too hard.
“That’s it,” he said softly. “That’s it, baby, I’ve got you.”
The endearment should’ve made you flinch after everything in your head. Instead, it lodged somewhere warm and painful beneath your ribs. Your breathing stuttered again, and Jeongin’s brows drew together.
“Can I do one more thing?”
You blinked at him through tears. “What?”
“I think you need pressure.”
You stared, and his ears went slightly pink, which would’ve been funny if you weren’t actively dying.
“I mean—” He swallowed. “When it’s this bad, sometimes holding your hands isn’t enough. And I know that. So… if you want, I can hold you. Just until you come back down.”
Your whole body went still.
There it was.
The thing you’d both been circling around for days without touching. The thing you’d been missing so badly it felt like a physical wound, and fearing so badly you’d barely let yourself think about it. Jeongin didn’t move, didn’t push for it. He just stood there with your hands in his and let you have every second you needed to decide. And because your brain was cruel, Jaemin’s voice whispered one last time—
Over a girl.
You almost pulled away, almost said no. But then you looked at Jeongin. At the exhaustion in his face. At the fear. At the love he was trying so hard not to weaponise against you. At the fact that he was still asking, still waiting, still giving you room to refuse, even though you were clearly seconds from falling apart completely.
This wasn’t a performance, and it wasn’t guilt. This was Jeongin, standing in the wreckage and loving you anyway.
Your lip trembled, and then in a voice so small you barely recognised it as your own, you whispered, “Please.”
Jeongin moved like the word had been ripped out of him. He moved decisively, like the second he knew he was allowed, every part of him locked onto the one job that mattered. He let go of one of your hands only long enough to step into your space properly, then wrapped both arms around you and pulled you against his chest. The sound that left you was humiliating. A full-body, broken sob that seemed to tear itself from somewhere deep in your lungs the second the pressure of him settled around you. Jeongin held you tighter instantly. One arm across your upper back, the other around your waist, pinning you to him with exactly the kind of firm, steady pressure your body had been craving. Not crushing. Not desperate. Just secure. Like he was building a wall around you with his own body and daring the panic to get through.
“I know,” he murmured into your hair, voice rough. “I know, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
Your hands fisted in the front of his blazer before you could stop them, and Jeongin made a tiny, wrecked sound and tucked you even closer. You think that it was somehow the worst part—that he reacted like this hurt him too, like getting to hold you again wasn’t a victory but a relief so sharp it bordered on pain.
“I’m sorry,” you gasped into his chest, the words dissolving into another sob. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“No.” His hand slid up the back of your neck, cradling you. “None of that. You have nothing to apologise for.”
“I do, I make everything—”
“You don’t.” The words came firm against your hair. “You do not get to take responsibility for my choices just because you’re panicking. I’m here because I want to be here. I cut them off because I wanted them gone. None of that is on you.”
You shook your head helplessly against him. Jeongin adjusted his grip, one hand flattening between your shoulder blades, rubbing slow circles there the exact same way he used to. The familiarity of it nearly undid you all over again.
“Breathe for me,” he whispered. “Just breathe. You don’t have to talk.”
So, you did. Or tried to. You clung to his blazer with both hands and let him hold you upright while your body shook itself empty. Jeongin counted breaths under his breath, low and steady against your temple. Every time you started to spiral again, he tightened his arms just slightly and anchored you back down with touch and warmth and the quiet certainty of his voice.
Minutes passed, you didn’t know how many, but it was long enough for the worst of the panic to burn through your system and leave you wrung out and trembling in its wake. By the time your breathing finally stopped fighting you, your cheek was pressed against Jeongin’s chest, and his blazer was damp where you’d cried into it.
Mortification crept in slowly, and you stiffened against him. Jeongin felt it at once, his hand pausing at the back of your neck.
“Hey,” he murmured. “You with me?”
You made a miserable noise.
“Mm. That bad?”
You pulled back just enough to glare weakly at the front of his blazer. “I got snot on you.”
For one horrifying second, there was silence. Then Jeongin laughed - a soft, helpless one, like he was so obviously relieved to hear you say something that your eyes immediately burned again.
“Oh no,” he said gravely. “Tragic. I’ll never recover.”
You let out a wet, exhausted huff that might have been a laugh. His arms tightened once—small, careful, like he was checking whether he was still allowed to be holding you now that the worst had passed, but that’s when the doubt came back. Quieter now, meaner for it. Because with your head clearer, you could feel exactly what position you were in: wrapped around Jeongin in a hidden school corridor, fingers still tangled in his blazer, letting him hold you as if none of the last two weeks had happened.
Your stomach twisted. What did this mean? Had you just undone all your careful distance because you were panicking? Was this forgiveness? Weakness? Did you actually want this, or had your body simply reached for the nearest familiar comfort, and now you’d have to deal with the consequences?
Jeongin must’ve felt the shift in you, because he loosened his hold a fraction immediately. He wasn’t dropping you; he was making it clear you could leave if you wanted.
“Talk to me,” he said softly.
You swallowed. “I don’t know if I regret this.”
The words came out before you could soften them, and Jeongin went very still. Mortification slammed into you again a second later.
“Not—” You squeezed your eyes shut. “That came out wrong.”
But he was already pulling back properly now, just enough to see your face.
“No, it’s okay.” His voice was quiet, unreadable in a way that made your chest clench.
You looked at him, your heart breaking at the distance that was between you again. The way he’d reacted so quickly to your doubt, your regret. You could see the worry he was trying to hide. The way he’d gone so careful again, like one wrong move might send you running. At the softness still lingering around his eyes from holding you while you cried.
And suddenly the truth untangled itself enough to say.
“I don’t regret you,” you whispered. “I regret that I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Jeongin’s face changed. It was relief exactly, but something gentler, sadder even. He nodded once in understanding, still looking unsure.
“I mean…” You looked down at the space between you, at your fingers still curled weakly in his blazer. “Five minutes ago, I was convinced I was ruining your life, and now I’m standing here letting you hold me like I didn’t spend a week trying not to let that happen. I don’t know what that means.”
Jeongin was quiet for a long moment before he said, very softly, “It means you had a panic attack and you let someone you trust help you.”
Your eyes stung when he continued.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything else yet.”
The gentleness of his words nearly undid you more than the panic had, as well as the surprising wave of disappointment you felt at his words. In reality, he could have taken it as a sign. He could have treated it like progress, like proof that you were finding your way back to him. Instead, he was making room for your confusion, too.
You laughed shakily, wiping at your face with your sleeve. “You’re annoyingly good at this.”
Jeongin’s mouth twitched. “At panic attacks or saying the exact thing that makes you roll your eyes at me?”
“Both.”
“Excellent.”
Another tiny laugh escaped you, and Jeongin looked so absurdly relieved by it that you had to look away before your chest could do something embarrassing. His hand disappeared into the pocket of his blazer, and when it came back, he was holding out a crumpled packet of tissues. You stared blankly at it for a second.
“Are you eighty?” you asked, voice still rough from crying.
“I was dating you,” he said simply. “I adapted.”
A startled laugh burst out of you, and Jeongin smiled - small and tired and so fond it made your stomach flip. Apparently, your humiliation quota for the day wasn’t full yet, though, because he gently dabbed at a streak of mascara under your eye with his thumb before you could stop him. You froze, and he froze, too, his hand dropping instantly.
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s—” You swallowed. “It’s okay.”
Silence settled between you again, and you realised just how exhausted you were. Mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Jeongin shifted his weight, eyes flicking toward the corridor. “Do you want to skip the rest of the day?”
You blinked. “What?”
“You look like you’re about thirty seconds from needing a nap and a medically irresponsible amount of chocolate.” His expression softened. “I can walk you home. Or to Chan’s. Or literally anywhere that isn’t this building.”
You stared at him in awe. The offer was so immediate, so matter-of-fact, like there had never been any other option in his mind but getting you somewhere safe. And there it was again - that dangerous warmth in your chest. That terrible, aching certainty that whatever else had happened, whatever else might still be broken, this part had always been real.
You looked down at the tissues in your hand, then back at him.
“Will you stay until I fall asleep?” you asked before you could lose your nerve.
Jeongin went absolutely motionless, and the corridor seemed to hold its breath with him. Your own pulse stumbled the second the words were out, panic of a completely different kind prickling at the back of your neck.
“That was too much,” you said quickly. “Forget I said—”
“Yes.”
You stopped. Jeongin swallowed, eyes fixed on you with something so open and startled and soft it made your chest hurt.
“Yes,” he said again, quieter this time. “If that’s what you want.”
You stared at him, then nodded once, because your throat had stopped working. His expression gentled immediately when he realised.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Then let’s get you home.”
And this time, when you started walking, you were the one who reached for his sleeve first, just to make sure he stayed close. Jeongin looked down at your hand, where it had caught in the fabric of his blazer, and something in his expression softened so quickly it made your chest ache. He didn’t say anything about it. Didn’t smile in that smug way he sometimes did when you gave him something small and unguarded. He just shifted a little closer to your side as you walked. He was close enough that your shoulder brushed his arm every few steps, and that if your knees gave out again, he’d catch you.
a/n: okay I need to edit part 3 but I wanna post it ASAP so I can focus on my other pieces (can you believe this was only meant to be a filler and now it's turned into like 50k total?)
Their Child Asks Them If They Can Borrow One Of Their Physical Features
Hongjoong
Hongjoong was sitting at the dining table, sketching ideas into a notebook while his six-year-old son colored beside him.
"Dad?"
"Hm?"
"Can I borrow your ears?"
Hongjoong blinked. "My... ears?"
His son nodded seriously. "For school tomorrow."
Hongjoong slowly put down his pen. "I think I need more information before I agree to any kind of ear-related business transaction."
His son leaned closer and whispered, "I have a presentation. Mom said public speaking is scary. But your ears make you look cool when you're confident."
Hongjoong stared at him.
Then immediately melted.
"You think my ears are cool?"
"They're dad ears."
"That's the highest honor I've ever received."
The next morning, Hongjoong carefully tucked his son's hair back behind his ears.
"You don't actually need to borrow them," he said softly. "You already got the brave part."
"...From you?"
Hongjoong smiled.
"From watching you try things even when you're nervous."
His son's smile grew.
"Can I still have your earrings when I'm older?"
"...We'll discuss it with your mother."
Seonghwa
"Daddy?"
Seonghwa looked up from helping fold laundry.
His daughter climbed onto the couch beside him.
"Can I borrow your eyelashes?"
"...My eyelashes?"
She nodded, pouting dramatically.
"Mine aren't princess enough."
Seonghwa set the towel aside immediately.
"Sweetheart."
She looked up.
"Your eyelashes are beautiful."
"But yours are prettier."
Seonghwa sighed because, unfortunately, she had inherited his tendency toward overthinking.
"You know what?" he said.
He carried her to the bathroom mirror.
"Do you know what I see?"
She shook her head.
"My daughter's eyes."
She blinked.
"They look kind," he continued. "Curious. Strong. They look exactly like someone I love very much."
"...Me?"
He kissed her forehead.
"Exactly you."
She thought about it.
"Can I still borrow one eyelash?"
Seonghwa laughed.
"I think Mom would have questions if I came downstairs missing eyelashes."
Yunho
Yunho was halfway through building a blanket fort when his son suddenly asked,
"Dad, can I borrow your height?"
Yunho burst out laughing.
"My height?"
His son crossed his arms.
"I'm the shortest in my class."
"You are six."
"I know. It's tragic."
Yunho pulled him onto his lap.
"You know I wasn't always this tall, right?"
His son looked horrified.
"You were tiny?"
"I was very tiny."
"No way."
Yunho grinned.
"The important thing isn't how tall you are."
"What is it?"
"How big your heart is."
His son frowned thoughtfully.
"...Can I borrow your heart then?"
Yunho's expression softened immediately.
"You already have it."
"...Really?"
"Yep."
His son hugged him tightly.
"Can I still borrow your height later?"
Yunho laughed.
"Give it a few years."
Yeosang
"Dad?"
Yeosang looked up from watering the plants.
His little boy pointed near the corner of Yeosang's eye.
"Can I borrow your heart?"
Yeosang blinked.
"My heart?"
"The one on your face."
Realization dawned.
"Oh."
His son traced the air near his own eye.
"I want your birthmark."
Yeosang crouched down to his level.
"Why?"
His son shrugged.
"Because it's special."
Yeosang smiled softly.
"When I was younger, I didn't think much about it."
"You didn't?"
"No."
"But I think it's cool."
Yeosang reached over, brushing his son's cheek.
"Everyone has something special."
His son considered this.
"I know."
"What?"
"My special thing is that I'm your son."
Yeosang froze.
Then immediately picked him up.
"You can borrow the birthmark whenever you want."
His son giggled.
"With markers?"
"...Washable markers."
San
San was making breakfast when his daughter announced,
"Daddy, I need your dimples."
He nearly dropped the spatula.
"My dimples?"
"Please."
"Why?"
She sighed dramatically.
"When I smile in pictures, I don't look cute enough."
San immediately abandoned breakfast.
He knelt beside her chair.
"Hey."
She looked at him.
"Who told you that?"
"No one."
"Then why do you think that?"
She shrugged.
San gently squished her cheeks.
"You know what happens when you smile?"
"What?"
"The whole room gets brighter."
"Dad."
"I'm serious."
She giggled.
"There it is."
"What?"
"That's my favorite smile."
She leaned against him.
"But your dimples are nice."
San kissed the top of her head.
"You don't need my dimples."
"...Can I borrow them for one selfie?"
He grinned.
"Only if I get to be in it too."
Mingi
"Dad."
"Yeah?"
Mingi glanced away from the movie they were watching.
His daughter studied his face carefully.
"Can I borrow your nose mole?"
"...My what?"
"The little spot."
Mingi touched the beauty mark on his nose.
"Oh."
"It's cute."
Mingi looked completely caught off guard.
"You think so?"
"Yeah."
He smiled slowly.
"When I was your age, I never really thought about it."
"I like it."
His daughter leaned against him.
"I think things that make people different are pretty."
Mingi stared at her for a moment.
Then wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"You're smarter than me."
She gasped.
"I have evidence."
"You absolutely do not."
She grinned.
"So can I borrow it?"
Mingi laughed.
"I'll draw you one."
Wooyoung
"Daddy."
"Hm?"
Wooyoung looked up from braiding his daughter's doll's hair.
"I want your eyes."
He gasped dramatically.
"My beautiful eyes?"
She nodded.
"They look mischievous."
Wooyoung looked offended.
"Mischievous?"
"Mom said that's a nice way of saying troublemaker."
"...Your mother has betrayed me."
His daughter giggled.
"I want eyes like yours."
Wooyoung smiled softly.
"You know what I think?"
"What?"
"I think your eyes already look amazing."
"They do?"
"They sparkle when you're excited."
She blinked.
"They do?"
"Yep."
"...Do yours sparkle?"
"Obviously."
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"You really love yourself."
Wooyoung grinned.
"I learned from the best."
"Who?"
He booped her nose.
"You."
Jongho
Jongho was helping his son carry groceries when the boy suddenly asked,
summary: seungmin, fellow skz member and your secret boyfriend, finds out that stays are calling the two of you a rarepair. he decides he wants to change that, but stays don’t seem to get the hint.
word count: 5.6k
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a/n: the written fic for we’re a rarepair is finally here yippeee! you do not have to read the smau to understand the fic it’s just silly extra content :) thanks for reading!
i stayed up the past two nights watching the encore im going insane with fomo i wish i was there 😩 day one i watched a laggy tiktok live and for day two i said fuck it bought a beyond live ticket but it was sooo worth it omg i had so much fun watching the live even if it started at 2am and ended at 6am for me 😭😭 but omg another comeback soon my wallet is crying
You knew what you were getting into when you became a trainee at a young age. And you especially knew what you were signing up for when Bang Chan asked you to join the new group that he was in charge of forming. How could you say no when Chan himself said he believed in you and wanted you on his team? You were well aware that there would be people watching your every move, people who did not like that you were the only female member, and that hateful words would be thrown at you left and right. But how could you say no when your dream of finally debuting was right within your reach.
What you were not expecting was to fall in love, especially with a fellow member. He was a close friend during your trainee days and your relationship only grew stronger as the days went on. Falling for Seungmin was unexpected yet easy, it felt as natural as breathing. The two of you just clicked and the connection was obvious to everyone. So when Seungmin confessed to you late one night, years into your career, not one member was surprised when the two of you walked into practice the next day holding hands, shy smiles on both of your faces.
Shipping culture has always been a big part of any fandom, so you were well aware of the ships that fans had formed between your members. You thought it was fun to keep tabs on what ships were popular, laughing at how observant fans were to the little moments. Tweets and edits always going viral amongst them. Stays deemed you and Seungmin’s ship name as Seungy/n during predebut, loving the soft yet teasing relationship that the two of you had. Before his confession, the Seungy/n fans might have fueled your delusions. Maybe he did like you back you had thought as you scrolled through tweets, photos, and videos of the two of you. How they noticed every small look or smile he sent your way was beyond your comprehension because you had never seemed to notice them in the moment.
You knew shipping was mostly silly and for fun, it was something that every fandom had and couldn’t be avoided, but as the only girl there was always going to be a handful of people who took it too far. Dating rumors spread like wildfire, people believing you were only in the group because you were dating one of the boys. Or even the few rumors that said you were sleeping your way through the members and that's why they kept you around. So when you and Seungmin told the company about your new found relationship, they had suggested to tone down the interactions between the two of you. Not wanting anyone to find out that you were dating as it might add fuel to the fire of hate.
After a long discussion, you and Seungmin decided that management was right. You both agreed to tone down on the touches and teasing on camera and in public as subtly as you could without making Stays think you suddenly started hating each other. The silly relationship that you had shown to Stays had changed, most of them noticing a new found distance between the two of you.
Once a favorite ship amongst Stays, Seungy/n’s popularity had declined over the years as you and Seungmin did your best to keep your relationship a secret, other ships taking over the attention of the fans. And after a while it started to feel almost natural, the routine of keeping your relationship a secret as the two of you grew older and more mature. The both of you were fond of keeping things private and to yourselves. Of course you still had fun and interacted with each other for Stays, showing that you still cared for one another, but it was never to the extent of how it was years ago when you first debuted. And as the group grew in popularity, newer fans were unaware of the relationship you and Seungmin used to have, deeming the two of you a rarepair.
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It was finally one of your rare days off and you were going to spend it doing absolutely nothing. You were exhausted, you and the boys have been working hard for your upcoming comeback while being on a world tour, and this day off was definitely needed to recharge your energy.
One of your favorite things to do during your downtime was catching up with Stays on twitter through your secret account, always wanting to keep up with what was going on within the fandom. When you first made your account years ago, you found yourself following Seungy/n update accounts and fan pages just to see what they thought of you two. Nowadays you giggle to yourself when they freak out over the smallest crumb of a cute interaction between you and Seungmin, unaware of what was happening behind the scenes.
“Y/N and Seungmin holding hands during this choreo ugh my heart” “Don’t they always hold hands during that part?” “Yes but this time they smiled at each other *hearts eyes emoji*”
“Seungmin laughing his ass off at Y/N’s stupid joke in today’s SKZ code episode, Seungy/n stans we are so back”
“Seungy/n is my roman empire I miss them. To all the people who drew them apart, I hope both sides of your pillows are warm”
You were casually scrolling on your phone while eating breakfast when you stumbled across a few SKZ ship threads. Curious, you decided to click on a thread labeled SKZ rarepairs and were not surprised when the number one rarepair in the thread ended up being you and Seungmin. With your habit of always checking in on Stays on twitter, you were well aware that your ships with the other boys were slightly more popular and you also knew that there were very popular ships between the boys. It didn’t bother you that you and Seungmin were at the top of the rarepair ranking list. You just laughed to yourself as you looked through the replies and quote retweets of the thread.
“Predebut stays finding out newer stays are calling Seungy/n a rarepair *exploding cat gif*”
“We are losing the ancient texts because wdym Seungy/n is considered a rarepair now when they used to be THE #1 SKZ ship back in the days”
“SKZ rarepairs but it’s actually the biblically accurate SKZ ships”
“If you told debut stay me that Seungy/n was no longer going to be popular she’d laugh in your face because the chemistry they had back then was insane”
Going about the rest of your day, you didn’t think about the thread again until your boyfriend texted you, asking you what a rarepair was. You knew one of the boys had to have sent him the tweet, probably teasing him about it as well, because there was no way the Kim Seungmin stumbled across the word rarepair on his own.
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“So, what’s our plan to make our ship popular again?” was the first thing Seungmin said to you as he entered your dorm, a bag full of snacks in his hand.
“‘Hello my amazing talented wonderful beautiful girlfriend, how was your day today?’ Oh thank you for asking my handsome boyfriend, it was great! How was your day?” you teased, a grin on your face as you grabbed the snacks from him bringing it to your living room.
“Well my amazing talented wonderful beautiful girlfriend, my day was actually terrible because I found out our fans don’t even ship us anymore,” he pouted, following you into the living room and then leaning in to press a soft kiss to your lips.
“Minnie, most of them haven’t shipped us in years. Ever since we started going out and had to keep us a secret.”
“I think it's time we start giving them reasons to ship us again.”
“Are you saying this because you actually want us to go public or because you're jealous that Stays ship me more with the other boys?”
“I’m not jealous,” he scoffs, eyes glaring at you as he sits on your couch and opens a bag of chips. “I just think that we’re obviously the best ship and Stays need to be made aware.”
You sit down next to him, reaching into the bag of chips. “You know you're going to have to actually talk to me about this if you really want us to go public.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he chides, hand reaching forwards to brush the crumbs off the sides of your mouth. “And don’t eat so messily.”
“Okay now you’re just changing the subject,” you roll your eyes.
“I’ve just been thinking,” he sighs, grabbing one of your hands and intertwining his fingers with yours. “We’ve been together for years and I’m getting tired of having to hide everything, having to hide us. I love you but I hate having to pretend like we’re nothing in public because our relationship is a secret.”
“Going public is very serious, especially with the job that we have. We’re also going to have to talk to management about this if we actually want to go through with it. But I agree, I don’t want to pretend any longer. Let’s figure this out together.”
He smiles at you, pressing a quick kiss to the back of your hand before pulling you into a hug. A quiet thank you escaping his lips before he leans in to seal yours with his in a kiss.
“So will you admit that you're jealous now?”
“Never.”
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You had been together for years, you and the boys were at the height of your careers and with a comeback coming soon it would only keep going up from there. What was the company going to do, fire you both? So a meeting with management was planned. They had given you permission to go public if you wanted, letting the two of you decide how you wanted to tell the world about your relationship. The both of you came to the conclusion that you wanted a private relationship, not a secret one. There would be no big announcement, no hard launch. You didn’t want all the attention it would bring, but you decided that you were no longer going to hide how you felt for each other to the public.
The rest of the members were happy for you as well, glad that after all these years you both no longer had to hide the love you had for one another. The nine of you were hanging out after the meeting when you and Seungmin broke the news to them, teasing from all of them quickly ensued.
“Oh thank god! It feels like a weight that had been crushing me all these years has been lifted off my shoulder,” Han joked before he let out a scream, Seungmin getting up from his seat to start chasing him around the room.
“Noona, if you guys start being more lovey dovey in front of us I might just have to bleach my eyes,” Jeongin jokingly threatened, a cute yet mischievous smirk on his face.
You just roll your eyes at his words as you lean forward from your seat and gently push his shoulder. “Innie, nothing’s going to change about how we act towards each other. We’re just not going to hide behind closed doors anymore.”
Minho looks you dead in the eyes. “If he hurts you I will kill him,” he deadpans. You stare at him for a few seconds, processing his words, before you let out a loud laugh.
“Minho, we’ve been together for years and you want to threaten him now?” He just shrugs his shoulders with a grin, mumbling something about how Seungmin deserves it if he breaks your heart.
“So when's the wedding?” Hyunjin teases. “Can I be the flower girl?” Before you can even respond, a pillow from across the room heads in his direction, hitting him right in the chest. You look up and see Seungmin getting ready to launch another pillow at him, Hyunjin holding up his hands in defense.
“If Hyunjin can’t be the flower girl, I volunteer,” Changbin exclaims, raising his hand up like a little boy in a classroom. A pillow is launched in his direction as well.
“I object to the wedding,” Felix jokes. “No way a homewrecker is taking my husband away from me. Who is going to do the dishes in our dorm now?”
Chan pretends to sniffle and wipe away fake tears from his eyes. “I feel like I’m giving away my precious daughter to a disgusting man,” he says between fake sobs. You laugh at the offended look on Seungmin’s face as he shouts out a loud hey, holding up his fists and throwing fake punches towards Chan.
Despite all the jokes and teasing you knew they were excited for the two of you. They were your family and they just wanted the both of you to be happy no matter what.
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The change started out subtle, you didn't want to give Stays whiplash with a sudden 180 flip in your behaviors. It felt strange though, not having to hide anything until you were behind closed doors. When the cameras came out, you no longer had to move away from Seungmin, no longer having to worry about them catching a romantic moment between the two of you. It felt like a relief, not having to be wary of the cameras or prying eyes on you both.
It started with small moments between you and Seungmin caught in the background of videos. The moments weren’t easy to spot unless you were really looking but Stays were the most observant people in the world. Blurry zoomed in photos and clips were posted everywhere, everyone going crazy.
The first moment caught on camera was the two of you walking behind the other boys, side by side and holding hands. You were both far enough in the background where the camera couldn’t really tell you were holding hands but definitely close enough for fans to notice and speculate. Then came a clip of the two of you asleep on the green room couch of the concert venue before the start of a show. The two of you were not completely cuddling but it was the closest fans had seen you together in years. You were aimlessly scrolling on your phone next to Seungmin when you both accidentally fell asleep. Your head on Seungmin’s shoulder, his leaning on top of yours, his hands folded in his lap, and yours barely holding onto your phone.
And when the comeback came around and the new album dropped, interviews and promotional videos came out. The two of you often sitting next to each other, bickering and teasing like you had used to in front of Stays long ago. And when the fanmeets started, Stays quickly noticed how playful the two of you were together again. Every fanmeet someone had caught Seungmin smiling at you fondly while you did something cute for the audience, the video always going viral on twitter. You even posted a tiktok together, something that you hadn’t done together in years. Lets just say the two of you were slowly breaking the fandom with your interactions.
“Seungy/n found out we were calling them a rarepair and they said BET because the amount of content we’ve been getting from them recently has been actually insane??”
“We are so back omg everyone say thank you seungy/n”
“The world is healing my beloved seungy/n is back and better than ever i missed my bestie duo”
“We doubted ourselves but we got early skz seungy/n back never kill yourself”
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It was satisfying, finally having your relationship out there and no longer a secret, even if you hadn’t officially announced anything. Seungmin, though, was in disbelief after finding out that some Stays thought the two of you were just messing with them. Sure there had been the handful of Seungy/n stans who were happy to finally have content of the two of you again, but you came to realize that a lot of Stays thought the two of you were just being silly and joking around.
“Look at what this comment says, ‘lol they have to be kidding no way they’re actually being romantic on camera’. I’m literally looking at you in this video with heart eyes! How does that not scream ‘I'm in love’ to them,” Seungmin sighed. “I initiated a hug with you in this other clip and they think we’re joking around!”
“To be fair, if I were a Stay, I too would be happy but suspicious,” you laugh out as he looks at you with a disgusted expression.
“And you're taking their side! I can't believe this,” he pouts slightly as he continues scrolling on his phone.
“Hey, I'm not taking sides! All I'm saying is that if my favorite idols suddenly started acting normal and slightly romantic around each other again after years of nothing I would be skeptical too!”
“Just say you hate me.”
“You’re literally so dramatic, like a puppy who was tricked by their owner with the word treat but they don’t actually get one,” you tease, poking his cheek as he tries to swat your hand away.
“And you’re annoying,” he jokes back, grabbing your hand and entwining his fingers with yours. “This tweet says ‘they’re so bestie coded I don’t care if they're messing with us’ I’m being put in the friendzone by our own fans,” he groans.
“We are best friends though,” you point out with a laugh, trying to defend your fans from your irritated boyfriend.
“But we’re also in love!” He just sighs as he shows you another tweet on his phone. “‘I don’t know what overlord I have to thank for giving us best friend Y/N and Seungmin back but they deserve my first born child’. Look, another tweet in the friendzone.”
All you could do is sit there and laugh at him as he miserably scrolls on his phone, complaining about Stays calling the two of you best friends and thinking that the both of you were just messing around for the camera.
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So far you had found the reactions from Stays hilarious, even if they were not catching on to your relationship with Seungmin. So the both of you devised a new plan, posting photos on instagram and bubble that gave off soft launch vibes just to see if this would help them notice what was going on between the both of you. The first photo you posted was a selca in your dorm room that you had sent on bubble, one of Seungmin’s hoodies that he had worn the other day in a live slightly hidden away in the background. You knew Stays would instantly spot it and point it out.
“Is that Seungmin’s sweater in the background or am I going crazy?”
“Aww they have matching best friend sweaters I love them omg”
Then Seungmin posted some photos on instagram that you had taken of him during your secret day trip out of Seoul. One of the photos had a slightly reflective building in the background, if someone looked closely they would be able to see your silhouette. You had made sure to angle the camera in front of your face to block it from the reflection, making it hard to tell who the silhouette belonged to. But it was obvious that it was a woman’s.
A couple weeks after Seungmin’s post, you had posted your own photos from that same trip. You had made sure to add in a couple photos with the same background and in the same places that Seungmin posted, of course fans noticed.
“Anyone else notice the silhouette in photo 3 lowkey looks like Y/N?” “I was thinking the same thing but it might just be skijigi??”
“The background of some of these photos look similar. Wasn’t Seungmin also there a couple weeks ago?” “Maybe he recommended some places for her to visit?” “Or maybeeee they were there together”
“Wait Y/N’s outfit in photo 8 lowkey matches that mysterious silhouette from Seungmin’s ig post a couple weeks ago *side eye emoji*” “They either went out together or they’re messing with us again omg”
Seungmin was still in disbelief at all the responses, he couldn't believe that Stays were so observant yet were pabos at the same time.
“Theyre stupid,” he groans out as he looks through all the reactions.
“Hey they're not stupid,” you state, coming to your fans' defence once again. “They just sometimes can be not that smart, they take after paboracha once in a while.”
“I think we need to spell it out to them in a more obvious way.” Lets just say Seungmin was crashing out, again.
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Seungmin and you had written a song together a few years ago, a duet about your journey together and love for one another. But you had never released it, not wanting rumors about the two of you being in a relationship to go around. So the song had gotten lost, buried, and forgotten under other work related files.
Maybe it was fate that you had found it again after the two of you decided to no longer keep your relationship a secret. Releasing the song would basically be a confession to the world, so you both decided to work on the song again, recording it, and uploading it as a SKZ record song on the youtube channel.
“They have to get the hint after this right?” Seungmin asks as the two of you sit together waiting for the video to go up on the channel any minute from now.
“I don’t know, they might just think we’re really good at writing love songs,” you joke, as you bounce your knee nervously. This would be the most public thing the two of you have done together to confirm your relationship and it would be the first duet you’ve recorded with Seungmin. “I just hope they at least like the song, even if they don’t get the hint.”
“Well I want them to get the hint,” he huffs, eyes widening when he notices the video was uploaded.
The two of you sit in silence, listening to the song together that you had heard a million times as you tried to make it perfect. You were proud of the song and how well your voices blended together, the emotions and love you had for each other overflowing as the song went on.
Then the comments started rolling in.
“Okay guys I don’t think they're messing with us this is literally just a love song to each other”
“Theyre just best friends guys! They love each other platonically, like how they love the other boys.”
“Their voices are heavenly together omg. Why have we never gotten a unit song with these two until now??”
“Guys its just a song lets not speculate about the lyrics, it most likely doesn’t mean anything”
You were happy that the two of you were getting a lot of love and praise for the song. But it seems that the song had divided the fandom in half. Some believing that this was the two of you confessing your relationship and some believing that it was just two friends releasing a song together.
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The next turning point for Stays was the newest 2 Kids Room episode between you and Seungmin. You had recorded these episodes in the past but you had to always hold back, never fully going into details about your relationship, only speaking about each other as best friends.
Seungmin wanted to go all out for the 2 Kids Room recording stating that there was no point in hiding your feelings anymore when most people were speculating that you were together now. You were skeptical at first, a bit scared of what people would say if you officially confirmed your relationship. You both agreed to speak about each other earnestly, not concealing any feelings, but also agreeing to not outright say that you were together.
“We should wear our rings for the shoot,” Seungmin states, looking at you as you fiddle with the ring hanging from your neck.
You look at him, eyes wide. “Are you sure?”
Seungmin had gifted the ring to you years ago as an anniversary gift, promising to love you for the rest of his life. It was a simple band that he had customized with a few crystals that sparkled under the light, your anniversary date engraved on the inside. He had made himself a matching one as well. The both of you always had it on you in some way, never leaving it behind. If you were in private you would wear it on your finger, if you were in public you would wear it on a chain hidden under your outfit, and if it couldn’t be hidden you would safely secure it to the inside of your shirt right above your heart, always slipping it back onto your finger the moment you could.
He just nods as he takes his ring off the chain around his neck, slipping it onto his finger with a smile. He then leans forward, unclasping your necklace and putting the ring on your finger. “And we should keep them on and not take them off again, let's not hide them anymore.” So you both agreed to proudly wear your rings, not just for the 2 Kids Room recording but forever.
After filming wrapped up, Seungmin wouldn’t tell you what he had said about you during the individual shoots for the episode. His ears turning red at the memory of his words as he tried his best to ignore the puppy dog eyes you sent his way. He resisted and wouldn’t tell you a thing. Stating that you will have to wait and find out at the same time as Stays when the episode was released.
Ever since the release of your unit song, Stays were eagerly waiting every week for the episode between the two of you to drop, and when it finally did months after you shot the episode, the internet went crazy.
You were waiting for Seungmin to come over when the episode was finally posted. Watching the video, you paid close attention to the individual clips of Seungmin, the glint of his ring shining brightly as he talked with his hands. A big smile on your face, your cheeks growing warm thanks to the words he was saying about you. Your boyfriend wasn’t one to express himself with words often but the way he talked about you with love in his eyes made your heart flutter.
“Y/N was one of my first friends that I made as a trainee. I’m not one to let someone into my world easily, but she slipped through the cracks without me realizing. The moment I met her and knew what kind of person she was, something in my mind clicked. ‘I can't let her go’ is what I thought back then and so I didn't, I couldn't. I still feel the same way today.”
“Seungmin is my best friend. When we first met all those years ago, we got along so naturally. It felt like I had known him my whole life and I still feel the same way now, he's my other half. I don't think I could live without him, as cheesy as that sounds. If soulmates are a real thing, I like to think that Seungmin is mine.”
“I honestly can't imagine my life without Y/N in it. I believe we were destined to meet. I like to think that we’d find each other in every universe, every timeline, every life because that’s how much she means to me, how much I need her in my life. I hope she’ll let me stay by her side forever.”
You couldn't help but tear up at his words. You knew he loved you, but to hear him say it so beautifully for the world to hear made you want to cry. Then came the end of the video with the ending messages to each other, that’s when the water works started.
“My one and only Minnie. You are my world, please don’t ever leave. I think I might cry if you did. Thank you for always being by my side, I hope you stay with me forever. Your Y/Nnie.” You had drawn a crying face and a heart next to your message.
“Jagiya, you are everything to me. I’m grateful to have you by my side every day of my life. Please never stop coming to me when you need help, I don’t know what I would do if you did. I’ll always choose you, let's be with each other forever. Your Minnie.”
The tears wouldn't stop as they fell down your face as you turned off your phone, taking a few minutes to try and calm down. Suddenly a hand was gently wiping away your tears, the touch familiar to you as you leaned into it. Looking up as you sniffle, your eyes meet Seungmin's, his face full of worry.
“Hey, why are you crying?” He whispers softly, your face still in his hand as he rubs his thumb across your cheek.
“Because of you,” you choke out. You can see the shock in his face as he processes your words, confused as to what he did. “Why would you say such nice things about me in that 2 Kid Room episode?”
“Oh Jagiya, I meant every word. I love you deeply and I want to stay with you forever,” he whispers. More tears filled your eyes at his words. He wipes them away again before pulling you into his embrace.
“I love you too,” you whisper as you press your face into his neck. “I love you so much,” pulling away slightly to look at him, cupping his face gently in your hands. Leaning in, you press your lips to his, sealing them in a sweet kiss. You pull away with a sniffle, wiping away the rest of your tears.
“I love you more.”
“I love you most.”
“Impossible,” he grins at you. He leans in again for another kiss, showing you just how much he means every word he said. “Now let’s go lay down, you big cry baby,” he teases, grabbing your hand and pulling you towards your bedroom.
The two of you climb into your bed, Seungmin wrapping his arms around you as you lean your head on his chest. He grabs your hand and starts to fiddle with the ring on your finger, bringing your hand up to his lips to press a soft kiss to the ring. The two of you lay in each other’s embrace for a while, you listening to his steady breath and heartbeat.
After a while you grab your phone and unlock it, the 2 Kids Rooms episode still on display. Looking up at him you ask if he wants to read the comments.
He lets out a soft chuckle and smiles at you. “What kind of question is that? Of course I want to read the comments.”
The two of you spend the rest of the night reading the comments under the video and scrolling through twitter, laughing at all of Stays' reactions.
“Omg they’ve been soft launching each other this whole time but none of us put the pieces together, they really had to spell it out for us with this episode lmaooo stays we are pabos fr”
“The way they talk about each other omg and how their words match and complement each other even when they're not in the same room they are literal soulmates”
“Jagiya??!?! Did we hear that right?? Are they hard launching omg???”
“oH they're besties but they are also in love with each other got it got it”
“Anyone else catch that they mentioned their unit song was written a long time ago and just found it again recently? Does that mean they’ve been together all these years?”
“Such romantic words for each other and they’re wearing matching rings too hello are they dating??”
“There’s no way Seungmin pulled our precious Y/N. Queen, is he bothering you? Leav him, stays can treat you better”
₊⋆｡‧˚ʚ ୨ৎ ɞ˚‧｡⋆₊
Finally, to Seungmin’s excitement, most Stays figured out the two of you were dating even if you both never explicitly announced that you were together. And over time, Seungy/n started rising to the top of the SKZ ship rankings, reaching number one again like it was all the years ago when you were rookies. Little did Stays know that this all came about because Seungmin found out you were a rarepair. And even though he would never admit it, it was because he was definitely jealous.
And years later, you and Seungmin finally announced to the world that you were together through an instagram collaborative post on both of your accounts. The post consisted of only one photo with the caption set as one emoji, the wedding ring. And it had gone viral, not just amongst Stays, but amongst other fandoms as well. Other idols and celebrities congratulating you both, showering you and Seungmin with love and support. The announcement definitely secured Seungy/n as the number one SKZ ship forever.
taglist for written part: @toplinehyunjin @idk-womp-womp
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TW: Mentions addiction, death by overdose, neglect, domestic violence, child abuse and other similar topics that could be triggering. NSFW, if you're curious how I do my smut warnings check the pinned post at the top of my blog! This is pretty tame smut wise though!
You were back home from college for the summer staying with your parents and your little brother Ethan. You had just finished your second year and you swore it had been even harder than your first between school and work load. You’d hoped you could relax a little, actually take the summer off but your parents had other ideas. Now that you were home they could fully check out for the summer, leaving you to take care of your brother like you always had to do. And that’s exactly what they did.
The day you got home they fed you some story about going to a friend’s party, that they’d be back by midnight blah blah blah. You had no idea when you’d actually see them again but wasn’t shocking to you in the slightest. You’d dealt with your parents lies and addiction your whole life. You were used to having everything dumped on you. But since you’d left for school Ethan was experiencing it without your shield of protection.
You did what you could when you were home but once you left for school again he was out of your reach and taking on the full blow of what having addicts for parents was like at twelve years old. You were nine when Ethan was born and you had protected him every day of his life until you left for college. It was an impossible choice to make but you had to go. It was the only way you could better your life and his, though it didn’t make leaving him behind any easier.
The past couple years had not been especially kind to Ethan and just like any child in turmoil at home, he acted out everywhere else. He’d given up on homework and his grades were dropping. He’d been fighting with other boys in school and on the bus. He’d graffitied a wall on the side of the school and had been accused of stealing from another kid. He seemed hell bent on causing trouble for anyone that was supposed to shape or guide him.
You went to pick him up on his last day of school. You were roaming the halls of the old building you knew well when you ran into your old school counselor. She smiled brightly, arms outstretched for a hug.
“Oh my god it’s so good to see you!” You squeezed her tightly. She had been the one that finally convinced you to go to college and you knew any future you had was owed to her.
“You too Ms. Kim.” She pulled away taking you in again. You looked thinner than the last time she’d seen you. A little tired but you were becoming a lovely young woman.
“What are you doing here?” She asked and you pointed towards the seventh grade hall.
“Here for Ethan.” Ms. Kim’s face fell a little. It was impossible for her to hide her concern.
“Oh… uh… well I was under the impression one or both of your parents would be picking him up today. We’d planned on speaking about some of the issues he’s been having.” You pinched the bridge of your nose, realizing why they’d been so quick to take off on you.
“No they’re… busy.” Ms. Kim all too well the kind of people your parents were, the whole town did.
“I’d be happy to talk with you about what’s going on if that’s okay?” You suggested and your counselor nodded.
“Of course, why don’t you follow me to my office.” Not that you needed to follow her. You’d been there countless times when you had gone to the school. Once you were both seated in her office she didn’t waste time getting to the point.
“Ethan is in serious danger of not being allowed back to school next year.” You were shocked to hear that. You knew he’d been trouble but enough to expel?
“For a couple fights and spray paint? That seems a bit extreme.” Ms. Kim pulled your brother’s file from her desk. It was about a half inch thick.
“Eight fights actually. He was caught vandalizing school property four times, caught smoking three…” You couldn’t believe your ears.
“SMOKING?” Ms. Kim nodded.
“That doesn’t include the bus infractions either. He’s had four additional fights on the bus as well as the incident where he was accused of stealing.” You knew your brother. He may be quick tempered and having issues but he did not steal. You shook your head.
“They never found that kid’s stuff on Ethan, no one has any proof he stole anything.” She nodded in agreement. She knew your brother wasn’t a bad kid, it’s why she was talking to you now, trying to help.
“I know. Still, with all the other issues the only reason he hasn’t been dismissed already is because of my emphatic refusal but that well is running dry.” You slumped in your chair, pressed your fingers into your forehead, and sighed.
“What do I do?” You asked feeling defeated. The counselor pulled out a pamphlet and handed it to you over her desk. You took it and saw kids playing soccer on the front.
“There’s a youth outreach program with a soccer team. I’ve heard it’s an interest of his and I think this could be good for Ethan. Being part of a team can teach him accountability and how to trust and rely on others. As well as give him access to mentors involved in the program. I heard they have new coach this year for his age group that used to play professionally. A lot of the boys are very excited about it, apparently he was quite popular until an injury.” Ethan was a huge soccer fan but there was no way you could afford to put him in a soccer program like that.
“It sounds amazing Ms. Kim but I can’t afford to pay for a program and gear. My parents…” Didn’t have a dime in their pocket that they weren’t spending on drugs.
“My parents can’t either.” You settled on that but Ms. Kim was already standing shaking her head.
“Don’t worry about that. A sponsor of the program that wished to remain anonymous offered to pay for Ethan. Gear and everything will all be covered, you won’t have to pay anything.” Your jaw dropped. It could be a real chance for Ethan, it seemed too good to be true.
“What’s the catch?” Ms. Kim’s face fell a little. You knew there had to be a catch, no one just hands you things for free.
“If Ethan gets into any trouble this summer, even one fight, he’ll be out of the program and won’t be allowed back to school next year.” Shit. You were supposed to keep a troubled, hormonal, preteen with a short fuse from fighting for the whole summer. You had your work cut out for you but you had to try. You had to back Ethan up however you could. You took the brochure.
“It’s a deal Ms. Kim. I’ll keep Ethan in line in return for the sponsor footing the bill.” She smiled brightly.
“Oh that’s fantastic! I know you want to do everything you can to help him.” You nodded. You really did. You wanted Ethan to know this part of his life, as hard as it was, was just temporary and that he could really do anything he wanted to if given the opportunity. Ms. Kim showed you out of her office just as the last bell of the day was sounding. You made your way through the horde of adolescents scanning for your brother.
Suddenly in a sea of neutral colored hair, a head of messy deep blue hair stuck out like a sore thumb. Ethan. When had he done that? The parents hadn’t mentioned it but they probably hadn’t seen it or him in god knows how long if you were honest with yourself. You signaled him with your hand and he made his way over to you.
“You’re home already noona?” You laughed and pulled him in for a hug.
“I’m happy to see you too kiddo.” His arms hung there for a moment then finally he wrapped them around you and hugged you back.
“I am happy to see you. I miss you.” He said quietly as he hugged you and you had to fight back tears. You let him break the hug and then you gently flicked his forehead.
“Come on, twerp. I’m parked out front.” Ethan grabbed his bag and followed you. You both climbed into your heap of a car and Ethan turned on the radio to a hard rock station. As soon as you pulled out of the lot you decided to rip the bandaid off. It’s not like he could jump out of your car. Right?
“You know you’re like one wrong fart away from getting kicked out of school.” Your brother laughed at your use of the word fart and rolled his eyes looking out the window.
“So?” You came to a stop at a red light and looked at him.
“So? So fighting, fucking up school property, SMOKING?” The light turned green and you took off again.
“Smoking is such a mom and dad thing. Do you really want to do anything they do?” Your brother gave you an angry side eye but knew you were right.
“No. I’m nothing like them.” You nodded agreeing.
“I know that but your choices lately suck and you’re gonna end up ruining your life before it really starts.” His eyes were inspecting the back of his skull again.
“I have a life NOW.” You shook your head.
“No, right now you’re just living, there’s a difference. Once you get out of this… get out of here… that’s when your life really starts. I’ve experienced it myself. Trust me, I know. But you have to stop doing shit that will keep you from taking advantage of opportunities for a better life.” Ethan was listening closely. He may be a bull headed preteen boy but he trusted you more than anything.
“What am I supposed to do when some kid runs their mouth about what they heard their mom and dad say about our parents? When some dude says I’m just a crack baby or some crap?” What the fuck. You’d forgotten how cruel kids could be about something that was entirely out of your control.
“You just have to ignore it. Do you care about our parents?” Your brother huffed a laugh.
“Fuck them.” You laughed and nodded.
“Exactly so who cares what some little walking boner says about them?” Ethan laughed.
“And you weren’t a crack baby you were a cute baby.” You pinched your brother’s cheek and he whined and protested.
“Nooonaaaa stop.” You laughed and put both hands back on the wheel. Ethan broke the silence again once the laughing died down.
“Everyone thinks I’m just like them. They think you were the miracle that made it out and I’m the one that’s gonna end up like them. You pulled the car off to the side of the road and threw it in park. You looked at your brother and tears were rimming his eyes. You took each of his shoulders in one of your hands and made him look at you.
“You are NOT going to end up like them, I will never let that happen. I would never.” He rubbed his nose with his sleeve and nodded.
“What do I do?” You straightened up.
“Well for starters, keep your fists to yourself. Let chickens bawk if they want.” You put the car back in gear and merged onto the road before grabbing the pamphlet Ms. Kim gave you and tossing it in his lap.
“Then you’re gonna try out for this soccer team.” He looked at you crazy.
“Soccer? I’ve never played a proper game before and we can’t afford to pay for cleats, shin guards… there’s so much stuff I would need. There’s no way.” You shook your head.
“So what if you’ve never played on a proper pitch? I’ve seen you smoke high schoolers in the park in pick up games, you’re good and you know. You’re good. Don’t worry about the money, everything is covered.” He sat there speechless. He’d always wanted to join a soccer team but your parents wouldn’t cough up the money or time it would take to do it. Now he really had a chance?
“There’s a catch.” Ethan’s face fell at your words.
“What is it?” You turned the wheel pulling into the driveway of your house. You turned off the car unbuckled your belt and turned towards Ethan again.
“If you fight or do any stupid shit this summer, you’re off the team and kicked out of the school.” He sighed and slumped down in his seat like you had in the counselors office.
“That’s IF I even MAKE the team.” You ruffled his blue hair and he pushed your hand away annoyed.
“We’ll get you to the try outs and go from there, how bout?” He agreed.
“Okay.” You went inside and made the two of you dinner before rooting yourselves to the couch to show each other YouTube videos you’d saved. You showed him some kpop group you were getting into and he pulled up a clip from a soccer game.
“Oh my god, noona! You have to see this guy, Jake Sim! He’s so badass! He can split the defense like a hot knife through butter. And watch the way he makes this goal!” Your brother handed you his phone so you could get a better look. You saw a very cute guy bounce a soccer ball off his knee before spin kicking it into the net past the goalie. All his team mates went wild and he pulled his shirt over his head then started running around celebrating. You didn’t mention it but you took note of the abs. This Jake Sim is my favorite player too you thought to yourself as you handed the phone back to your brother.
“That was awesome!” Your brother beamed, watching another clip.
“Yea he’s my favorite… or well he was. Sucks he got injured.” You hummed agreeing. That new coach Ms. Kim mentioned had also been injured. Soccer must get rougher than you thought with all these injured players. Around ten you and Ethan went to bed. You laid there staring at your ceiling for a long time before you finally fell asleep. You had three days before tryouts to get everything together for Ethan.
Ms. Kim dropped off a gift card for the sporting goods store unsure of exactly how much was on there, but assured you it should cover everything. You loaded your brother up and took him to get his cleats and other equipment. It felt like an eternity of shopping, you didn’t realize you needed so much shit for soccer.
At check out you watched nervously as the total racked up with every swipe. Shin guards, socks, shorts, cha ching cha ching cha ching. Finally when the scanning stopped you were looking at a two hundred and fifty dollar total and that was after grabbing the cheapest of everything. You pulled out the gift card and swiped with the confidence of a woman that could buy the whole store if she wanted.
The seconds that clicked by felt like minutes and you were convinced you’d over spent your budget. Then the register popped open and a receipt started to print. The cashier folded it up and handed it to you along with your bags.
“You’ve got three hundred left on your card. Have a nice day ma’am.” You stood there stunned for a second. Three hundred dollars?! That couldn’t be right. You took the receipt and handed the bags to Ethan as you checked the balance. Sure enough highlighted at the bottom, remaining balance three hundred dollars. You would return the card to Ms. Kim as soon as possible to give the rest back to the mysterious sponsor.
Ethan was so excited he tried on all his new gear as soon as he got home, watching YouTube videos on the best way to break in new cleats. It had been a while since you saw him so hyped up about something. The next two days were just a blur of playing games, eating, and spending time with your brother. The night before tryouts you shooed your brother to his room at eight thirty at night.
“The sun isn’t even down yet! I can’t sleep now!” He protested as you continued pushing him. You were realizing it wouldn’t be much longer before you wouldn’t be able to do this at all. He was already as tall as you. You almost couldn’t do it now.
“You have black out curtains, just try!” Once he was through the threshold and in his room you blocked the door with your body.
“Noona, come on, please? At least let me play games in here for a little longer.” You saw the sweet little kid with boba eyes starting back at you again and you caved.
“Fine but in bed by 10. You need to get plenty of rest to show them how bad they want you on their team.” Your brother laughed and walked over to his gaming setup. You turned to leave but stopped when you heard Ethan’s voice again.
“Noona?” You turned and looked at him; he looked nervous.
“What if I get there and they all think I’m just a bad person and won’t let me try out?” You walked over to him and gave him a big hug.
“That won’t happen because you’re not a bad person. Got it?” He nodded, sat down and turned on his console. You ruffled his hair as he put on his head set and you got his bitchy side eye as you left his room. You stayed up cleaning up the kitchen from cooking dinner and at nine thirty you heard your brother talking to his gaming mates.
“Sorry, gotta cut out early today guys. Soccer tryouts tomorrow.” You heard a slurry of props and well wishes as he said goodbye and turned his game off. Fifteen minutes passed and you saw the light under the crack of his door go off. He really was a great kid, god damn your parents for doing this shit to him.
You took a shower, trying to calm down the raging anger you felt but it didn’t help. You walked into your room towel wrapped around you and wet hair dripping down your back. You paced in your room like that; talking to yourself and getting angrier by the second.
“Is it not enough fucking me up?! They HAVE to fuck Ethan up too?! He’s got so much potential if someone takes the time to support and nurture him. Our parents couldn’t nurture shit!” You went over to your desk ready to grab whatever knickknack you laid eyes on first and launch it across your room. But instead of a knickknack the first thing you saw was the gift card.
You remembered the remaining balance. Someone had willingly given over five hundred dollars just so your brother, a kid they didn’t even know, could try out for a team he wasn’t sure to make. It may not be your parents but someone was trying so you couldn’t give up. That night you went to bed with a sense of determination like you’d never felt before.
The next morning you woke up early and made Ethan a big breakfast. Eggs, bacon, the works. You were pouring a big glass of orange juice when he came stumbling from his room. His blue hair was wavy and standing every which way.
“Hey Sonic, breakfast on the table, 10 o’clock.” Ethan rubbed the sleep from his eyes and changed his trajectory, heading towards the food laid out for him.
“Thanks noona.” He grumbled. His voice was getting deeper and that made your heart twist a little, knowing he wasn’t going to be a kid much longer. You went and got ready for the day while your brother ate his breakfast. When you came back out he was rinsing his plate and cup.
“Hurry up and shower and change. We gotta be at the place at 11.” Ethan set his dishes in the sink and ran to the bathroom to get ready. He showered and got dressed and grabbed his gear even faster than you expected. You piled in the car and headed towards the park where tryouts were being held. When you pulled up you were about fifteen minutes early. Oh well better early than late.
You and Ethan got out and headed towards the field obviously marked for soccer. Midway there Ethan tapped your shoulder, stopping you.
“Noona.” He whispered even though there was no one near you.
“I’m nervous! I’ve got to pee!” You looked around and spotted a portable bathroom. You pointed toward it.
“There! Go take a piss and meet me over by the pitch.” Ethan nodded, handed you his gear, and ran towards the bathroom. You struggled holding yours and your brother’s things as you walked and didn’t see a man passing in front of you. You bumped into each other, causing your purse and your brother’s equipment to go flying. You landed hard on your ass, debris scattered around you.
“Oh my fucking god I’m so sorry!” You looked up and saw the hottest guy you’d ever seen leaning down picking up your things. He offered his hand to help you up and started handing you things as he continued to profusely apologize.
“I’m really so sorry, I was looking at my phone and…” You waved him off.
“It’s fine, my hands were full and I wasn’t looking either. No harm.” He smiled at you and it was perfect. Perfect teeth, perfect lips. Why did he look so familiar?
“As long as you’re sure you aren’t hurt.” You shook your head.
“No, I’m fine. Plenty of padding.” If you had a free hand you would’ve slapped your forehead. The hot guy laughed.
“Good to know.” He said, giving you a wink. You could feel a blush creeping up your neck. Thankfully, before you could make a fool of yourself anymore he went to introduce himself.
“Sorry I’m Ja-“ He was cut off by your brother coming back from the bathroom.
“HOLY SHIT YOU’RE JAKE SIM!” Jake laughed, caught off guard by a twelve year old swearing you were sure. You turned to your bother scolding him.
“Watch your fucking mouth.” Jake laughed even harder and you realized your own slip up.
“Sorry… heh.” Jake shook his head, getting himself back together, wiping a tear away.
“No it’s fine really. You hear worse things on a pro pitch I guarantee it.” Your brother stood there in awe until you dumped his gear back into his arms. You stretched out your now free hand to introduce the two of you.
“I’m y/n, this is my little brother Ethan. He’s here for tryouts today.” Jake shook your hand, smiling brightly.
“Jake Sim, I’ll be coaching his group I believe.” You stopped short a second and looked at him. You thought your brother had been mistaken but upon further inspection he was in fact the cute soccer player Ethan had shown you videos of. Then you remembered the shot with his shirt over his head and your ears started turning red.
“Oh so you’re actually…” He laughed and ran his hand through the back of his hair.
“Yea… it’s not anything really.” Finally your brother’s brain seemed to catch up.
“He still has the record for best conversion rate in the history of pro soccer!” You weren’t sure what that meant exactly but having a record in anything in a pro league must mean you’re pretty damn good. Jake blushed a little and chuckled.
“Oh yea… heh, I forgot about that actually.” Your brother had stars in his eyes.
“I wanna be a forward striker just like you Jake. That game against Brazil.” Jake knew the game he was talking about and smiled fondly.
“OoOoOo! And the penalty kick you took against Manchester United! Fuc- uhh freaking insane man!” Jake laughed.
“You know your stuff kid.” You didn’t think you’d ever seen your brother smile like that.
“Do you think after tryouts we could kick a ball around a little?” You shook your head.
“Ethan I’m sure Jake has things to do-“ Jake cut you off.
“I don’t mind as long as it’s okay with your sister?” You looked at him for a second surprised by his answer. You’d assumed a big shot soccer star wouldn’t have extra time to kick a ball around with some blue haired kid he’d just met.
“Well okay, as long as Jake really doesn’t have anywhere to be after.” He shook his head smiling.
“No really, I blocked out my day for this, so it’s okay.” You nodded agreeing. Jake pointed towards the field.
“You guys go ahead and head out to the field and I’ll meet you out there in just a minute.” You grabbed Ethan by the shoulder making him turn and leading him towards the practice area. You sat down on the bottom bleacher. Ethan sat next to you and started putting his pads on. You saw a boy around your brother’s age and an older man you assumed to be his father approaching. When the boy was within earshot he said something to his dad.
“Dad, that’s the guy that stole my Switch and punched me.” Oh no you thought to yourself, that’s the last thing you need here. You saw the dad look over at you, giving you the stink face. When Jake finally made his way onto the field finally, the dad immediately made a beeline over to him. Jake reached out to shake hands and the man just ignored him entirely. He aggressively pointed over to you and your brother.
“That boy is the delinquent child of drug addicts and I demand that he not be permitted to tryout for this team and instead be asked to leave.” Jake looked over and there was a softness in his eyes when he saw who he was pointing at. The man continued.
“I donate a lot of money to this program and I demand that he be barred from playing. He’s violent and unruly and…” Jake held up his hand stopping the man.
“It’s very nice of you to donate to a not-for-profit organization but that doesn’t mean you dictate who gets to try out or who makes the team. I’m the coach an this is MY pitch. If you don’t like it you’re welcome to withdraw your son from tryouts.” The kid ran over and pulled on his dad’s arm.
“No dad! I have to tryout. Please…” The dad grumbled something and then walked away. Jake looked over at you again and gave you another little wink. You could feel your face getting warmer. You took you seat on the bleachers again when Jake blew the whistle calling the kids over. You glanced over at the dickhead dad and he was still glaring at you. You tried your best to ignore him and watch your brother play.
Jake ran them ragged. Kicking balls around cones, running and touching lines, blocking goals he shot at them… And they weren’t little kicks either. It was impressive what he taught the kids in such a small amount of time. He broke them up into four groups and had them run a scrimmage. Luckily the boy who’s dad was still giving you daggers was assigned to a group your brother wasn’t in. The rule of the game was first to score wins. Your brother brother’s group was up first. It was pretty evenly matched for a minute but then your brother got the ball on a breakaway. He was wide open, just him versus the goalie. He pivoted, took the shot and the ball hit the net.
Your brother ran around flapping his arms as the other kids cheered and slapped him on the back. His group cleared the pitch and then it was the dickhead dad’s kid’s turn. Their game was about the same except it seemed like he was on the ground every five minutes crying foul. Finally the opposing team made a goal. They circled around and cheered as the one boy ran over to his dad pouting. The other boys all grabbed water bottles and hydrated as they caught their breath.
Your brother ran over to you and you handed him his water bottle and a towel to wipe the blue sweat dripping down his face. You made a mental note to rinse his hair for him later.
“Did you see that noona!?” You laughed hyped up by his enthusiasm.
“That part where you kicked ass!? Yea I did!” Another one of the mom’s sided eyed you and you gave her a little wave apologizing. Jake was over with some of the other coaches that had been watching from the top of the bleachers. After a few minutes of discussion they all nodded and handed Jake eleven yellow practice jerseys. Jake made his way to the center of the pitch and blew his whistle calling all the boys back over.
“They already decided?” Your brother asked nervously. You nodded and pushed him towards the field.
“They saw how awesome you were and probably didn’t even need to think about it.” He laughed and ran over with the rest of the boys. They made a circle around Jake and he started walking around handing certain boys jerseys. He was down to one jersey and your heart was beating out of your chest for your brother. He really needed this. Jake walked past dickhead dad’s kid and two others before stopping in front of your brother and handing him the jersey. Then Jake walked back to the middle of the pitch to address the boys.
“I would like to state first and foremost that no one is getting cut from the team. Boys not selected will be on reserve in case of any injuries or drop outs. That being said… if you are holding a yellow jersey…” You held your breath. What the fuck does a yellow jersey mean? He got it? He didn’t?
“Welcome to the team.” You let out the breath you’d been holding as the boys with yellow jerseys, including your brother Ethan, jumped up and down celebrating and high fiving each other. Of course the same dickhead from before stormed out onto the field and right up to Jake.
“What do you mean my son didn’t make the team?!” Jake took a step back and tried to calm the man down.
“He did make the team sir, he’s just second string. I recommend that he practice some of the fundamentals between now and next years tryouts.” The kid’s dad pointed at your brother.
“So you’ll let that blue haired little asshole on the team but not my son?!” You shot up out of your seat ready to tell the guy off but Jake put his hand up, stopping you. He was ridged with anger but when he spoke it was calm, collected.
“SIR. If you continue on like this, I will be forced to actually cut your son from the team and ban him from ever being allowed to try out again. Watch your mouth when you’re speaking about MY kids.” The whiny kid was pulling at his dad’s arm again pleading not to get him cut and banned. Again, the dad accepted defeat and grumbled as he was walking away. You sat back down trying, to calm your racing heart. Your brother ran over, beaming about making the team as if none of the other stuff had even happened.
“I made the team noona! I did it!” He threw his arms around you and gave you a big bear hug and then let you go just bouncing with energy.
“Jake said to give him just a minute and we could play around a bit.” You handed him his water again.
“Are you sure you aren’t too tired?” You didn’t want to put Jake out, especially after he stuck up for Ethan like that. He stopped drinking just to laugh at the suggestion.
“Uh NO. I get to kick a ball around with THE Jake Sim? I’m definitely not too tired.” You laughed, shaking your head as Jake made his way over to the two of you carrying a ball.
“I thought you couldn’t use hands?” You joked with him. His beautiful smile was back as he laughed.
“It’s not like they shoot you in the head if your hands ever touch the ball.” Jake shot back and your brother choked on his water laughing. He sprayed you with a little and you swatted at him.
“I’m not the one that needs a shower thanks!” Both of the guys laughed. Jake threw the ball up and caught it again.
“Still okay if we play a little?” Jake asked you.
“Yes absolutely.” Your little brother answered for you. Jake was distracted looking at the absolute enigma of a woman in front of him when Ethan bumped the ball out of his hands and grabbed it, running for the middle of the pitch. Jake chucked and lingered there a moment longer with you before giving you a little wave and running over to your brother. You shook your head and sat back down on the bleachers.
After another forty-five minutes, Jake finally called it. When he jogged over to you with Ethan he’d expected to see you on your phone, keeping yourself busy while they goofed off. He was surprised to see you’d actually been watching them the whole time. When Ethan got to you, you threw his towel in his face.
“Mop up before you get in my car.” Jake laughed, limping the rest of the way over, drenched in sweat. That’s when you remembered he’d been injured and he’d not only just led a tryout, but played around with your brother for almost an hour. You walked over to him trying to help.
“Are you okay?” He nodded and declined the help.
“I’m fine really, just a little tight. It’ll be okay in a minute.” He plopped down on the bleacher and stretched his leg out, rubbing at his knee. You grabbed your brother’s stuff and shoved it into his arms.
“Here are my keys, go take this to the car and get in the AC.” Ethan went to protest but stopped before he even started, deciding not to push his luck.
“Bye Jake! See you next practice.” Ethan waved and then ran off towards your car to cool off. Jake waved as he ran away then started rubbing his knee again. You sat next to him and watched as he worked the the muscle above his knee.
“I should’ve told Ethan no. I’d heard about your injury and I wasn’t even thinking-“ Jake stopped you.
“No really, it’s my fault. I didn’t wear my brace today. Trying to show off for the kids, I guess. Pretty dumb.” You smiled at him and shook your head disagreeing.
“You’re a super hero to them. I get how it could be hard to be viewed as something breakable.” That was exactly how he felt. Like if their hero could be cut down what could they hope for themselves? You understood all too well because you felt the same about Ethan. You’ve always been there, a constant, but what if you failed him? What if your parents did wear him down and steal that light you still saw in him? The one they stole from you a long time ago. After a minute Jake stood up and lifted his foot up and down stretching out his knee.
“There we go! See? All better. I promise to wear my brace next practice.” He crossed his heart and you could feel your face heating up again. You had to get out of there before you turned into a beet.
“Good idea! Okay bye!” You turned to leave and Jake called to you. You stopped and turned around. He grabbed a duffle bag and fished out some keys before slinging it over his shoulder and walking over.
“I’ll walk you to your car, I’m heading out too.” Just great, there went your quick escape from further embarrassment. If Jake noticed you blushing he didn’t mention it. He kept up with your walking pace but you could tell he was trying to hide that he was still limping a little. When you got to your car he opened the driver’s door for you.
“Get home safe!” You smiled reaching for your seat belt as he closed your door for you.
“Thanks! Take it easy, ice that knee.” He laughed and waved as he backed away from your car so you could take off.
“Will do!” You put the car in reverse and headed home with Ethan. The whole way there he went on and on about the day like you hadn’t sat right there watching it. You didn’t bother reminding him. You just listened and laughed along happy to see so much joy pouring from him.
Practice was half days twice a week and full days Saturdays. First practice after tryouts you noticed Jake had kept the promise you didn’t ask him to make and was sporting his knee brace. He was so good with all the kids, really teaching them as if they were heading to the pros.
Your brother adored him. He soaked up every bit of information and after every practice Jake made time to just play with Ethan. The second Saturday of full practice, Jake offered to bring Ethan home. Your brother walked through the door exhausted covered in grass stains and sweat. You went to hug him and backed away.
“Whew! Go shower and rest. I’ll come get you when dinner’s ready.” He gave you two enthusiastic thumbs up and headed towards the back of the house where the bathroom and bedrooms were. You turned back to finish up dinner and that’s when you noticed Jake had walked in with him.
“Oh! Hi Jake.” He waved giving you his cute little tight lipped smile. You had all of his smiles memorized now. His big toothy one when he thinks he’s said something funny, the one that makes his eyes scrunch up and disappear, the soft one he gets when he’s talking to Ethan and seems to really understand what he’s saying. You snapped out of it.
“Hey y/n. I just wanted to tell you that Ethan did really great out there today. He reminds me a lot of myself when I played as a kid. If he has some good support he could go places; college, maybe even the pros some day.” You knew Ethan was good but you were surprised to hear Jake say that.
“You think he’s that good?” Jake nodded.
“I think he can be, with the right teacher and a supportive foundation.” There was that word again. Support. As long as you were home you were able to support Ethan a hundred and ten percent. He always came first. Once you had to go back to school though, there was no way your parents would keep up with his equipment or get him back and forth to practices. You frowned.
“He doesn’t always have the luxury of having that. I do what I can…” Jake stepped closer and put a hand on your shoulder.
“I can tell you do… really.” He thought for a moment.
“Can I ask you a question?” You nodded.
“That man the first day, at tryouts, what he said about your parents… is that true?” You couldn’t blame him for being curious, you were used to it. A twenty one year old girl like you, toting around an adolescent boy with blue hair. Something must be wrong with you both. You pulled away from him, heading towards the kitchen to try and create some space. It was getting harder to breathe and you felt like the room was getting smaller by the minute. You took a deep breath.
“Does it matter?” You asked, focused on the food on the stove. Jake walked by you.
“No of course not, I just I know what it’s like.” You looked at him surprised.
“Your parents are addicts?” He shook his head.
“No no. My best friend growing up, his parents were. I saw how it was for him. He spent a lot of time at our house. I think my parents insisted on it so much because they wanted to make sure he was safe.” That was nice of his parents you thought. Ethan had friends like that he could rely on before you left for school but once he started getting into trouble he wasn’t allowed around those friends anymore and was on his own. You hated yourself thinking about it.
“Does your friend play soccer too?” You asked, trying to change the direction of the conversation to something a little lighter assuming, like some in fairy tale, they’d never lost contact and probably even joined the pros together.
Jake’s expression changed. His eyes were cast down, a frown pulling at his lips and you realized you’d done the opposite of what you’d wanted to do. Seeing him like that, you just wanted to hug him and tell him whatever was wrong would be alright.
“Uh no… Sean and I kind of went different ways once high school ended. I went off to play ball for university. He had great grades but he didn’t get any of his scholarships and his family had no money so he had to stay behind and get a job. He started drinking a lot, making choices the Sean I knew wouldn’t have made with a sober mind. Then unfortunately like what happens all too often in those situations, he fell into the same cycle as his parents and started using drugs.” You thought back to what Ethan told you in the car, how he was scared everyone thought he was going to end up like your mom and dad. It happened more often than not but you refused to let it happen to him. Not while you were breathing. Jake was squeezing his hands and picking his cuticles, a nervous habit.
“The day I signed my contract to go pro, Sean’s parents called and said he’d overdosed. He’d been trying to get clean, relapsed and used too much.” You felt a tear suddenly roll down you cheek. You turned your head and wiped it away quickly. Jake cleared his throat suddenly, realizing maybe that was an overshare.
“Sorry, anyway, that’s what I mean when I say I get it. You know?” You nodded quietly.
“Sorry to be a downer before your dinner, I’ll get out of your hair and see you guys at the next practice!” Jake turned to leave and you grabbed his wrist stopping him. He turned and looked at you with the expression of a kicked puppy. It made your heart twist in your chest. Jake looked down at your hand on his wrist and you let go quickly, laughing nervously.
“Uh… there’s plenty of food… if you’d like to stay?” Jake gave you a small smile.
“Are you sure?” You nodded and went to the cabinet. You grabbed an extra plate and fork and placed them on the table with yours and Ethan’s.
“Of course there is! Go have a seat I’m just gonna go get Ethan.” Jake walked over and took his seat were you’d put the new plate down and you ran off to get your brother. When Ethan walked through the doorway to the kitchen and saw Jake, he beamed. He always acted like it was the first time seeing him, he would get so excited.
“Jake! I was hoping you’d be here still!” Your brother ran to the table and took the seat next to Jake, which typically would be yours, and started asking questions about when he played professionally. You shook your head and laughed as you grabbed the food and brought it to the table, sitting in Ethan’s usual seat across from the two of them.
It was the first dinner in a while that wasn’t just you and your brother. It was nice. Jake answered all of Ethan’s questions and made sure to loop you into the conversation so you didn’t have to hear the two guys rattle on about soccer stats the whole meal. You’d scrapped together some casserole that Jake ate two servings of because it reminded him of his mom’s and he didn’t get home cooked meals as much.
When the meal was done you told your brother to get off to bed and Jake helped you clear the dishes. Although you insisted that he didn’t have to, he didn’t listen. You drew the line at him washing the dishes and he laughed, giving in.
“Fine fine! I was just always taught the cook doesn’t clean up after the meal!” You smiled shaking your head. Jake glanced at the clock over your shoulder.
“Actually, I should probably get going. It’s getting late.” You turned and looked at the clock also. Eleven thirty? You’d sent Ethan to bed over an hour ago. The two of you had been joking around and talking that long? You folded the wash cloth in your hand and draped it over the sink.
“Oh sure, of course! Let me walk you out.” Jake followed as you headed towards the door. You opened it and he stopped in the threshold, turning back to you.
“Thanks again for dinner.” You smiled back waving him off.
“It really was nothing. Just chicken breast, freezer burnt veggies and cream of mushroom soup.” Jake let out a laugh that came from his belly.
“Well when it’s cooked with love you can tell.” You started blushing.
“Thank you.” You said quietly, looking down at your shoes. Jake stood there, for how long he didn’t know. One minute? Two? He wanted to give you a kiss on the cheek. He wanted to say thank you again. But when you looked up at him again he finally snapped out of it.
“Okay, yea… uh… so… goodnight.” He laughed nervously.
“Goodnight Jake.” He gave you a little wave then turned and walked towards his car. Once he climbed in you shut the front door and turned laying back against it. The back of your head thunked against the door as you looked up.
“What the fuck are you doing y/n? Snap out of it.” You gently slapped your blushing cheeks with both hands.
“He’s just being nice! He’s your brother’s soccer coach, that’s it! Get it together!” You pushed off the door and went to the kitchen to finish the dishes before going to bed. That night visions of a flushed and sweaty Jake running up a pitch and kicking a soccer ball danced through your head.
After that dinner, Jake started bringing Ethan home after every practice on Saturday. You insisted on him staying for dinner each time to repay him for the ride. Definitely not to sit across from him and watch him lick his lips while he ate.
When the team had their first game and won, Jake took all the boys out for pizza. And of course he asked you to join too. Trying to wrangle eleven rowdy preteens made it pretty much impossible for Jake to actually get to talk to you though, which had been his plan.
After every practice and during every game, you saw more and more improvement in Ethan’s playing. But not just his playing. It was his whole attitude; his whole outlook on his life and the future of it. You could never repay Jake for what he’d given your brother. Hope.
You were sitting on the bench reading a book after practice one day while Jake and Ethan kicked the ball back and forth. Jake looked over at you, admiring your sun kissed cheeks. You bit at your lip and turned the page seemingly enthralled with whatever was happening in your book. Ethan kicked the ball to Jake while he wasn’t paying attention and it bounced off the side of his leg and rolled away.
“Earth to Jake?” Your brother teased. Jake laughed sheepishly and ran to get the ball before jogging over to Ethan.
“I think that’s enough for today.” Jake tossed Ethan the ball and he started juggling it with his knees, hyper focused, making sure not to drop it.
“You like my noona huh?” Ethan asked out of nowhere. Jake choked on air. He hadn’t been expecting that. Your brother kneed the ball up hard one more time and caught it as Jake stammered for an answer.
“Uh uh… I mean sure, of course I like her, you know… she’s nice and makes good food…” Your brother shook his head.
“No I mean like… like you wanna have sex with her.” Jake clutched his metaphorical pearls and choked again.
“Ethan!” He scolded him and your brother laughed.
“I’m not a baby, Jake. I know people do it.” Jake stole the ball from your brother and held it out of reach.
“Okay good on ya mate but don’t talk about your sister like that.” Ethan gave up trying to get the ball back and gave Jake a knowing smile.
“You do like her.” One of Jake’s hands palmed the top of Ethan’s head like a basketball and spun him in your direction. He gave your brother’s shoulder a push with enough momentum to get him moving forward.
“Go.” Ethan spun around facing Jake, walking backwards.
“She likes you too. You could come over for dinner tonight.” Jake shook his head.
“It’s not Saturday.” Your brother scoffed.
“You won’t get shot in the head just because it’s not a Saturday.” Jake’s own words coming back to bite him. The two guys were still bickering when they walked up.
“What are you annoying him about now Ethan?” You asked playfully. Ethan held up his hands in defense.
“Nothing! I was just telling Jake he should come over for dinner tonight.” Your heart beat picked up at the suggestion.
“And I was just telling Ethan that it’s an inconvenience to you for him to invite me last minute like that.” You smiled and dismissed him.
“Not at all! I always make a bunch of extra food. With the way you run them at practice he eats like a horse so I never know how much to make.” Jake froze not expecting you to side with Ethan so easily.
“Seeee told you! Come on!” Your brother pulled at Jake’s arm. Jake stood there looking at you with a silly smile on his face. You smiled and nodded before Jake agreed.
“Okay, if it’s really not putting you out y/n…” You shook your head no and Ethan started dragging Jake towards the parking lot. When you got to the cars your brother finally let go.
“Let’s go!” Your brother instead again and Jake laughed.
“Slow down Striker. I’m gonna run home real fast and clean up. It’s one thing sitting around for an hour after practice all sweaty, but half the day?” You laughed and Ethan rolled his eyes but nodded.
“Okay okay but hurry!” You nudged your brother’s shoulder.
“Get in the car and leave him alone.” Ethan stuck his tongue out at you and Jake turned his head to hide the smile that he cracked as your brother got in. You turned to Jake with your fingers pressed to your temples and your eyes closed as you gathered the strength to not flick your brother in the forehead again. You opened your eyes and smiled when you saw Jake again.
“Take your time, really. He needs to clean up his room anyway.” Jake laughed.
“I just need to shower and change, shouldn’t take me long.” You gave him a little nod.
“Okay then, we’ll see you in a bit.” Jake’s smile grew.
“Yes! Definitely!” You gave Jake a little wave and then got in your car. He could see you lecturing your brother and his eyes rolling in response. You flicked him in the forehead and started backing out. Jake couldn’t hold back his laughter as he got into his own car.
About an hour and a half went by before you heard someone knocking at your door. When you answered it, Jake greeted you with a smile. He was wearing baggy jeans, a clean white t-shirt, and a black zip-up hoodie. When you made eye contact you noticed the glasses he was wearing and his still damp hair from the shower he’d taken. He was breathtaking. You’d only ever seen him in joggers and shorts, which he looked amazing in no doubt, but this Jake?
“Hey! Sorry it took me so long, I was trying to get my contacts back in but finally just gave up.” He laughed and you snapped out of it.
“Oh! No! It’s totally fine, come on in.” You moved away from the door, giving Jake room to enter. He walked in and closed the door behind him.
“Smells great!” He said as he toed his shoes off by the door.
“Thanks! It’s nothing special, just spaghetti. Oh yeah, Ethan said he’s not feeling well so he’s gonna stay in his room and get some rest.” Jake knew damn well what your brother was angling at and he was gonna make him run extra laps next practice for doing this to him.
“Oh, well… if he’s not feeling good I can go…” You turned quickly. That was the last thing you wanted.
“You don’t have to go. Anyway, if you bail too I’m gonna have to eat ten tons of spaghetti by myself and I can’t eat an ounce over two tons.” Jake burst out laughing and was a little relieved you wanted him to stay. The two of you ate and talked; you about college and your major, Jake about his family and dog back home.
Eventually your conversation migrated to the couch in the living room. Soft music was playing, a bottle of wine you’d picked up for the two of you on the way home earlier opened and about half gone. Maybe that’s why Jake felt a little bolder than usual.
“I think Ethan is trying to play match maker.” He admitted as he sipped his wine. You nodded ,giggling, your cheeks a pretty shade of pink from the alcohol.
“Yea you picked up on that huh?” Jake grinned and shook his head. You sighed and sat your wine glass down on the table.
“He’s still just a kid, he doesn’t understand how these things work.” Jake looked confused.
“How what things work?” You looked down at your hands in your lap.
“How our history complicates things and how kindness can be interpreted as… more than what it is. It’s an easy mistake for someone who hasn’t seen much kindness, especially someone young like Ethan.” Jake sat his glass down and scooted closer to you, taking your hands.
“You know I don’t just do the things I do out of pity right? You do know there IS more than kindness behind what I do. When a school counselor approached the program saying there was a kid that couldn’t join because of financial issues, I didn’t know the reasons behind it. I just knew a kid needed a chance so I sponsored whoever it was.” Your head popped up and you looked at Jake shocked. It was him!
“Then I met you and Ethan that first day at tryouts and I saw how that asshole talked about both of you. I realized pretty quickly Ethan must have been the kid I sponsored.” You nodded.
“So… that was you?! The gift card, everything?” Jake shook his head confirming.
“Yea. Kindness may have been what opened the door but everything since that moment we met is because I care about you and I care about Ethan.” You didn’t know what to say. Sure you felt something growing in your heart for Jake this whole time but you didn’t dare dream that he may have felt the same. Jake pushed hair away from your face and traced his fingers down your cheek. He cupped your jaw and leaned in. You braced yourself on his leg between the two of you and leaned in also.
Your noses brushed, then your lips just barely. Just as Jake was getting ready to feel your soft lips against his, the front door to your house came slamming open, hitting the wall and knocking down a picture of you and Ethan. You both jumped, startled, and saw your parents stumbling with laughter.
They shut the door and turned around to find you and Jake sitting on the couch in disbelief. Your dad smelled the food and headed for the kitchen without a word. He started eating the left overs you’d planned on Ethan as your mom approached you and Jake.
“What’s going on here? Where’s your brother?” You rolled your eyes at her performance as a concerned mother in front of Jake.
“It’s almost midnight. He’s in bed.” She stood there looking at Jake, sizing him up.
“Who’s this?” She still talked to you like you were a child and you hated it.
“This is Ethan’s soccer coach, Jake.” Your mom let out half a laugh.
“If Ethan’s in bed why’s HE here?” Jake shifted in his seat uncomfortably. Your parents were very obviously high on something. You pinched the bridge of your nose fighting the headache creeping in.
“He came over for dinner. We were just talking. What do you care anyway?” Your mother came around the coffee table and slapped you in the face.
“You watch how you talk to me in my house, you little bitch. You think just because you’re in college you’re so much better than us. But here you are, whoring yourself out for soccer lessons.” You stood up, furious and unwilling to stay in your vulnerable position. Your dad walked in to see what the commotion was about; now that he had eaten he was ready to sleep.
“What’s going on in here?” Your dad walked over and Jake stood up quickly. You instinctively positioned yourself between your parents and Jake like you would if it were Ethan.
“Our daughter seems to be fucking Ethan’s soccer coach. I caught them just now on the couch.” You scoffed in disbelief.
“We weren’t doing anything I told you we were talking!” Your dad looked down and saw the bottle of wine. He picked it up and started drinking from it as he walked back towards their bedroom.
“I don’t give a shit who that little slut fucks.” You flinched when the door to their room slammed and PRAYED it didn’t wake Ethan up. Your mom turned back to you even more irritated than before. She poked you in the chest and Jake puffed up a little.
“Why do you even fucking come back? Me and your dad never wanted you and Ethan hates you for leaving. He says it all the time. That you left him behind and he’ll never forgive you.” Tears welled up in your eyes. You knew it was bullshit and if you were thinking clearly you’d call her on it. You knew she was just saying anything for maximum damage but she knew how to cut deep.
“Why don’t you just disappear? It’s what you do best. Go fall off the face of the earth for all I care, just get the fuck away from my couch. I’m going to sleep.” Your mom shoved you hard and had Jake not been right behind you, you would have fallen into the coffee table.
She was right. You did just disappear. You bailed on Ethan and this is what he has to live with on a daily basis because of you. The tears that had collected in your eyes streaked down your cheeks. Your mom sat down on the couch and grabbed both of the wine glasses, finishing off whatever was left in them before laying down.
“God fucking go! Fucking cry somewhere else!” You stepped past the table, grabbed your keys, and ran for the door, sobbing.
“Y/n wait!” Jake came racing out behind you. You stopped gasping for air and Jake ran into you, grabbing your shoulders so you wouldn’t fall. You were inconsolable, your hands gripping your hair as you cried uncontrollably. Jake pulled you in and hugged you tight. He wrapped himself around you as much as humanly possible.
“Breathe y/n. Come on, breathe. I’m here. It’s okay.” You fought your way out of his grip and away from him. You were screaming.
“What did I do to deserve all of this?! I try! Why is it so hard to just love me! When do I get a fucking break?! Why does it ALWAYS have to be so fucking hard?!!!” Jake stepped towards you and held your face in both of his hands, making you look into his eyes.
“You did nothing to deserve this y/n! It has nothing to do with YOU doing enough to deserve to be loved. It’s not like you made a shitty decision and ended up here. It won’t always be hard! Life dealt you a shitty fucking hand but it won’t always be hard! I promise! You’re doing the best you can with what you’ve been given!” You stood there looking at Jake, your whole body trembled, lips wobbly as tears continued falling.
“And I think you’re doing pretty fucking good considering those assholes are your parents.” You threw your arms around Jake’s neck and cried into his chest. He wrapped his arms around you and squeezed.
“I’ve got to save Ethan from this.” You mumbled into Jake’s shirt. He made you look up at him and wiped a fresh tear away.
“We will.” Jake leaned down and pressed his lips softly against yours for just a second. Like he was sealing his words with a kiss, a promise. He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against yours.
“Come back to my place for the night. You can sleep on my couch. Tomorrow morning when Ethan’s up and your parents are passed out we’ll pack what we can of his things and go. He can stay with me while you’re away at school. We’ll work out the details after we get him out and settled.” You shook your head.
“No Jake, you’ve already done too much. This isn’t your problem.” Jake traced his finger tips down your cheek and looked into your eyes.
“Please let me help. I WANT to help you both. I love him like he’s my own little brother and… and I love you too.” Your breath caught in your throat.
“I love you. Please let me help you guys… since… since I couldn’t help Sean.” You nodded, finally agreeing and Jake kissed your lips softly again, only a second longer than the last.
“Come on, let’s go.” He led you towards his car and opened the passenger door for you. You slid in and closed your door as he hopped in the driver’s seat and headed towards his apartment. The car ride was silent aside from the music coming from the radio.
You were cringing inside thinking about how Jake had just seen you. Screaming, crying, totally out of control. You didn’t usually let your parents get to you like that anymore but they hit all the right buttons tonight. Jake pulled into a parking garage and into a spot, then led you up to his place.
“It’s not big, just a studio. But I’m moving to a bigger place at the end of the summer so don’t worry about that.” Jake unlocked the door and walked in, clicking on the lights. You followed him in and shut the door. When you turned you saw him grabbing gear and clothes and tossing them into neater piles.
“Sorry…” He laughed sheepishly.
“I wasn’t expecting company or I would’ve cleaned.” He collected a few more things and then tossed them before inviting you in further.
“Uhh like I said it’s a studio so just the one room and the bathroom but I have an awesome couch. Or you can have my bed and I’ll take the couch, whatever you want.” He was rambling nervously. It was cute how flustered he was having you in his place.
“I could honestly use a shower and maybe something to sleep in?” Jake held up one finger and dashed over to a small dresser. He rummaged through it for a second and pulled out a t-shirt and pair of his shorts. He jogged back over to you and held them out.
“Here you go, the bathroom is right over there and there’s clean towels and rags in there too. If you check under the sink I think I might even have a toothbrush down there, still in the box and everything.” You took the clothes, pulling them close to your chest and then walked over to give Jake a kiss. Your lips landed on his cupids bow and as quickly as they were there, they were gone.
“Thank you.” You said softly, then headed for the bathroom. Jake stood there, his finger tips pressed against his lips where yours had just been. You had already kissed a couple times that night but it was the first time you had kissed him and something about it felt different. Better.
You stood under the hot shower for a while just letting it run down your face and body. You wanted to wash away all the horrible things your mom and dad had said that kept replaying in your head. The warm steam that surrounded you smelled like Jake, clean and something else that was just inexplicably him. It helped calm the residual turmoil in your head that the hot water didn't.
You turned off the water, dried off, and put on the clothes Jake gave you. You looked in the mirror and rolled your eyes. Nothing says sexy like swimming in fabric. You looked ridiculous in his oversized clothes but it didn’t matter. Your virginity seemed to be terminal. You were always too busy protecting Ethan to worry about anything like that, and you were sleeping separately anyway. Maybe it was for the best so you didn’t get any crazy ideas.
When you exited the bathroom Jake was finishing up laying out sheets, pillows and a blanket on the couch. You walked over and held your arms up showing him the ensemble and fully expecting him to get a good laugh out of it at the least. Instead Jake just stood there frozen with a pillow in his hands. You waited nervously for a minute and when Jake didn’t say anything you decided to just change the subject quickly.
“Do you want the bed or the couch? I’m fine with either.” Jake was still locked in place speechless. You took a step towards him.
“Jake?” He seemed to register you saying his name and you repeated your question.
“Which do you want?” He tossed the pillow and closed the rest of the distance between you. He took you in his arms and pulled you against him.
“You. God the only thing I want is you baby.” He kissed you but it wasn’t like the other kisses had been before. This kiss had fire behind it that was begging to burn out of control but Jake pulled away before it could. His hands cradled your face as he looked at you, his eyes almost black. You were gripping the front of his shirt and his chest heaved under your hands like he’d just come off the field from a play.
“You’re so fucking sexy.” He kissed down your jaw and neck, letting his hands wander. You let out a soft laugh.
“I’m swimming in this Jake.” He hummed against your neck.
“I know and all I can think about is this gorgeous body rubbing naked under MY clothes.” Jake gently palmed your ass pulling you even closer to him as he pulled the collar of the t-shirt down and sucked a mark on your shoulder. You could feel him against you through his jeans already hard. And to think you had worried he wouldn’t think you were sexy.
“Jake…” His name came out breathy and soft. He stopped kissing you and looked into your eyes waiting for your next words. He bit at his lips as his hands still wandered. I want you, take me, fuck me. He didn’t care what the words were if it ended in him making love to you.
“Jake… I’m a virgin…” His hands came off your body as soon as the word left your lips and his apologies followed right after that.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry, we don’t… I mean obviously… you don’t… you know. I’ll take the couch and… and if I made you feel pressured…” He didn’t seem like he’d ever stop so you threw your arms around his neck and pulled him down into a kiss shutting him up. You broke the kiss and Jake stood there speechless.
“You’re not pressuring me, I want to. Go to bed with me. Make love to me, Jake.” There was nothing more Jake wanted to do but he wasn’t sure.
“I’ve never been with a virgin.” He blurted out. Your face fell a little as your arms dropped away and you took a step back.
“Oh… yea I guess most guys want girls with experience.” Jake shook his head stepping closer to you again. You were misunderstanding him.
“No it’s not YOUR lack of experience I’m worried about. It’s MINE. What if I hurt you?” Your heart swelled. You held Jake’s face and kissed him. When you pulled away you rested your forehead against his.
“You won’t. You never have and I know you never will.” You braced yourself on his shoulders and jumped up, wrapping your legs around his midsection when he caught you.
“Now take me to bed, coach.” You kissed him as you wrapped your arms around his neck and thread your fingers through the hair at his nape. His mouth opened and your lips slotted together. His hands were gripping your thighs, holding you up as he walked towards his bed.
The tip of his tongue softly parted your lips so he could taste more of you. You made out like teenagers kissing for the first time, all the way to the edge of his bed. Jake crawled on with your arms and legs still wrapped around him and once you felt the mattress against your back he unhooked your arms from his neck and sat up enough to whip his shirt off and toss it away.
Fuck, he was beautiful. He leaned down, kissing you again as his hands wandered up your shirt. Goosebumps erupted across your skin where he touched you. Everything felt turned up to eleven and he hadn’t even done anything to you. He broke the kiss and looked down at where his hand was now gripping the shirt.
“Can I?” You nodded and Jake started dragging the fabric up your skin. You lifted off the bed enough to help him get it over your head and then it was just another piece of clothing cast aside by Jake. When he looked down and saw you he bit his lip again, a habit of his it seemed, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again and you were still there he knew he wasn’t dreaming. He didn’t know how he wasn’t, but he wasn’t. You were really underneath him, in his bed, chest rising and falling with your nervous breaths. Your breasts were gorgeous. They looked so soft and perfect and Jake wanted to touch them more than anything. One of his hands carefully slid up your side and cupped one. He gave an experimental squeeze, gently, as his other hand made the same journey up the other side of your body.
Every time he touched you it was like being on fire and doused in more gasoline. With both of your breasts in his hands now he leaned down and kissed you again, his lips trailing from yours down your neck. You held on to Jake’s broad shoulders as he kissed and caressed you to his heart’s content. He rutted his hips into yours and you felt like you’d been electrocuted. You couldn’t control the sound that came from you when he did it. You moaned his name out.
“Mmm Jake, fuck…” Jake loved it and rolled his hips into yours again. When he did, his cock felt even harder and hit just the right spot to get his name to spill from your lips again. Breathy and wrecked.
“MMM Jake please, I need you.” He kissed your lips again and then sat up between your legs. His hands ran up your legs and thighs, pushing the baggy soccer shorts up.
“Need to take these off baby, that okay?” Your lip was between your teeth again and you could feel your face turning pink as you nodded.
“Yea… okay…” He gave you a sweet kiss and then started crawling down your body. When he was between your legs looking up at you, you couldn’t believe it was really happening. But you could feel his lips graze your inner thighs, you could feel his fingers slip into the waist band of the shorts and tug at them. You lifted your hips, allowing Jake to slide them down your legs. You covered yourself with your hands quickly. Jake tried to get you to move them but you wouldn’t budge. Jake laughed softly at how cute you were.
“Come on pretty, I need to see you to…” Jake cocked his eyebrow at you and your face turned even redder than before.
“You first.” You demanded, thinking, for some reason, that would stop him in this situation. He smirked at you brow still arched confidently.
“You wanna see me baby?” Jake got up from the bed and started unbuckling his belt. You propped yourself up on one elbow watching him. That wasn’t what you’d meant in the moment but now you couldn’t look away. His belt jangled as he started on the button and zipper of his pants. The loose fitting jeans fell to his ankles as soon as they were undone and he stood there in his short navy blue boxers, his hard dick tenting the cotton fabric.
Your eyes flicked down and you licked your lips reflexively. Jake caught it and his ears turned pink at the thought of your lips wrapped around him. His dick throbbed. He hooked his fingers in the waist band of his boxers and pulled them down, letting them fall into the pants at his ankles. He grabbed his cock by the base and gave a soft squeeze to take away a little of the edge.
“See what you do to me, pretty? Fuck.” You could see his tip, pink and beaded with precum. He let go and started climbing back onto the bed. He was on his knees between your legs again letting you get a closer look at his cock. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t a little unsure if you could take him. You hadn’t seen enough dicks to really judge, and none in person, but it looked big. Jake ran his hands up your thighs to where your hands rested at your apex.
“See? Nothing to be shy about, baby.” You moved your hands away and they were wet from your arousal. Jake licked his lips when he saw your pussy already glistening with your juices, so wet just for him.
“God damn, you’re fucking beautiful.” You smiled, still feeling a bit shy but more at ease from Jake’s reaction to seeing you. He took one finger and softly traced up and down your slit; it tickled and you shuddered. He pulled his finger away and put it in his mouth, tasting you, more gasoline thrown on you at the sight. The way he closed his eyes like he’d just had the best bite of ice cream in his life.
“Taste good too…” He traced his finger through your folds again, this time focusing on your clit. You twitched when he started rubbing slow circles over it gently. He kissed your thighs, shushing you.
“I’ve got you baby, just relax…” He changed from circles to an up and down motion but still kept the same slow gentle pace. You could feel more of your arousal dripping from you. Jake’s fingers dipped back towards your entrance quickly to gather the fresh precum then focused on your clit again, this time, with more pressure. You moaned out.
“Mmmm Jake that’s… fuck…” Your back arched off the bed and he ran his free hand along one leg as he kissed the other soothing you.
“I know, feels good?” You nodded quickly, biting at you lip as he moved his fingers faster over the bundle of nerves. He smiled.
“Good, tell me when you cum. I wanna hear you.” You nodded again, breathless.
“Y-yes J-Jake I wi-will.” Touching yourself NEVER felt like THIS and then suddenly Jake’s tongue was tracing your clit and your legs tried to squeeze closed.
“FUCK!” You screamed out and grabbed Jake’s hair unsure of where else to hold on. It seemed to be the right choice because the sound Jake made was just more fuel to the fire. He slowly made out with your clit, kissing and licking, sucking and nibbling gently. He flicked the tip of his tongue over it and pressed it flat, dragging it up, tasting as much of you as possible. You could feel the slow build of your climax with every stroke of his tongue.
“MMgonna cum Jake… don’t stop… gonna…” You raked your fingers over Jake’s scalp with one hand and he grabbed your other, weaving your fingers together as you came on his tongue. He continued with slow tender licks, working you through it and squeezing your hand gently, grounding you through the aftershocks. When your body relaxed Jake stopped. He hovered over you again and kissed your face. You wrapped your arms around him and pulled him down.
“Jake that was… holy fuck!” He giggled as he peppered more kisses over your face.
“Yeah?” You were still catching your breath.
“Yeah! Fuck yeah, actually!” You pulled him in for a kiss and he adjusted a little to lay next to you on the bed. His fingertips traced down your body, barely touching. You wiggled in your spot needing him to touch you more and he let out a breathy laugh against your lips.
“Patience baby, we need to go slow for this next part.” Your heart was beating out of your chest suddenly but before you could get too nervous Jake’s lips were against yours again. He made out with you just like he’d done your clit not even two minutes before. Slow, like he had all the time in the world. Tongue, not just tasting you but really experiencing you. You only realized Jake’s hand had started traveling down your body again when his finger tips slipped past your still sensitive clit, gathering your slick. You jumped a little and gasped.
“Shhhhshhh, just relax yeah?” He whispered against your lips and went back to kissing you like he’d never stopped. When you melted into his lips again his fingers slid back towards your entrance. He started with one finger, slowly pushing it in little by little, pumping it gently and finding no resistance.
“Fuck, you’re so wet baby.” Jake pulled his finger out then pushed two in the same way he’d done the first. When the heel of his palm was pressing against your clit his fingers were fully inside you. He held them there a second, letting you adjust. His free hand was in your hair, gently twirling bits of it around as his lips slid across yours, nibbling your bottom lip from time to time. He slowly started pumping the two fingers inside you, curling them slightly. You tensed and Jake stopped.
“Does it hurt?!” He was about to pull his fingers out but you put your hand on his shoulder stopping him.
“No! No it doesn’t hurt, Jake. It… it feels good. Don’t stop.” He let out a sigh of relief and started slowly pumping his fingers again. You cupped his face and made him kiss you again. You could kiss him forever and it still wouldn’t be enough. He applied more pressure to your clit with his palm and started moving faster. It wasn’t long before you were gasping for air, teetering on the edge of another orgasm and unable to kiss him any longer. He pressed his face into your hair, lips to your cheek, almost breathing as heavily as you were.
“Are you gonna cum for me again? Hmm? Don’t forget to tell me pretty. Wanna hear you nice and loud for me.” The tip of his tongue traced up your cheek and he breathed you in as you nodded your head.
“Yes… fuck… I am. I am! Right there, I’m gonna cum!” He whispered to you, coaching you through iy.
“Good. Cum for me yeah? Want you to cum for me.” His thumb replaced the heel of his palm and added more pressure to your throbbing clit. As soon as he started rubbing little circles, your eyes scrunched closed and the universe exploded behind them.
“Jake! Jake! Fuck! I’m coming! Jake yes! Please don’t stop.” He kissed your lips and you broke away from it, moaning into his mouth as he eased you through another orgasm.
“Yes yes yes yes! Jake! So good!” When your grip on his shoulder loosened, he slowed down and then pulled his fingers out. You rolled on top of him and straddled his legs, his hard cock standing between the two of you. You grabbed him and he let out a hiss. You tried to let go but his big hand covered yours, stopping you. Instead he pulled your hand off and brought it to his mouth. He stuck out his wet tongue and licked the palm of your hand before putting it back on his cock.
“It’s okay, it feels good. Keep going.” You nodded and he started guiding, you stroking him with his aided lubrication. When Jake could tell you were a bit more confident his hand fell away and he let you take control.
“Fuck that feels so good baby.” You hummed watching his pretty pink tip get darker by the second. His eyes rolled back and as soon as his head hit the pillows you asked a question he’d not been prepared for.
“Can I put my mouth on it?” Jake’s head shot back up.
“Uh… I mean yea, if you want to. But only if you really want to, I don’t expect-” You leaned down and shut Jake up with a kiss, your hand still working him slowly.
“I want to, Jake. I wanna taste you too…” You went to crawl between his knees on the bed and he stopped you.
“Hold on, it’ll probably be easier like this.” Jake got up from the bed, grabbed a pillow, and tossed it down on the floor. Ever the gentleman, he extended his hand to help you off the bed and situated on your knees on the pillow. As soon as both of your hands were free you ran them down Jake’s abs and thighs making his dick twitch.
You licked one of your hands, wrapped it around his shaft, and started stroking him again. You took a small lick, just to taste first. Fuck, he tasted divine. He didn’t rush you, just enjoyed the licking and hand job that he considered himself lucky to be getting. You felt his thighs tense when you finally put the tip in your mouth.
Still, he didn’t rush you or push his dick in further. Only when you started sucking on him like a popsicle did he weave his fingers into your hair and guide you to bob your head. Once you did his hand just rested there as you kept sucking his dick, stroking what you couldn’t fit in your mouth. After a minute, you pulled off of him gasping for air. He supported your elbow and made you stand as you caught your breath.
“Baby if you keep doing that, I’m NOT gonna last.” You laughed and he guided you towards the bed. He was crawling on top of you as you slid back and then stopped.
“Oh fuck, wait a second.” He ran over to the same drawer he’d pulled the clothes from earlier and fished around. When he came back over to the bed and started crawling over you again you noticed the condom in his hand and bit your lip, nervous but excited. Jake leaned down and kissed you again.
Every time he kissed you it was like he’d carved out hours from his day to do it and was in no hurry for it to end. Everything about him relaxed you; his scent, his kiss. You were lost in his lips again when he sat up to open the condom. He rolled it down his shaft and then you were caged in under him again. His fingers toyed with your hair as he looked deeply into your eyes.
“I love you.” You could feel your heart swelling and a lump forming in your throat.
“I love you too, Jake.” You held his face in your hands and kissed him as he lined up with your entrance. He paused.
“If it hurts…” You nodded and kissed him again.
“I will. Please… I need you Jake.” He started pushing his tip in slowly. You gasped at the new sensation and he stopped. You started assuring him before he could even ask if you were okay.
“It’s okay, it doesn’t hurt. Just take it slow.” Jake nodded and kissed you. He took it slow just like you requested. When the last couple of inches were left, you hooked your legs around his waist and dug your heels into his ass, making him bottom out finally.
“FFFuhuhuck!” He laughed.
“What happened to slow?” You wrapped your arms around his shoulders and started kissing down his neck.
“Fuck me, Jake.” He gave you a slow thrust and you let out a little gasp.
“Oh my god!” Jake smirked and did it again, a little harder, and you gripped his arms tightly.
“Jake! Fuck!” He gave you a kiss and started rolling his hips into you slowly.
“You said to fuck you.” He laughed and kissed you again, unable to keep his lips away from yours for long. He kept his pace, both of you got quiet except for panting breaths. You finally broke the silence.
“You feel so fucking good, Jake.” His hand cradled your back, arching you into him more and started fucking you a little harder.
“Fuck, you too baby. So good.” He kissed you messily as his rhythm picked up.
“I’m close, Jake. Just like that! Just like that!” Sweat was beading around his hairline and his face was getting redder.
“Cum with me, baby. I’m close too, cum with me.” He reached between your bodies and started teasing your clit and you arched into him more.
“Fuck Jake, I’m coming!” He buried his face in your hair and his cock inside you. He throbbed and filled the condom as you squeezed every drop from him. Jake’s arms trembled. He struggled to hold himself over you as he came. Your nails were dug into his back and your legs shook around him.
“That’s it baby, take it all.” He cupped your cheek, forehead pressed to yours as he stilled his movements. You both stayed like that, trembling for a minute before catching your breath as Jake softened inside you. Finally he pulled out, leaving the bed to throw away the condom. When he got back to the bed you had already crawled under the covers. He crawled in with you and pulled you close. You laid your head on his chest and your eyes instantly started drooping.
“Thank you.” You said sleepily. Jake looked down at you.
“For being amazing in bed? I am pretty fantastic.” You looked up at him laughing and flicked him in the forehead.
“No dummy…” You settled back into his arms again and yawned. It was quiet for a second.
“For saving me.” Jake’s hand that had been rubbing up and down your arm stopped.
“I’m always the one doing the saving, I’ve never had someone save me.” Jake squeezed you tighter and kissed the top of your head.
“I’ll always save you.” You were both on the edges of sleep now.
“I love you, Jake.” He let out a soft sigh, eyes closing.
“I love you too, y/n.” You were both asleep before you knew it. The next morning you were jolted awake by your phone ringing. You immediately had a bad feeling. You sprang out of bed and ran over to your bag shuffling through it as Jake was starting to get up. You grabbed it and answered without even looking.
“Ethan?!” You could hear shit crashing in the background.
“Y/n, mom and dad are home. Dad’s going ape shit because there isn’t anything to eat in the house!” You could hear your dad’s voice.
“Tell that little slut to get off that asshole’s dick and come make me food! Not a god damn thing to eat in this dump!” You rolled your eyes and heard another crash.
“Are you in your room, Ethan?” Jake was standing behind, you trying to keep up with one side of the conversation.
“Yea but I swear to god if he doesn’t stop saying shit about you I’m gonna go punch him.” His temper and preteen hormones were not helping him think clearly. Wanting to and being able to are two different things and as much as Ethan may want to punch your dad, he’s still just a twelve year old boy and your dad is still a grown ass man.
“Ethan, I don’t give a shit what he thinks or says, okay? Do not leave your room, do you hear me?” You were gathering your clothes and started putting them on as Jake ran to his closet and pulled out joggers and a t-shirt. You could hear your dad over the phone again. He sounded closer, outside Ethan’s door.
“You tell that bitch she better get her ass here and make herself useful or I’ll call my friends and let them get some use out of her. Bet I could get a lot of smack for a taste of her.” Ethan snapped.
“DON’T FUCKING TALK ABOUT HER LIKE THAT YOU DISGUSTING FUCKING PIG!” You heard the door get kicked in and you jumped. It was so loud even Jake heard it.
“What the fuck did you just say to me you fucking piss ant?!” You heard a shuffle and then the line disconnected.
“Ethan?!” You looked at your phone screen and put it back to your ear again.
“ETHAN?!” You looked at Jake and the fear that was in your eyes was like a cornered animal that knew death was coming.
“W-we HAVE to go… it’s Ethan!” Was all you could get out as the tears welled up in your eyes. Jake grabbed his keys, slipped his tennis shoes on and opened the door.
“Come on, let’s go!” You ran after him, the door slamming closed behind you. Jake drove as quickly and safely as possible while breaking as few laws as possible. When he pulled up to your house he threw the car in park and got out before you could even unbuckle your belt. He opened your car door and you bolted for the front door, Jake right behind you. You could hear things crashing and yelling as you got closer. You burst through the door and found your dad hold up in the living room while Ethan threw shit at him from the kitchen.
“Fuck you fuck you fuck you!” Ethan shouted as he threw what ever he could grab.
“ETHAN!” He looked over and saw you with Jake standing behind you.
“Noona!” Your dad saw his opportunity and went for Ethan but before he could get his hands on him you ran and used your whole body as a weapon. Your dad lost his balance and went down but took you with him. He was on top of you hands immediately around your throat. Ethan ran over, kicking him as hard as he could.
“Get the fuck off her!” Jake yelled as he grabbed your dad, pulling him off of you and throwing him down. Jake kept punching your dad while Ethan kicked him until finally he stayed down. You had to pull Ethan away even after Jake had stopped. Your dad coughed and laid there trying to catch his breath, gripping his side.
“Get the fuck out of my house! Both of you! You’re not my kids! I don’t ever want to see you assholes again.” Ethan went to go after him again and you stopped him.
“With pleasure! This may be YOUR house but who’s name is on all the bills and pays them? Huh? Who’s the one that personally mails checks for mortgage payments from school?! Do you think I did that for you two? That was for ETHAN! Now that we’re out of here do you think I’ll really keep doing all that?” Your dad stood up furious. He wanted to come at you again but it was pointless with Ethan and Jake standing there and your mom still passed out on the couch. He did a double take with Jake and pointed.
“I recognize you! You’re some hot shot soccer player! I’m just gonna call you Paycheck when I sue your ass for beating me up in my own home!” You laughed.
“First step is filing a police report. You gonna call the cops? You 100% sure there’s NOTHING in this house that could get you into trouble?” Your dad glared but kept his mouth shut.
“Thought so. Ethan, go get what you need and leave what can be replaced.” Your brother ran off to his room, spread out his comforter and started throwing things in the middle of it. You stood out in the living room with Jake. Your dad shoved your mom’s legs over and sat down on the couch, lighting a cigarette.
When Ethan had everything important in the blanket he grabbed the corners, twisted them together, and flung the heavy makeshift bag over his shoulder. He didn’t even stop to take a look behind him when he walked out. As your brother came back out to the living room with his stuff, your mom started stirring from her sleep.
“What’s going on? Why are you here?” Her words bit at you.
“Don’t worry we’re leaving. Ethan, go get in the car.” Your mom stood up.
“You can’t take him.” You squared up to your mom.
“Who’s gonna stop me? Ethan, car. Now.” Your brother walked out the door and you and Jake headed out behind him.
“You think you can save him? You can’t even save yourself, you stupid bitch!” You turned back and looked her in the eye.
“I don’t have to…” You look at Jake who nodded at you knowingly. You pointed at him.
“He will.” You grabbed his hand and walked out the door, not even bothering to close it behind you. Ethan was already in the car with his stuff, smiling with a feeling of relief like he’d never felt before. Time for new beginnings. Getting three people settled in a studio apartment is difficult enough, when one is a twelve year old boy? You guys decided that Ethan got the couch while you and Jake would take the bed.
The first night Ethan made a big deal out of it. Claiming he was the matchmaker of the century but for you guys not to do it when he’s there. Jake just threw a pillow at his face and told him to go to bed. The next week the three of you fell into a natural rhythm. It was tight quarters but you made it work. You were preparing to head back to school, Jake was preparing for his move with Ethan to a new place, and Ethan had been preparing for the next big game. The last one of the summer and the last one you would see before leaving.
The day before the game Jake got an email about a roster change up for their team. Apparently the kid that played goalie for them fell off his skate board and broke his arm. He was definitely out and his replacement had already been picked. It was the son of the dickhead dad from tryouts; they were the Meijers, apparently.
Jake was furious; he hadn’t had a say in who was selected. That kid hadn’t even tried for the goalie position during tryouts, but there was nothing he could do now. He decided to break the news at dinner. You were all sitting around the coffee table; you and Jake on the couch, Ethan on the floor.
“Our goalie was hurt.” Jake said out of nowhere. Your brother looked at him worried.
“Is he okay though?” Jake nodded.
“Yeah yeah, I mean he broke his arm but he’s alive it’s nothing like that.” Your brother let out a sigh of relief.
“Jeeze you made it seem like he died, the way you said it.” Jake hoped the relief of Ethan’s friend being okay would be enough to ease the blow of what he had to tell him next.
“They gave the Meijers’ kid the spot.” Ethan froze.
“What?” Jake braced himself.
“The goalie position was open and his dad made a big enough stink about his donations to the right person, so they filled the slot with his son.” Your brother stood up throwing his hands in the air in frustration.
“What the hell! You know that dude hates me!” Jake shook his head.
“He just spews the bullshit he hears from his parents; he doesn’t really know what he’s saying.” Ethan looked at him angrily.
“He knows exactly what he’s doing! We’re not just stupid kids! He torments me constantly and everyone just acts like they don’t see it.” Jake stood up, trying to calm Ethan down.
“I know you’re not a stupid kid but my hands are tied man-” Your brother interrupted him.
“Great, just great! The whole summer staying out of trouble out the window with our last game!” He stormed off to the bathroom. The only room in the apartment he could get privacy. Jake ran his hand through his fluffy hair and and slumped back down on the couch next to you.
“The thing is… I don’t like it anymore than he does. Picking that kid not only means upsetting Ethan but it means we passed over another player that was meant for the position When the Meijer boy tried out… well… he wasn’t good. Let’s just say that.” You smiled and poked his cheek.
“I’ll talk to Ethan, it’ll be okay.” Jake gave you a weak smile but still had a pout. You kissed his pushed out bottom lip as Ethan came out of the bathroom.
“Ugh GROSS! I sleep there!” You threw another pillow at your brother.
“I just gave him a kiss it’s not like he’s got me fifty shades in here.” Ethan made a face like you just made him smell sour milk.
“Ew please stop talking. Can I please go to sleep now!?” You and Jake got off the couch and let the moody adolescent get his rest. The two of you got in bed quietly talking about upcoming plans until you fell asleep. The next morning was game day. Just like for tryouts, you woke up and got Ethan with a big breakfast and started coffee for Jake. Once everyone was up, food eaten, and gear collected you all were out the door with zero time to spare thanks to the cramped living quarters. You got to the warm up before the game about 5 minutes late. Jake parked the car and opened his door, leg half out when he turned to you.
“I gotta hurry over there but I’ll see you both out there okay?” You smiled, nodding as he gave you a quick kiss. Jake ruffled Ethan’s faded blue hair and your brother swatted at him. Long gone was the shock and awe; now Jake was just his big sister’s annoying boyfriend. Deep down was still shock and awe though, deep deep down. Jake grabbed his stuff, shut his door, and ran towards the field where a few other coaches and the higher ups from the organization already were. You turned to your brother in the back seat as he got his stuff together.
“Hey… whatever that little dingleberry does or says… just ignore it okay? We won’t let mom and dad make our lives miserable anymore right?” Ethan nodded and you smiled.
“You’re god damn right! So don’t let that asshole make you miserable either.” Ethan laughed and you opened your car door.
“Come on, let’s get to the field before Jake plays your position.” You and Ethan got out of the car and before you could take a step you felt lanky arms around you. You hugged Ethan back and noticed he was officially taller than you. You fought off tears and squeezed him tighter, waiting for him to break the hug first like you always did. When he finally let you go you grabbed some of his gear from him.
“Come on hotshot, I’ll race you.” You acted like you were taking your mark and Ethan followed suit.
“Onetwothreego!” You said quickly. You ran half way through and Ethan started after you.
“CHEATER!” He yelled after you. Far closer than you thought he’d be honestly. Next thing you knew he was zooming past you. Suddenly your little brother had surpassed you in more than just height. When you caught up, he was leaning against the bleachers like he’d been waiting an eternity.
“I thought we were racing.” He said with all the sass he could give. You rolled your eyes.
“I let you win.” He laughed as you were still catching your breath.
“Yea, sure you did.” You pushed him towards the pitch as he kept making fun of you. You stopped him right before you split up to go to the bleachers.
“You’re here to back up your team, the one on the field and the one off. They’ve got your back just like Jake and I do. Anything else… doesn’t matter.” Ethan nodded. You gave him one more hug and then pushed him off toward the bench where Jake and the rest of the team were. You took your seat on the bleachers and suddenly felt like eyes were on YOU.
You turned and scanned the crowd in the stands and sure enough dickhead dad, Mr. Meijer, was shooting you his standard look of daggers. You ignored him just like you’d told Ethan to do to his son and focused on the field. Jake had the boys huddled around him and he was giving them a pep talk.
“Okay, when life jukes you?” The boys all replied.
“Bend the ball.” Jake shook his head.
“Right! We got juked by life but it’s okay because we know how to bend the ball and work with what life puts in our way. Meijer is in the goal, everyone else’s positions stay the same. We didn’t get to practice with this line up but that’s okay because all the pieces of a team come together to make each other better.” Jake stood up and the boys stood up too.
“When life jukes you?!” He said loudly and the boys replied.
“Bend the ball!” Jake tossed his clipboard aside, getting more hyped.
“I said! When life jukes you?!” The boys were all bouncing like pogo sticks around him bumping shoulders.
“BEND THE BALL!” He clapped his hands together.
“That’s right! Let’s bend that ball today! Hands in! Team work on 3!” The boys all put their hands in. Ethan looked up and across from him was the Meijer boy. When no one could see he gave Ethan the finger. Your brother rolled his eyes and just tried to focus on Jake’s speech.
“1, 2, 3, Teamwork!” They all yelled with him before breaking and running to their places on the field. Everyone was in their own spaces stretching, getting ready for the referee to start the game, when the Meijer kid motioned, getting your brother’s attention. As soon as it worked he gave your brother the finger again.
Your brother looked around to see if anyone saw, but everyone else’s eyes were busy somewhere else. He looked back again and saw Meijer laughing, knowing no one ever saw the horrible shit he did to your brother. With the blow of a whistle, the game started. The first bit had been fairly evenly matched, both teams playing well but making no goals.
At the first chance he could, Meijer saved a goal and then he launched the ball straight at your brother’s head. It bounced off hard and your brother glared at him, clearly pissed. No one saw so Meijer gave him the finger again and Ethan just blew it off. It’s just this one game, he thought. But then every chance Meijer got after that, your brother was hit in the head with the soccer ball.
Your brother was getting angrier. How was no one seriously seeing him do this? Ethan turned, glaring at him again and shot him a warning look. The next time the ball was in Meijer’s hands it went sailing at your brother’s head again, hitting him in the face this time. Everyone saw that. Meijer ran over like he was helping Ethan up. Ethan’s eyes were watering so he wasn’t sure who was helping him until he heard Meijer’s voice.
“I heard they only let a crack baby on the team because your sister lets the coach put it in her butt.” Ethan pushed him away and got up on his own. He stepped up to Meijer and you were standing from your seat, watching nervously.
“Don’t do it, don’t do it…” You chanted quietly to yourself.
“What did you say about my sister?” Your brother asked, furious. Meijer leaned in so only Ethan could hear him. Jake was already making his way across the field.
“I said your sister is a slut that likes it in the ass.” Ethan reared back and punched the Meijer kid in the face. When he went down Ethan got on top of him and hit him again. Thankfully after the first hit, Jake started sprinting and got there quickly. The other coaches, the higher ups, you, and Mr. Meijer went running towards the commotion on the field. Mr. Meijer was the loudest voice walking up with the rest of the coaches and staff.
“I told you that boy was trouble-“ Ethan interrupted, pointing at the other boy.
“He hit me in the fucking face with a ball.” You grabbed Ethan’s arm and tugged him closer to you.
“Watch your mouth!” He rolled his eyes and Mr. Meijer laughed off your brother’s reasoning.
“It’s a game with a ball that flies around. Sometimes people get hit. It doesn’t mean you act like an animal and attack the person.” The Meijer kid walked up holding his eye.
“I was trying to help him up and say sorry and he just hit me.” Ethan pointed at him.
“You’re fucking lying you-“ Jake stepped in front of him.
“You’re NOT helping…” Jake turned to the boy’s dad.
“It was all just a misunderstanding…” Ethan pulled his arm out of your grip.
“NO it wasn’t. I was gonna beat the shit out of him becau-“ Mr. Meijer interrupted your brother.
“See he admits it! I’d expect no less from a junkie’s kid. Probably born addicted to god knows what.” Jake stepped up to the guy calmly.
“Stop talking.” Mr. Meijer pointed over to the big wigs of the organization standing there.
“You there, you know how much I donate to this organization, I demand this boy, who’s clearly had his brain damaged by drugs, be thrown out and banned.” Before they could say a word Jake turned to them.
“Is this how this organization works? Pay enough money and you can throw your weight around however you want? This program is supposed to be for kids like Ethan. If you’re so hell bent on throwing him out, it would only be fair if the other boy was also banned. If someone can just buy their way in and treat people like this, maybe I don’t want my name attached to the organization.” That got the attention of the higher up’s. Since Jake joined them the interest in their soccer program had gone through the roof. One man’s donation wasn’t worth losing Jake Sim over. They huddled, discussed and made a decision.
“Both boys will be ejected and banned.” You felt your heart drop. That was it. Ethan was done at school now. Mr. Meijer started complaining immediately.
“You can’t just make that decision so flippantly right here on the field. If my son did something wrong to be banned then show me the proof. All he did was play a game and try to practice good sportsmanship!” The management looked around.
“Did anyone else see him do or say anything?” Everyone shook their heads no. He was too careful for that.
“Well in that case-“ Jake stopped him.
“Give me a day before you make any decisions and I’ll get right back to you.” They nodded agreeing.
“Okay, Mr. Meijer, you and your son and Ethan and his guardian will meet at our offices tomorrow afternoon. We’ll make our final decision there.” Everyone nodded and the crowd started to disperse. As everyone turned to walk away, the Meijer boy gave your brother the finger one more time, like someone that just HAD to have the last word. Your brother rolled his eyes and ignored it. He was angry, not just at that asshole and his dad, but at himself. He’d fucked up again because of his temper.
The car ride back to the apartment was silent, not even the radio was on. Ethan hated it more than the lectures he usually got. When you all got back home Ethan tossed his stuff down and you turned towards him.
“What were you thinking?!” Your brother sighed.
“I wasn’t, okay?! I wasn’t thinking! He’d been throwing that ball at my head for half the damn game and then he hit me in the face and told me-“ Jake and you had only seen the one. You didn’t know what Ethan was talking about and you interrupted him.
“HE’S A DICK HEAD! WHO FUCKING CARES WHAT HE CALLED YOU!? DO YOU REALIZE YOU JUST RUINED YOUR LIFE!?” You had never yelled at him like that before. Jake walked over and put a hand on your shoulder trying to calm you. Ethan felt a lump forming in his throat.
“He said I only got my spot on the team because you’re a slut and Jake screws you in the ass and I snapped. I know you’re disappointed in me, I know I fucked up my life, I’m sorry. Maybe I am just like mom and dad.” You stood there dumb struck and felt tears fighting their way to the surface. You reached for him.
“Etha-“ He pulled away when you tried to grab his arm and ran for the bathroom. Jake called after him.
“Ethan… wait…” The bathroom door closed firmly behind him. You looked at Jake, your bottom lip wobbling. Jake pulled you in and wrapped his arms around you, burying his face in your hair.
“It’ll be okay, we’ll figure it out.” You wrapped your arms around his waist and squeezed.
“I’m supposed to leave the day after tomorrow. If I don’t get there my scholarship is forfeited. And not for the semester or the year, I mean completely. How are we supposed to figure it out before then?” Jake’s hands rubbed up and down your back.
“I promise no matter what, Ethan will be fine and you’ll get to school on time. You trust me?” You nodded against his chest.
“Yes.” You said softly and Jake squeezed you again.
“Okay I need to go meet up with a friend for a minute. I’ll grab something for dinner on the way home. Just relax for a bit okay?” He kissed the top of your head and you nodded as you held onto him tighter. He laughed.
“I need my torso if I’m leaving, babe.” You sighed and gave him one more squeeze.
“Okayyy…” It was Jake’s turn to kiss your pouty lip. He held your cheeks in both hands and gave you two quick kisses with his plump puckered lips that covered yours.
“I won’t be long, promise. I love you.” He let go of your face and scooped up his keys.
“I love you too.” Jake winked at you and headed for the door. About two minutes after he left, Ethan came out of the bathroom. He stopped in his tracks when he saw you on the couch scrolling on your phone. You looked up at him, you didn’t look angry anymore.
“Oh… uh… I thought you and Jake left…” You shook your head and set your phone down.
“No, Jake had to do something. He’s bringing dinner home after.” Your brother nodded. After the silence stretched between you an uncomfortable amount of time you decided to say something. Ethan had the same thought and you both spoke at the same time. You both paused and you gestured towards him to go first.
“You first.” You wanted him to feel heard, more than anything. What you had to say could wait.
“I just… I know I’m a disappointment. You’ve carried everything for so long. More than I realized; the house, the bills. I had to do one stupid thing you asked and I let you down. I just couldn’t let him say stuff like that about you. He could say whatever he wanted to say about me but not you.” You could feel the tears welling up again. You patted the couch next to you.
“Come here.” Ethan walked over and sat beside you.
“You didn’t let me down and you could never be a disappointment to me. I shouldn’t have said you ruined your life. That’s not true, life is just harder without an education and I don’t want that for you because you aren’t like mom and dad. Not at all Ethan, do you hear me?” He nodded tears in his eyes.
“I love you, we’ll figure it out okay?” Ethan hugged you and you squeezed him back tightly.
“I love you too, noona.” You both held on to each other until he let go first. He had a curious look on his face as he let you go.
“Why do you always do that? Make me let go?” You smiled, you didn’t think he’d realized you did it.
“Cause hugs fill up your cup and I want to make sure you always get yours full. So I let you hold on as long as it takes. It’s gotten shorter over the years but…” Ethan threw his arms around you again and squeezed, holding onto you for dear life. You gasped a little surprised and then held on as tears streaked your face.
Jake returned about an hour and a half later, with pizza and a DVD. You all sat and ate while watching a sitcom your brother had picked until it got late and it was time for bed. Jake reassured Ethan everything would be okay again before he turned in for the night. After the day he had, it wasn’t long before he was snoring on the couch. You and Jake got into bed and he pulled his laptop out.
“Jake it’s late, you should rest.” He cradled your head and kissed your temple.
“You go ahead and get some sleep, I just have to check this real quick and then I’ll lay down.” You put your hand around the back of his neck, pulled him close and kissed him. You pulled away and looked at him for a minute.
“Okay… goodnight. I love you.” He gave you another quick kiss.
“I love you too baby.” You curled up on your side away from Jake on his computer. He was worried the light would keep you up but he’d only gotten as far as putting the DVD in and opening the video player when he heard the deep breaths of you sleeping. He looked over and your shoulders rose and fell slowly.
Just as promised, as soon as he’d watched the DVD he put aside the laptop, laid down, and pulled you close. You melted into him and he fell asleep… with a plan.The next morning during breakfast Jake told you he had to hurry out and that he needed to do something that could help Ethan later that day.
“I’ll be back as quick as I can but no matter what, make sure Ethan gets to that meeting!” You nodded, confused, and he gave you one more kiss before bolting out the door. Ethan got up, got dressed, and ate. He was watching tv while you watched the clock. Jake had texted you a few times, the last of which he said he wouldn’t make it on time to drive together but that he’d meet you there. About thirty minutes before the meeting you and Ethan piled into your car.
“Where’s Jake?” He asked you nervously.
“He’s meeting us there.” You said, cool as a cucumber. Inside you were just as nervous but you needed Ethan calm. You and your brother got to the office about ten minutes early. You were led into a conference room that had been set aside for your meeting.
The men that ran the organization, who were making the decision, were already seated. And at the end of the table you saw Ms. Kim from the school. What was she doing here? Who called her? This was not good. As you and Ethan took your seats, Mr. Meijer and his son came into the room arrogance just radiating from them.
“Oh, Ms. Kim! You got my message! I’m so glad you could make it.” You rolled your eyes. Of course he called her. Fucking prick. Ms. Kim half nodded, half waved him off and the Meijers took their seats. The man closest to you turned and smiled.
“We’re just waiting on Jake to start.” Mr. Meijer scoffed.
“He’s late. My time is valuable, let’s get this done!” The man’s smile fell as the other organizers agreed. Before any of them could say anything, Mr. Meijer shot up out of his seat and pointed his sausage finger at your brother.
“This boy has been terrorizing my son for months and now he’s trying to drag him down with him and I will not stand for it. Ms. Kim can show you all the times this little delinquent has harassed my son at school!” The men looked over to Ms. Kim whose lips were pulled tightly.
“I do have Ethan’s file here but the only people allowed to look at it are his sister, him, and myself.” Mr. Meijer scoffed, about to interrupt, when she continued.
“What I can TELL you is there is a history of issues between the two boys, some resulting in physical altercations that appear provoked by Ethan.” Your stomach was in your throat. Ethan was on the edge of his seat.
“That’s not true. He always starts it, I-” Mr. Meijer interrupted your brother.
“No one asked you to speak. Sit there and let the grown ups talk.” You turned to Mr. Meijer.
“Don’t talk to him that way. If he says YOUR son starts it, I believe him.” You turned to Ms. Kim.
“Since I’m one of the people allowed to look at that file, may I?” She nodded and handed it over. You flicked over it quickly seeing the same name again and again, followed by similar descriptions of these ‘altercations started by your brother’. You threw it down in front of you on the table.
“I was never told ALL these happened with the same boy, it says on most of these that the altercation was already happening when staff approached them. So how do they KNOW Ethan started them? Just because that boy said so? Why’s his word better than my brother’s?” Mr. Meijer let out a huff of air.
“I think my son’s word is better than the word of a junkie’s mistake.” You shot up from your seat ready to absolutely tear into the dick head when Jake came bursting through the door out of breath with another man trailing behind.
“I’m so sorry I’m late!” Meijer turned to Jake pointing at him.
“You’re late, you shouldn’t be in here! Get out!” Jake glared but ignored him.
“I’ve got proof.” Jake spit out and everyone shut up and looked at him.
“You were late, you shouldn’t be allowed in here! He’s only on the team in the first place because you and his sister are together.” Jake turned to Mr. Meijer and pointed.
“I met y/n and Ethan at tryouts; she and I didn’t start a romantic relationship until well after that. And who I date is not the business of you or the organization. And frankly I’m having serious concerns with continuing this partnership.” The organizers all scrambled trying to save face.
“Well Jake’s here and says he has proof, I think he deserves to present it at the very least.” Mr. Meijer went to complain and another one of the men interrupted him this time.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Meijer.” He grumbled and sat down as Jake bowed towards the organizers.
“Thank you so much. There’s a few of the boys on the team I’ve been very impressed with as you know, Ethan being one of them. So yesterday I had a friend of mine on the side lines taking video of the boys. The plan was to send the video to the local travel team and get the boys a chance to try out. That club picks 3 boys every year and gives them full scholarships to whatever college they get accepted to.” Your jaw dropped. You had no idea he’d even set that up for your brother, he did so much for you both quietly. You looked over at Ethan who’s mouth was open in shock too and then you looked at the Meijer boy and he looked nervous.
“Unfortunately I didn’t get a full game to send, obviously, since we had to forfeit after the fight, but I still had my friend burn me a copy so I could get any usable clips.” So that’s what he’d been watching in bed last night. Jake pulled out the DVD and played it on the tv in the conference room. He grabbed the controller, fast forwarded for a bit, and then paused.
“I’m glad I did because it gave me the chance to see this…” He hit play just in time for everyone to see the Meijer boy take the soccer ball and launch it right at your brother’s head. Everyone gasped when they saw it, except the kid and his dad. Jake hit fast forward again until he stopped at another clip.
“And this…” Bam the ball sailed out of the boy’s hands and hit your brother again, very clearly on purpose. Jake fast forwarded again until the next cliche wanted to show.
“And this.” He pressed fast forward again and the ball blasting your brother in the face flashed by but Jake didn’t pause it until the Meijer boy was ‘helping’ your brother up.
“And we all saw the one he took to the face but it was when I got to this part that I needed my friends’ help. I could see the Meijer boy was saying something but the camera was too far to pick it up, so I asked my buddy if he could clean it up so I could hear him and he said there was no need. He heard what the kid said.” The dickhead dad looked at his dickhead son and the boy was white as a ghost.
“Hey Hoonie, can you tell them what you told me?” The man that ran in with Jake, Sunghoon, who he affectionately called Hoonie, walked over.
“Uh yea… sure. Firstly I’d like to say I’m sorry for the language I’m about to use.” You knew what he was going to say before he said it, Jake too.
“Uh so I was recording and he leaned down and I thought he was helping him you know? Then I swear I heard him call Ethan a crack baby and then he said his sister y/n was…” Sunghoon looked at Jake unsure and Jake nodded.
“He said y/n was a slut that liked it in her… uhh… well… I think you know where I’m going with this.” Everyone looked shocked and Mr. Meijer suddenly looked as nervous as his son. He stammered.
“Well… uh… how can we be sure that’s what he said, just because this random guy says?” Jake pointed at the screen.
“If you all could take a look at the screen. As I said, I could see him saying something but I didn’t know what. It’s funny… once someone tells you what someone said and you look back, it’s pretty obvious its exactly what they said. Jake pressed play and sure enough it was simple to make out the words exactly how Sunghoon had heard them. Mr. Meijer was gearing up to raise hell but everyone was frankly done with him. One of the men from the organization, one that had been completely silent up until that point, stood up.
“I’ve heard about enough out of you, Mr. Meijer. Sit there and shut up!” Mr. Meijer’s mouth was sealed. The man that had been doing most of the talking stood up now.
“Given the evidence presented by Jake and his associate I think we have no choice but to ban the Meijer boy from ever participating in our organization.” He turned to Ethan.
“Ethan, we don’t condone your choice in physical violence…” Your brother grabbed your hand and squeezed it tightly under the table as he held his breath, ready to take the blow of disappointment when he said he was out too.
“But we do condone standing up for the people we love. You’ll be allowed to stay in the program.” You and Ethan both jumped up and hugged and Jake ran over, wrapping his arms around both of you. Mr. Meijer and his son stood up to walk out and Ms. Kim stopped them.
“Excuse me, Mr. Meijer? Be expecting a call from the school. We’ll need to discuss the grounds of your son’s expulsion.” He turned back around, furious, and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. Before you left Ms. Kim talked to you too. She told you, given the evidence that Ethan wasn’t the antagonist in the fights, the school would allow him to stay but would probably want to hold him back a year, just so he could catch up. He agreed immediately. Ethan swore to himself right then he would do whatever it took. Because you did for him and he owed it to you and himself to not let your sacrifices be meaningless.
You were in the kitchen, music playing quietly, cooking for two. Ethan was out with friend’s for the night. Since it was just the two of you, Jake wanted to take advantage of it. He was hungry but not for the meal you were preparing. He walked into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around your midsection from behind, kissing the side of your head. You hummed.
“Hmm, these are done. As soon as the roast in the oven is done, dinner is finished.” You clicked the burner off and turned around in Jake’s arms. You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him. It was meant to be a quick kiss before setting the table but Jake’s lips parted and slotted against yours. Before you knew what was happening his tongue was in your mouth and his hands gripped your ass, pulling you closer. You broke the kiss and he started kissing down your neck, backing you against the counter and caging you in. You braced against his shoulders laughing.
“Jake! The food is gonna burn and I need to set the table.” Jake pulled away quickly.
“Don’t worry! I can set the table.” He lifted you, making you wrap your legs around him. When your bodies met again you could feel his hard cock pressing into your clothed core already. You squeaked and playfully smacked him.
“Put me down you animal!” Jake walked you over to the dining room table and sat you on it, standing between your legs.
“Just getting dinner on the table babe.” His palm rested against your sternum making you lay back on the table. He got low and started bunching up the long boho skirt you had on. He put his head under the fabric and started kissing up your thighs.
“The roast is burning Jake.” Your words came out breathy. Jake whispered against your skin.
“Only thing I see burning is you baby.” He was just getting ready to slide your panties to the side and get a taste of you when the front door to the apartment flung open and your brother walked in.
“Hey, what the fuck are you burn-“ Ethan turned and immediately shut his eyes when he saw the two of you on the table.
“Oh fuck, oh gross guys! WE EAT THERE!” You and Jake quickly scrambled, fixing your hair and clothes as Ethan stood in the kitchen doorway. It was the end of his senior year and he filled it now. Long gone was the blue tinted hair that hung in his face; now he wore his natural color much shorter, easier on the field.
“You know we haven’t lived in a studio apartment in years! You could do it in your room!” You ran to the oven to pull out the roast that was going to be dry but edible. Jake pointed at Ethan as he walked over.
“You were supposed to be out with the guys for the night!” Ethan put up his hands like he’d been caught in a robbery.
“Soooorry for coming HOME!” You tossed down your mitts, turned around, and leaned against the counter Jake had just pressed you up against.
“Why ARE you home?” He walked over and picked at the vegetables in the pan on top of the stove.
“Well…” He chewed the first bit and picked another piece up.
“Most of the guys got accepted to the same university so we’re all gonna be on the same team next year anyway. I’ll have time to hang out with those guys everyday, but I won’t get to see you and Jake so I figured it could just be an ‘us’ night. I know we don’t get to have them as much anymore.” You turned back towards the counter so you brother wouldn’t see the tears rimming your eyes. You took a deep breath and turned back towards him straight faced.
“Yea okay… I guess we can let you hang out with us or whatever.” Your brother pushed you and you fell into Jake. You pretended like you were gonna punch him and he held up his hands in defense again. You pointed your finger at him, a faux stern look on your face.
“Go get another plate!” Ethan walked over to the cabinet with the plates and opened it.
“Fine, but I’m eating in the living room! I refuse to sit at that table until it has been sterilized or burned.” You rolled your eyes and took his plate from him, scooping food onto it. In the past, when you were in a pit of despair, you’d think of what the future could look like for you and Ethan. If only you now, could tell you back then, that you’d be married to the man that saved you when no one else did, and that Ethan was going off to college to play soccer with a full scholarship you’d think you were just being kind to yourself. Saving yourself the pain of the truth, but those would only be footnotes of the joyful parts of your life now.
You passed Ethan’s plate to Jake for him to put a dry piece of roast on and suddenly arms that used to be lanky but had now filled out were around you. You twisted around and hugged your brother back. You both just stood there, and stood there AND STOOD THERE. Finally for the first time in as long as you could remember, you broke the hug. You laughed confused.
“What are you doing you goof? You know you always let go first!” He shrugged.
“I just wanted to make sure your cup had extra until I came back home.”
Genre: meet cute, pre-relationship, getting together
Summary: You get all sorts of folks coming through your reptile store. From nervous parents indulging an excited child, to long-time reptile parents needing new supplies, you'd just about seen it all.
So when an excitable man comes in looking to make sure he has everything he needs before he gets his new lizard, you're happy to help as usual.
Yet... he won't leave your mind, and he keeps coming back to visit. (Is he having the same feelings as you?)
Word Count: 4.8k
A/N: FINALLY I've written something for each of the boys AHH I'm so excited. Richard really inspired me for this one. I'm so happy for her, she's gonna live the best life I know it.
⁽ᵈᶦᵛᶦᵈᵉʳ ᵖᶦˣᵉˡ ᵃʳᵗ ᵇʸ ᵐᵉ⁾
(writing masterlist)
Your pet store was your pride and joy. It was small, but it was staying afloat, and that's what mattered.
You'd been passionate about reptiles and amphibians since you were a little kid. You learned everything you knew from your uncle, who also raised snakes and lizards. Anything you didn't know, you read books or watched videos about.
So after finishing university, with a zoology major (focused on herpetology) and a business minor, your goal had always been to own your own shop. You’d been working at a local pet store during school and for a few months after graduation, too.
That was, until a perfect little part of a building came open for rent.
It was small, cozy even, but it’s exactly what you had in mind when you thought about your future store.
Your uncle ended up giving you a late “graduation gift” to help you with the downpayment for the location and the stuff you’d need within it.
It had taken months to build it up to what you wanted it to be, and honestly it still didn’t feel fully finished, but you finally felt secure enough to open it.
You’d named it “Tales of Scales” and it was your pride and joy.
Well, next to Croissant of course.
You blinked, pulling yourself out of your reminiscing. You couldn’t believe it’d been a full year since you’d fully opened and you were still here.
It had been a bit of a slow day so far, but it usually was in the middle of the week. Some part of you still debated if you should even be open as often as you were, but considering you only had one other employee and half the power had to stay on anyway when you weren’t here to keep all the tanks warm and running, it really didn’t make much of a difference.
Plus, you’d have to come in anyway to clean the tanks and feed the animals who needed it, so why not just be open while you were at it?
Croissant, your bearded dragon, was currently resting on your shoulder. He had a perch on the main check out counter with a pathway that led back to his main enclosure, located just behind the desk. He loved the attention he got when customers came in. If he could spend all day sun bathing or being petted, he would.
You hummed softly to yourself as you looked back at your computer screen, double checking your inventory for the upcoming month. There were some new snake treats you’d seen advertised on Instagram recently, and you were debating if you should add them to your shelves or not.
The soft sound of the door opening pulled you away from the computer screen. You glanced up and saw two men, about your age if you had to guess, enter.
You gave them a small smile and bow. “Hello, welcome in. Let me know if you need help with anything.”
They both gave you a quiet greeting in return before talking to each other as they browsed through the shelves near the entrance.
You glanced back at your computer, glancing up at them periodically to make sure they were still doing well. Croissant was still vibing on your shoulder, completely content snuggled into your body heat.
The two eventually made their way to some of the enclosures near you. You were very particular about the selection of live animals you had available at your store. You made sure they were always healthy and had plenty of room to be happy. Most of them you acquired from breeders who you had connections with, normally when they had excess that weren’t already claimed for. You also weren’t afraid to help connect customers to the right person if they were looking for a critter that you didn’t currently have in person.
“Oh!” You heard one of them exclaim softly. You glanced over and saw they were standing in front of one of the gecko’s cases.
The one who’d spoken was the excited one who gave you the urge to pinch his cheeks. He was smiling at the other boy as he pointed at the enclosure. “This one is like the one I’m getting!”
“Is that how big they get?” The other asked, bending over just slightly so he could peer through the glass easier.
“That one’s full grown,” you piped up, causing both men to look at you. “She’s pretty average size, so that’s about what you can expect.”
The excited one nodded eagerly, glancing at the other man. “Perfect size, right?”
“So you’re getting a crested gecko?” You asked curiously.
He looked back at you and you swore you saw a slight blush dusting his cheeks. “Uh, yeah! I’ve always liked lizards and stuff and so I decided to finally get one.”
You nodded. “I get it, I also like lizards and stuff,” you teased lightly.
The other boy snorted and the excited one’s blush grew exponentially. You decided to take it easy on him, though. You didn’t want to scare off a potential long-term customer.
“What all have you bought for them so far?” You prompted gently.
He brightened up at that. “Oh! I have the tank at home and a heating lamp for it already. I wanted to buy some of the decor in person though, so I looked up stores near me and I found this one!” He smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t even know this place existed or I would’ve come here sooner, I think.”
The other boy raised an eyebrow. “This is practically your cat cafe Sung-ah.”
The excited one (Sung?) looked like he was about to protest when he looked at you and his eyes widened.
Oh he finally spotted Croissant.
“Oh my gosh,” he breathed, eyes full of wonder. “On your shoulder- is that a bearded dragon?”
You gave a small shrug to gesture to him. “Yes it is. This is Croissant, the unofficial, official store mascot.” You glanced back at the boys. “You can come hold him if you want.”
You didn’t offer Croissant to everyone. There was a sign under his perch, actually, that gave strict instructions to not lift him up without an employee’s permission followed by an explanation of how to pet him safely (with one to two fingers, down his back, and to not poke his face).
“Seriously?” He asked near reverently.
You nodded. “He’s a chill guy. He won’t mind.”
The guy scurried over and stopped in front of you. If he was a dog, though he gave off squirrel vibes honestly, he’d be vibrating with excitement.
“What’s his name?” He asked.
You slowly moved your hands up to scoop up Croissant and hold him out to the boy, who gently held his hands out. “This is Croissant. He’s 8 years old.”
Croissant huffed as he was moved off of his warm perch. He looked up at the man holding him and blinked before shifting to start crawling up his arm, deciding he wanted to be on someone’s shoulder, even if it wasn’t yours.
The guy yelped, but thankfully didn’t flail. You laughed. “Sorry about him. He’s very stubborn. He just wants to sit on your shoulder like he was on mine.”
The guy watched him with wide eye wonder, not even looking at you as he replied breathlessly. “Yeah, no, that’s fine. He can do whatever he wants.”
“Are all… lizards this friendly?” The other guy asked, clearly trying to remember what you’d called Croissant but giving up.
You shrugged. “Yes and no, depends on their parents’ personalities a little bit, and species does matter some, too. Bearded dragons are generally a very friendly option for people. I recommend them for those who have kids because they’re also a bit bigger, too, which makes them a little sturdier.
“Just like other pets, though, socialization is important if you’re getting a young reptile. The more often they have positive interactions with people, the less stressed they’ll be and many will even enjoy being around people,” you explained.
“I’m gonna have everyone come and hold her when I get her,” the excited one said, looking at the other guy.
The other guy laughed. “Maybe she could come to the studio with you.”
The excited one gasped. “Oh my god, do you think she could? I bet she could fit in my pocket!”
“You could maybe harness train her,” you suggested.
The excited, future-reptile owner looked at you. “What’s that?”
You leaned down behind the counter to grab Croissant’s harness. You placed it on the counter to show him. “We don’t carry a ton of these in stock, because not a lot of average reptile owners want them, but I do have a source if you’re interested.” You gestured toward the door where a sign was hanging by the entrance. “All friendly reptiles are welcome in our store as long as they’re safely contained in some way, and that includes being attached to a harness. This one is Croissant’s.”
“And he wears it?” The other boy asked.
You nodded. “I mean, he was unsure at first, but what pet isn't?” You shrugged. “Now he puts it on no fuss. He likes going on walks.”
“Should I get one now then?” The excited one asked. His eyes reminded you of boba with how wide and innocent they looked. “Or should I wait until she's full grown? Is it ever too late to train them for it?”
“When are you getting her?” You asked, tilting your head.
“In a little over a week,” he replied.
“Just bring her in then and I can help you out if you want,” you suggested. “Not right away, if you want to give her time to settle in first. I promise she doesn't need to be in a harness day one, or even month one, in order to eventually get used to one.”
He nodded along, still looking at you with his wide, excited eyes.
“So,” you said, stepping out from behind the counter, “want to get some stuff for her enclosure?”
“Yeah!” He replied eagerly.
“Great, how big is the tank?” You asked as you started walking towards one of the shelves.
“Oh- um, will Croissant be okay like this?” He asked, still rooted in place.
You nodded. “Yeah I walk around with him on my shoulder all the time,” you turned to keep walking, “but if at any point he makes you uncomfortable, or you just want to be relieved of your perch duties, let me know.”
“I don't mind,” he replied softly before scurrying to catch up with you.
So as it turned out, the future gecko owner's name was Jisung and the friend he had with him was Minho. He ended up purchasing two nice branches for her to climb on, a dome shelter, a water dish, and a starter plant for his tank. You walked him through basic setup and even gave him one of the pamphlets you had printed out for all new reptile owners.
“I'm sure you know some of this already, but I always find having a reference to double check myself makes me feel better when I'm doing something new,” you explained as you slipped it into his bag.
“No, yeah, I appreciate it,” Jisung said, his adorable blush coming back.
“I want to see her once you get her,” you told him as you put his receipt into the bag. “Even if it's just you coming in and showing me a picture.”
“I'll be back, I promise,” he said as he scooped up the bag. “Thanks for all your help today.”
You smiled. “It's my pleasure. I'm always happy to help a new reptile owner. Sounds like you're gonna give her a good home.”
God his cheeks looked so cute when he blushed. “That's the goal. She deserves to be spoiled like any other pet would be.”
You grinned, glancing down at where Croissant was now happily laying on his perch. “I agree.”
When the two of them said their goodbyes, with Jisung thanking you once again for all your help, you were pretty sure he'd be back.
There was a chance he wouldn’t. He could just order his food online or go to a big name store, but the fact that he came in in the first place gave you some hope.
You expected it wouldn't be immediately, though, and while you weren't in the habit of memorizing the faces of first time customers, something about him was sticking in your mind.
So you were a little surprised when, exactly a week later, he came back through the door.
You'd been stocking one of the shelves when you heard the familiar sound. “Welcome in,” you called out, finishing what you were doing before turning around. “If you need any help just let me know- oh, Jisung! Hi!”
Jisung blinked. “You remember my name?”
You shrugged. “Of course, why wouldn't I? Did you get your gecko early?”
He blinked, a blush immediately rising to his cheeks. “I didn't think you'd remember that either- um, I mean, I'm picking her up today and I realized I wasn't sure if she'd have a good carrying container? Then I wasn't sure what even was a safe way to transport a gecko, so I figured I'd stop by here since you probably would know.”
You smiled. “I mean, whoever you’re getting her from probably has her in a safe travel container already. If you don’t mind me asking, where are you getting her from?”
Jisung quickly explained and you nodded along as he did. “Yeah, they’re a good one. They’ll definitely have you hooked up, but-” You turned towards the shelves, “if you want to be extra sure, I can definitely help you out.”
Jisung nodded, smiling bashfully. “Yes please. I just want to make sure I do this right.”
You led him around your small store, hooking him up with Croissant’s favorite treats, a small travel container, and a misting bottle.
“I mean, she probably won’t need it for the short trip,” you reassured him as you helped him check out, “but, they do like humid environments. I bet she’ll already have a damp towel at the bottom of the container she’s in when you get her, though.”
Jisung continued to nod along to everything you said. Keeping his gaze on you as he tapped his card against the terminal. “Thank you for all of your help.”
“You clearly did a lot of research too, I’m sure you would’ve figured it out without me,” you told him seriously, “but I’m still happy I could help even a little bit.”
“No, no, you helped a lot,” he reassured. “I mean, I did research a lot but,” that lovely blush comes back onto his face, “I second guess myself a lot, so having someone who clearly knows what they’re talking about tell me I’m doing it right means a lot.”
You beamed. “Well then I’m doubly happy I could help.” You reached out, playfully nudging his shoulder. “You got this. You’re gonna give her a great home.”
“Thanks,” he breathed softly. He looked at you for a moment longer, before blinking, breaking the moment.
He leaned back away from the check out counter, laughing slightly. “But, um, yeah, hah, thanks for your help. I should probably get going.”
You nodded, fingers twitching on the counter. “Yeah, of course. Next time I see you, you’ll hopefully have a name for her, yeah?”
He laughed more genuinely this time. “For sure.”
The rest of your day went by normally. The flow of customers was fairly slow, so you managed to get some cleaning done, including deep cleaning Croissant’s tank.
As you were closing up your store that evening, Jisung kept popping up in your head. You knew why. He was cute, charming, and also had a soft spot for reptiles, which was always a huge plus in your book.
Plus, he seemed so dedicated to making sure he was about to give his new gecko a good home. Considering it was his first reptile pet, you were super impressed by his dedication.
You assumed it’d be a few more days until you saw him again. He probably had work, and he really didn’t have a reason to come in immediately. He’d bought plenty of supplies from your store already, and more from online retailers as well.
So imagine your surprise as you started to walk home after locking up the shop, when you spotted his face on a large sign on a building.
Well, it wasn’t just his face, Minho was there, too, as well as six other men.
Holy shit. He was a k-pop idol??
You knew of Stray Kids. You listened to music of all kinds, you just rarely looked up the artists to memorize their faces. Plenty of your friends and customers had mentioned their love for random k-pop groups, including naming some of their pets after them. Stray Kids was one that had come up more than once.
And you’d had two of them in your store. One of them twice now.
There was a part of you that felt you needed to do something with this information. What if Han expected that you knew who he was? Should you look him up?
You ended up throwing on some of their music as you made dinner that evening, thoughts still racing around your head. Out of curiosity, you did look up the group, to see if there was something glaring you needed to know.
You read a basic bio of the members, mainly their names and the roles they played. Jisung was apparently one of the main rappers and was also part of their production group known as 3Racha.
And then… you just closed the tabs. It felt wrong to read more, even if the information was right there and thousands, if not millions of people knew more about Jisung and his likes and dislikes than you did.
But did you really need to know?
By the next morning, your mind had settled. Sure the guy in your shop was probably fairly rich, travelled the world, and had millions of fans. So what?
He was also clearly passionate about reptiles, got a bit nervous talking to strangers, and looked adorable when he blushed.
And you kinda wanted to squish his face.
And his eyes looked so pretty when he got excited.
… And you really hoped he'd come back to your store sometime.
As much as you tried to distract yourself, Jisung kept lingering in your mind over the next couple of days.
Your store was open on Saturdays, but you gave yourself Sunday and Monday off instead. At least working at the store helped keep you mostly distracted, but over the weekend, not so much.
Croissant was surely tired of your attempts at keeping busy by Monday, so you made yourself leave the house and take Croissant to the park for a bit. You also drafted up a few posts for your store's socials and updated the website with promotions for your new inventory you were getting in next week.
Come Tuesday, you were itching to get into the store, anything to give you less time to fight the urge to check Jisung's socials.
Had pick gone well with his lizard? How did she do on the ride back to his place? Had he shared her with the world? If so, what did they think? What had he decided to name her? How did her enclosure look now that she was in it?
Croissant shifted on her perch, causing you to snap out of your thoughts. You glanced over and saw her staring at you, unimpressed.
“What?” You asked her.
Croissant blinked at you.
“You don't even know what I'm thinking,” you pointed out.
Her tail flicked.
You groaned. “I know, it's stupid to be crushing on a guy I barely know, but you saw his big eyes right? And how excited he was about everything in here? That's like my biggest weakness.”
Despite remaining silent, Croissant was clearly judging you.
You'd had a steady flow of customers that day, maybe above average for a Tuesday but nothing wildly busy.
It was about 30 minutes before closing and the store was peacefully quiet. You were finishing cleaning one of the cages when you heard the door open.
“Welcome in,” you called out. “If you need any help, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
You finished refilling the water dishes and setting everything back into place before getting the snake who had been residing in there out of his temporary box and back into his home.
He settled back in easily and you smiled, closing up the top and finally stepping away to look for the customer that had come in.
He was easy to spot, a familiar silhouette hanging out by the register. He was gently petting Croissant, who was leaning into his touch, eyes closed in contentment.
You felt your steps stutter for half a second before you composed yourself, taking a soft, but deep breath.
“Hey Jisung,” you greeted, walking over to the counter.
Jisung jumped slightly and you had to resist the urge to giggle.
“Hey!” He greeted, standing up straighter, though his hand didn’t leave Croissant. “I, um, I was worried I was going to make it before you closed.” A blush crept slowly up his cheeks as he spoke. “I tried to come yesterday, but I didn’t realize you guys were closed on Mondays, which was totally my fault for not checking. I know being open every day of the week is unreasonable anyway so like, it’s not a big deal you were closed or anything I just uh-”
You smiled at him, leaning against the counter. “You’re all good. We’re open on Saturdays, and since supposedly a ‘work life balance’ is healthy or something," you made air quotes teasingly as you said it, “I decided I should probably still have two days off a week.”
Jisung licked his lips, cheeks still a dusty pink. “I honestly hadn’t thought about the fact that I’ve only ever seen you here before. Does anyone else work here?”
You shrugged. “It’s mostly me. I have one part-time employee who comes in a couple evenings a week, mainly Fridays and Saturdays because they’re our busiest days, but also stock day, too.”
Jisung nodded along as you spoke, his tongue peeking out for a moment, distracting you momentarily.
“So, um,” you said, regaining your train of thought. “Did you need something on Monday?”
He perked up. “Oh, um, not necessarily,” he admitted sheepishly. “I know you wanted to see picture of Richard once I got her, and I know it’s too soon to bring her, but I wanted to show you pictures. I was freer yesterday than today, so I almost didn’t make it. I know it could’ve waited but-”
“No, I’m glad you came,” you replied softly. “Come on then, show me. I want to see her.”
Jisung beamed, immediately whipping his phone out. Croissant grumbled as he lost access to his chin scratcher.
He would live.
“She did great on the car ride home, and she started being curious about her tank super quickly,” he started saying excitedly as he turned his phone for you to see. “A few of the memb- my friends have already come over to meet her. She’s so cute, too.”
You nodded, cooing at the photos. “She’s super cute. I’m excited to meet her.” You glanced over at him. “So, Richard?”
He laughed. “Um, yeah. It’s sort of an English joke but also, because Richard and lizard sound similar, you know?”
You snorted, which evolved into a laugh. “Oh my gosh, that’s hilarious. Perfect name for her. How did you think of that?”
“I can’t take all of the credit,” he shrugged, still smiling. “Honestly my friend Changbin is the one who suggested it.”
“Well I’m excited when you finally bring her by,” you said.
Jisung nodded, suddenly looking more nervous. He glanced over at Croissant, fiddling with one of the sleeves on his jacket. “So, um, uh, have you heard about the dinosaur cafe downtown?”
You nodded, eyes lighting up. “Yeah, I think I saw that on Instagram. It just opened recently, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, yeah it did,” he replied. “Would you- uh… maybe want to go? Together?”
Your heart fluttered but you tried not to get your hopes up. “As friends..?”
“No- I mean, unless that’s what you’d prefer!” He quickly said. “But, um, I’d like it to be a date if you would also like that. For it to be a date, that is.”
You felt a blush crawl up your own cheeks now. “I mean, I would like that, too.”
Jisung beamed, his shoulders relaxing. “Okay, cool, great.”
“I do have to admit something, though,” you said in a bit of a rush. Jisung blinked at you, waiting, so you continued. “I do know that you're, like, a big k-pop idol. I saw your face on my way home the other night on a big screen. I didn't know before then, but I felt like you should know that.”
He looked hesitant when you first started but then he relaxed again and nodded. “I mean, I was pretty sure you didn't know me, at first at least. I can't always read people, but usually I can tell.” He shrugs. “You would've found out eventually, but… are you okay with that?”
You shrugged too. “A job is a job. I've heard some of your guys' music before. It's really good.”
He blushed. “Well, thanks. I'm really proud of what we do. What we have done.”
“Then I'd really like to hear more about it,” you told him honestly. “Do I need to sign like, an NDA or something to go on a date with you then?”
Jisung spluttered and you laughed playfully. “Uh, Skigji would probably prefer that. Not that I don't trust you, but-”
You waved a hand. “No, you're fine. It'd be like a whole liability probably.” You tilted your head to the side. “How much could someone reasonably sell your phone number for?”
Jisung laughed. “Oh gosh, tens of thousands at least. Some Stay are pretty determined when it comes to stuff like that.” He licked his lips, looking mildly more confident now. “You'd need to have my number first in order to sell it though, so.” He put out a hand and winked at you.
You laughed but couldn't stop the blush from spreading as you placed your phone in his hand. “Smooth.”
He shrugged nonchalantly as he typed into your phone. “I try, sometimes.” He handed the phone back to you.
“So,” you shot him a text, signing it with your name, “now that I have your number, and you have mine… when do you want to go on this date?”
He blinked rapidly, his cool act quickly diminishing. “Oh! Um, are you available maybe tomorrow evening?”
You giggled. “Yeah, I think my calendar’s clear then.”
“Great!” He beamed. “I can pick you up here at 5?”
You nodded. “That works.”
“Cool, cool,” he nodded. “Um… I guess I’ll get out of your hair then, let you close up the shop and all.”
You shrugged. “I don’t mind, you’re certainly not a bother.”
He beamed. “Well, I could help if you want?”
You laughed. “I mean, sure. How do you feel about sweeping?”
You switched the sign to closed as Jisung began sweeping the floor. Even though you’d closed with your employee a few times, doing it with Jisung felt different. It was still so easy to talk to him, and even though he needed some guidance with your closing tasks, it was honestly fun.
As you locked up the store, Croissant safely tucked away for the journey home, Jisung lingered nearby, shifting from foot to foot.
“Um, I could walk you home if you’d like?” He offered.
“I’m sure it’s out of your way,” you countered.
He shrugged. “I don’t mind… I like spending time with you.”
“And you're not worried about being spotted or something?”
He slipped a face mask on and put his hood up. “People don’t usually notice me when I’m by myself.”
“Then sure,” you smiled, “I wouldn’t mind the company. Especially when they’re cute.”
He spluttered, and even with the mask on you could see the blush on his face. “Not as cute as you.”
You blushed in return. "Up for debate."
“Well we can debate then, on our date tomorrow,” Jisung offered.
You come home from three years abroad not by choice but for your grandmother’s funeral and walk straight back into YANG JUNGWON — lead businessman at Yang Industries and standing beside a life that doesn’t include you. Your grandmother’s will fractures your family, though it was already fractured, the letters she left begin exposing secrets, and the manor starts unravelling everything it’s been hiding — affairs, business ties, and truths no one wanted uncovered. Every moment alone with him drags you back toward those buried feelings since you were teens and makes you confront the one thing you never said; your grandmother planned this. But did she really bring you back just to watch your family spiral — or to force the two of you to face what she always knew was ‘meant to be’?
parings. . . yang jungwon x female reader ┃ wc. 27.7k
⟡themes. . . childhood best friends to lovers, second chance romance, right person wrong time, mutual pining, slow burn, angst with payoff, unspoken feelings, complicated relationships, love vs duty, rich family drama, inheritance drama, toxic family dynamics, sibling rivalry, jealousy, family secrets, corruption, old money, forced proximity, shared history, emotional repression, house as a character, flashbacks, happy ending
⟡content warnings. . . mature content (18+), fingering, oral sex (f), slight repression of breathing (fingers in mouth), penetrative sex, multiple orgasms, cowgirl, missionary, eye contact, light restraint (wrists pinned), praise kink, slight dom/sub undertones, loss of a loved one, grief, infidelity, family dysfunction and manipulation, emotional repression, mild angst, morally grey side characters
⟡now playing. . . Wicked Games by Chris Isaac // To Love by Suki Waterhouse // she heart by Cameron Cabelo
⟡laceys note // I really loved writing this and how the grandmother is so present in the story while not being present, she controls the whole narrative. The family secrets always just a matter of time before they came out. I put a lot of heart into this and I hope it shows, i didn’t indent for it to be this long but oh well! I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing! Enjoy💞 (ps I’ve rebloged with all those who asked to be tagged bc tumblr has a limit 😫)
THE FLIGHT FROM BARCELONA LANDED FORTY MINUTES LATE.
You didn’t mind. Forty minutes was forty minutes less of being home, and you needed every one of them. You sat in your seat while the other passengers stood and jostled for overhead luggage and you looked out the small oval window at the grey Korean sky and you thought about your grandmother’s hands.
The way they looked when she shuffled a deck of cards. The way she’d lay one down on the table and look at you sideways and say what does that tell you before you’d even had time to see the face of it.
She’d been teaching you something your whole life. You were still figuring out what.
Your phone had forty-three unread messages by the time you turned it off airplane mode. Thirty-one of them were from your sister Haeun. You read the first one — the lawyer says the reading is Thursday, I need to know what grandmother told you — and put your phone face-down on your thigh and breathed through your nose until the seat belt sign dinged off.
She hadn’t told you anything. That was the thing about Han Sooja. She never told you anything. She offered, suggested, implied. She left doors slightly open and trusted you to be curious enough to walk through them. Every Sunday for three years you’d called her from your apartment in Barcelona — the one with the yellow kitchen tiles you hated and then grew to love — and she’d talk about the garden, about the house, about whatever book she was reading, and at the end she’d say something that didn’t make sense until weeks later.
The last call had been eight days before she died. She’d asked if you still had the book she gave you before you left. Italo Calvino, the one about invisible cities. You’d said yes, it’s on my shelf, and she’d made a small sound of satisfaction and said good girl the way she used to when you found a hidden room in the manor, small and proud and like she’d been waiting. You hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. The book was in your carry-on bag right now. You didn’t know why you’d packed it. It had felt necessary in the way that irrational things sometimes do.
The Han family estate sat forty minutes outside of Seoul, through the kind of countryside that looked different in every season and the same in all of them. Your father had arranged a car. You sat in the back and watched the city dissolve into hills and treelines and you felt the specific vertigo of returning somewhere that exists more fully in your memory than in real life.
You hadn’t been back in almost three years. Barcelona had been good to you. Your degree, your small studio, your Sunday markets and your terrible attempts at Catalan and the way the light hit the Eixample buildings at five in the afternoon like the whole city was on fire. You had built a life there from scratch, which was something, which was actually a lot. You had been proud of the distance.
Now the distance was just kilometres you’d swallowed in nine hours and your grandmother was dead and the estate gates were opening in front of you and you were twenty-three years old and somehow eight years old at the same time. The manor was lit from inside. Warm amber in every window, the way it always looked in winter, the way it looked in every memory you had of arriving home from anywhere. Your chest did something complicated.
You were barely out of the car when the front door opened. Your mother came down the steps first. She looked beautiful and exhausted and somewhere behind her eyes was a grief that was doing battle with something sharper. She held you and you held her back and she smelled like the same perfume she’d worn your entire life and for a moment you just let yourself be held. “You look thin,” she said, pulling back to look at your face. Her hands cupped your jaw the way she’d done when you were small.
“I’m not thin.”
“You’re thin.” She said it like a conclusion and took your bag from you before you could argue. Your father appeared behind her. Tall, silver-templed, the kind of handsome that photographs well. He kissed your cheek and said welcome home, sweetheart and squeezed your shoulder and you smiled and said thank you and the whole thing lasted four seconds and felt utterly normal and you pushed down the small unnameable thing it stirred in you and went inside.
Haeun was in the sitting room with her husband Minjae, who was tall and quiet and had the energy of a man who had learned to occupy as little space as possible to survive his marriage. She stood up when you came in and crossed the room and hugged you and over her shoulder her eyes were already doing the thing — already calculating, already moving pieces around a board.
“You look wonderful,” she said, and she meant it as something other than a compliment.
“So do you,” you said, and you sat down, and you accepted the tea someone put in your hands, and you listened to your family talk around the actual subject the way families do, and you thought about your grandmother’s hands again. The way she’d lay a card down. What does that tell you?
You were so inside your own head that you didn’t hear the second car arrive. You didn’t hear the front door. You didn’t hear the voices in the hall. The first thing you registered was your mother’s posture changing — a small straightening, a social smile replacing the real one — and then the sitting room door opened and Jungwon walked in.
He was wearing black. Of course he was, it was a house in mourning, but it suited him in a way that felt almost unfair. He’d grown into himself in the years since you’d last seen him — not taller, he’d always been tall, but somehow more present, like he’d learned to take up the exact right amount of space. His father walked in behind him and then a woman you didn’t recognise, and then you did recognise her, you’d seen her tagged in photos online the way you absolutely had not been keeping track of, and her name was Seo Yerin and she was very beautiful and her hand was in the crook of Jungwon’s arm like she’d grown there.
Jungwon’s father greeted yours with the practiced warmth of two men who had been doing business together for decades. Your mother offered Yerin tea. Haeun said something charming. Minjae stood slightly behind Haeun and looked at the ceiling. And then Jungwon looked across the room and found you.
There was a moment — just a moment, small enough that you could convince yourself later it hadn’t happened — where his face did something unguarded. Something that looked like there you are and oh no at the same time. And then it resolved into a smile. Warm, professional, genuine enough to be dangerous. “You made it,” he said.
“I made it,” you said. He crossed the room and hugged you and he smelled different — something expensive, cedar and something clean — but underneath it was the same, was him, was the boy who had eaten your grandmother’s good biscuits and blamed it on you and laughed so hard he’d fallen off the kitchen counter. You pulled back before you held on too long.
“How was Barcelona?” he asked. His voice was careful. Friendly.
“Cold right now,” you said. “How’s the company?”
“Growing,” he said. And then, quieter, under the room noise: “She talked about you. Every time I visited. Said you were doing well.”
Something lodged in your throat. “She talked about you too,” you said. Yerin appeared at his shoulder like a weather system. Her smile was lovely and precise. “You must be the friend,” she said. “Jungwon’s told me so much.”
You held her gaze for exactly the right amount of time. “Good things, I hope,” you said pleasantly.
“Of course,” she said. And her hand found Jungwon’s arm again. And the moment sealed shut.
Dinner was the thing it always was in this house — too much food, too much wine, too much history in the walls. You sat across from Jungwon and next to your father and you told yourself to eat and listen and feel nothing in particular.
Your grandmother’s chair at the head of the table was empty and remained empty the entire meal. Nobody had moved it. Nobody had suggested moving it. It sat there with its carved wooden back and the slightly worn armrest where she’d rested her right hand for sixty years and it was the loudest thing in the room.
After dinner, when the adults had migrated to the sitting room and Haeun was performing warmth at Yerin with the energy of a woman collecting intelligence, you slipped out. The hallway was quiet. The manor at night had its own sound — old wood settling, the particular silence of high ceilings, the grandfather clock at the end of the east corridor that had been six minutes fast for as long as you could remember and which your grandmother had refused to correct because she said she liked having six extra minutes that nobody else knew about.
You stood in the hall outside the library and pressed your hand flat against the wall. Old wallpaper. Pale blue, faded at the seams. You knew what was behind it. Third panel from the left, your grandmother had said when you were nine, crouching down to your eye level with absolute seriousness, you push at the bottom corner, not the middle, because the middle is what they expect. And then she’d winked at you and Jungwon and said the house has more rooms than anyone thinks. That’s true of most things.
You pressed the bottom corner of the third panel. Nothing happened for a second. Then the soft mechanical exhale of something old and well-made, and the panel gave, and the smell of cool air and stone and something faintly like old paper came out of the dark.
You stood there looking into it. Behind you, very quietly, someone said: “You remembered.” You turned around. Jungwon was leaning against the opposite wall with his hands in his pockets, watching you with an expression you couldn’t quite read in the low hall light.
“You followed me,” you said.
“I saw you leave.” He pushed off the wall and came to stand beside you, looking into the dark passage the way you both used to as kids — like it was a dare, like it was an invitation. “I used to come here,” he said. “After you left. With her” You looked at him. “She’d make tea and we’d sit in the passage room with a candle and she’d make me do the crossword and not let me leave until I finished it.” He had a smile on his face.
Your throat did the thing again. “She never told me that,” you said.
“She never told me she called you every week either,” he said. “I found out from the phone records when we were going through her things.” A pause. “She listed you as the Barcelona girl in her contacts.”
A sound came out of you that was almost a laugh. It hurt a little on the way out. The passage waited. Dark, familiar, smelling of everything unchanged. “We should go in,” Jungwon said quietly.
“Now?” He looked at you sideways and for a second he was twelve years old and the whole world was just this house and summer and whatever stupid adventure came next.
“She would have wanted us to,” he said. And the thing was — he was right. You both knew it. This was exactly the kind of thing she would have engineered if she could have. And the thought that maybe she had — maybe this was the beginning of something she’d set in motion from a long way back — made the back of your neck prickle. You reached into the dark for the torch she’d always kept on the inside ledge. It was there. Fresh batteries. Recently placed. Of course it was. What does that tell you, she would have said.
You clicked it on. “Come on then,” you said. And Jungwon followed you into the wall.
The passage room was exactly as you remembered. Small, stone-floored, with a ceiling low enough that Jungwon had to duck slightly now in a way he hadn’t needed to at fifteen. There was a wooden table, two chairs that didn’t match, a candle in a brass holder with a box of matches beside it, and a shelf of books along the far wall that had nothing to do with the library on the other side of it. Your grandmother had curated this room the way she curated everything — deliberately, privately, with a logic that only revealed itself if you were paying attention. Jungwon lit the candle without being asked. Old habit.
You swept the torchlight along the bookshelf. Calvino. Borges. A Korean translation of an Agatha Christie you’d never seen before. Three books on architecture that made your chest ache with something fond.
And at the end of the shelf, propped against the stone wall like it had been recently placed and not forgotten, a tin box. Small, olive green, the kind that used to hold biscuits. You both looked at it. “That wasn’t here before,” Jungwon said.
“No,” you agreed. Neither of you moved toward it immediately. That was something she’d taught you both without ever making it a lesson — patience. The instinct to look before you touched. To let a thing be what it was for a moment before you decided what to do with it. You sat down in one of the mismatched chairs. Jungwon took the other. The candle made the room flicker and warm and very small.
“When did you last come here?” you asked.
He thought about it. “Two weeks before she died. She wanted to do the crossword and said the library was too bright.” A corner of his mouth moved. “She said fluorescent lighting was an act of violence against the human spirit.”
“She said that about my university’s studio lighting on a phone call once,” you said. “I’d sent her a photo of my desk.”
“She printed it,” Jungwon said. “It was on her dresser.” You looked at the candle flame. Three years of Sunday calls and she’d printed a photo of your desk and put it on her dresser and filed Jungwon under the boy who visits in whatever internal registry she kept and said nothing to either of you about the other and you had both thought you were each grieving her separately and privately and it turned out she had been holding you both the whole time, one in each hand, like she always had. “I should have come back sooner,” you said. You hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
Jungwon was quiet for a moment. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to. She was proud of you being there.” He paused. “She showed me your graduation photos.”
“She wasn’t at my graduation.”
“I know. But you sent them to her.” He looked at the table. “She showed me on her phone. Stood there in the garden and made me look at every single one and told me what each building in the background was.” A beat. “She knew all of them.” Of course she did. Han Sooja had read every book in this room and a thousand more and had never once made a performance of knowing things.
You stood up and crossed to the shelf and picked up the olive tin. It wasn’t locked. The lid lifted with the soft resistance of something sealed against air and inside was not another letter, not yet, but a folded piece of paper and beneath it a photograph and beneath that a single playing card.
The seven of spades. You picked it up. Turned it over. On the back, in her handwriting — small, precise, the handwriting of someone who had learned to write when paper was expensive: Not everything buried is lost. Some things are just waiting for the ground to be ready. — start with the east corridor, third door.
Jungwon leaned over and read it. His shoulder was warm against yours. “The east corridor,” he said.
“Third door is the old study,” you said.
“Your father and mine use it when they’re doing paperwork. She always hated that.”
Something shifted in Jungwon’s expression. Not much. Just enough. “Why did she hate it?” you asked.
He picked up the tin lid and turned it over in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. Which meant he knew something and wasn’t sure yet whether to say it. You let it sit. Patience. Look before you touch.
You folded the note back up, put it in your pocket, and placed the seven of spades carefully back in the tin. “Tomorrow?” you said.
He nodded. “Tomorrow.”
—
The will reading was at ten in the morning in the manor’s formal sitting room, which your grandmother had always called the room where people go to say things they’ve rehearsed.
The family lawyer, an older man named Mr. Oh who had been handling Han Sooja’s affairs for thirty years, sat at the writing desk with a folder open in front of him and his reading glasses pushed to the end of his nose. Your mother sat straight-backed in the good armchair. Your father beside her. Haeun on the small sofa with Minjae, who had the expression of a man attending something he had been asked to attend and was determined to survive neutrally. The Yang family were not present for this — this was immediate family, just yours, just the people your grandmother had chosen to name. And it surprised you that she hadn’t named Jungwon.
You sat in the chair nearest the window. Old habit. Whenever your grandmother held court in this room she’d saved that chair for you because it got the best light and she knew you liked to draw in the margins of things.
Mr. Oh read the preamble in the formal language of legal documents and your mother’s posture got incrementally straighter with each clause and Haeun’s hands in her lap were very still in the way that meant they wanted to be doing something else. The estate. The grounds. The property in full — to you and Haeun jointly, held in trust until such time as you both agreed on its future. Haeun’s shoulders dropped a fraction. Okay. Shared. That was manageable.
The financial holdings, the investments, the accounts — split equally between the two of you. Still manageable. Still even. Your mother’s face was carefully neutral.
And then: The personal correspondence, the private library, the contents of the third floor study, and sole guardianship of the estate’s architectural records and original documents — Mr. Oh paused in the way lawyers pause when they know what they’re about to say will change the temperature of a room — to my granddaughter, Y/N, who has always understood that a house is not a building but a living record, and who I trust to know what to do with what she finds.
The room was very quiet. You felt your mother look at you. You didn’t turn. Haeun said, lightly, carefully, as if the words hadn’t been sitting in her mouth for thirty years: “The architectural records.”
“All original documents pertaining to the construction and modification of the estate,” Mr. Oh confirmed. “Floor plans, correspondence, modification records. All to your sister, as specified.”
“I see,” Haeun said. Her voice was a closed door. Mr. Oh continued. There were smaller bequests — to staff, to a charity your grandmother had supported quietly for decades, to a cousin you barely knew. A piece of jewellery to your mother, significant and old and chosen with the precision of someone who knew exactly what a gift could mean and what it could also withhold. Your mother held the jewellery box in her lap and looked at it and you saw, briefly, the grief crack through the composed surface of her face.
She had loved her mother. Whatever else was happening in the register beneath that love, the love was real and it was enormous and she was going to feel both things at the same time for a very long time.
The reading ended. Mr. Oh gathered his papers. Minjae quietly offered to fetch tea as a reason to leave the room. Your father stood and shook Mr. Oh’s hand. Haeun stood up and came to you. “Congratulations,” she said. The word had nothing to do with congratulations.
“I didn’t ask for it,” you said.
“No,” she agreed. “You never have to.” She left the room. You watched her go and thought about the seven of spades in the tin box in the passage room and your grandmother’s handwriting and the specific, deliberate way she had chosen to distribute what she knew and what she owned. Not everything buried is lost.
Your father’s hand on your shoulder again. That same four-second warmth. “Your grandmother loved you very much,” he said.
“She loved all of us,” you said.
He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course,” he said. “Of course she did.”
Six weeks before she died — Sunday, Barcelona, 4pm
The light through your kitchen tiles was doing the thing it did in late autumn, coming in flat and amber and making everything look like the inside of a memory. You had your phone wedged between your ear and your shoulder and you were attempting to re-pot a plant that had been dying slowly since August.
“The Calvino,” your grandmother said. “You still have it?”
“On my shelf,” you said. “It’s been there for three years, Halmoni.”
“Good.” That sound of satisfaction. “I want you to read it again before you come home.”
“I’m not planning to come home.”
“I know,” she said. Not sadly. Just factually, the way she said most things. “Read it anyway. There’s a passage in the chapter about Octavia — the spider-web city — that I want you to think about.”
You looked at your dying plant. “About what?”
“About the nature of what holds things together,” she said. “And what happens when you finally look down.”
You’d laughed a little, because she was always doing this, always dropping things into conversation like seeds into soil. “You could just tell me what you mean.”
“Where would be the fun in that,” she said. Not a question. The plant lost a leaf. You caught it. “Jungwon came by yesterday,” she said, at the end, in the place where she always put the things that mattered most.
You were quiet for a second too long. “How is he?” you asked, carefully.
“The way young men are when they’re doing the right thing for the wrong reasons,” she said. “He brought me tangerines. He stayed for four hours.” A pause. “He asked how you were.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were building something beautiful and that you missed home more than you admitted.”
“Halmoni—”
“I told him the truth,” she said serenely. “Goodnight, my girl.” The call ended. You stood in your yellow-tiled kitchen in Barcelona with a dead leaf in your hand and the flat amber light going dark around you and you thought about Jungwon asking how you were. You didn’t call him and you could almost see your grandmother's disarming look.
—
Your grandmother’s bedroom was at the end of the east wing. Nobody had gone in since she died. You could tell by the way the door resisted slightly when you turned the handle — not locked, just untouched, the air on the other side of it thick and still in the way that rooms get when they’ve been holding their breath. The staff had respected it. Your mother had respected it, or avoided it, and those two things looked identical from the outside. You went in alone.
The curtains were half-open the way she always kept them — enough light to see by, not enough to bleach the colours, she’d said once, about curtains and about most other things. Her bed was made with the precise, almost architectural tidiness of a woman who had made her own bed every morning for eighty-one years. On her nightstand: reading glasses, a glass of water someone had forgotten to remove, a library book three weeks overdue, and a small framed photograph.
You crossed the room and picked it up. It was the two of you. You and her, you couldn’t have been more than ten, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the passage room with a candle between you and a crossword spread out on the stone floor and your face screwed up in concentration. You had no memory of the photo being taken. You had no idea who had taken it. You stood there holding it for a long time. Then you put it down, carefully, exactly where it had been, and you looked at the room.
She had left it for you to find. Whatever it was. You knew that the way you knew the batteries in the torch had been fresh — she had arranged this, she had thought about you standing in this room, she had trusted you to look properly. So you looked.
Her desk first. Neat, deliberate. Correspondence in one pile, addressed and stamped and ready to post — you’d find out later she’d written them in the last week of her life, small notes to old friends, a letter to a charity, one to Mr. Oh with an addendum to her will that simply read make sure she gets the Calvino back if she doesn’t bring it herself. Her pen in its holder. A magnifying glass. A small jade figurine of a rabbit that had sat on every desk she’d ever owned since before your mother was born.
You moved to the wardrobe. Her clothes, her good coat, a shelf of shoeboxes at the top. You pulled each one down and opened it with the care of someone who understood that your grandmother did not waste containers. Shoes in most of them.
In one — the second from the right, which was the kind of specific detail only she would have noted — a bundle of letters tied with kitchen string, and beneath it a leather notebook, and beneath that a folded envelope. Your name on the front. Both names. For my granddaughter and for Jungwon-ah — to be opened together, in the house, when the time is right. You’ll know.
Your hands were very steady. That surprised you. You sat on the edge of her bed — something you’d done a thousand times as a child, sitting there while she brushed her hair or told you something she wanted you to remember — and you held the envelope and you didn’t open it. Not yet.
She’d said together. She’d written both your names. She’d trusted you to know when the time was right and you knew, the way she’d taught you to know things, that the time was not right alone in her bedroom at nine in the morning while the house was waking up around you. You put the envelope inside your jacket, against your chest, and you took the leather notebook too because it had no name on it and therefore belonged to you the way all unnamed things in this house now did, you put the shoeboxes back exactly as you’d found them, and you straightened the bed where you’d sat, and you took one more look at the photograph on the nightstand.
There’s a passage in the chapter about Octavia, she’d said. About the nature of what holds things together. You’d read it on the plane. You’d sat in seat 24A at thirty thousand feet over France and read the passage about the spider-web city suspended over an abyss and the people who lived in it who did not think about the abyss because to think about the abyss was not the point. The point was the net. The point was the thing that held. The life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than that of other cities, Calvino had written. They know the net will only last so long.
You left the bedroom. You pulled the door back to exactly where it had been.
The leather notebook turned out to be a record. You found this out that afternoon, sitting on the floor of the passage room with the candle lit and your back against the cold stone wall, and it was not what you expected and it was completely what you should have expected because this was Han Sooja and she had never done anything without documentation.
It was dated across seven years. Small entries, some only a few lines, written in the spare economical way she wrote everything. It read less like a diary and more like case notes — observations, dates, names, figures. The early entries were oblique enough that you had to read them twice. The later ones were less patient with their own obliqueness.
Your father’s name appeared on the fourth page. And then a name you didn’t recognise. A woman’s name, recurring, with dates beside it and in one entry a location — a restaurant in Gangnam, a hotel in Busan, a work trip that had not been a work trip. Your grandmother had written these things in the same tone she used to note the weather or the overdue library book. No exclamation. No fury. Just the facts, recorded with the quiet, devastating precision of a woman who had known for years and decided that the right time to use what she knew was not while she was alive to be argued with.
Your father, the last entry about him read, dated eight months ago, has made choices that your mother has chosen not to see. I have chosen not to intervene in my daughter’s choices. But I have chosen not to reward his with my silence after I’m gone. He will know, when the estate goes to you, that I knew. That is enough.
You read that three times. Then you turned the page. The next section was about the company. Your father’s company and the Yang family company and the specific way they were connected, which your grandmother laid out in the same case-note fashion — dates of agreements, figures, the shape of something that had been built quietly over decades. You didn’t understand all of it. You understood enough. You understood that it was the kind of thing that would matter enormously to Jungwon, who was now running his family’s side of it, who had taken over from his father without knowing everything his father had built. Or maybe knowing some of it. You didn’t know yet what Jungwon knew.
The last entry in the notebook was not about your father or the companies. It was short, just four lines, and it was the only entry in the whole notebook that had nothing to do with documentation. I have watched those two children for fifteen years and I have been patient because patience was what was needed. They are both very clever and very stupid in the way that people are when they are in the middle of something they can’t see the edges of yet. I am leaving them the house and each other and every door I can think to unlock. The rest is up to them. I trust them. I always have.
The candle burned. You sat on the cold floor of the secret room your grandmother had shown you at nine years old and you held a notebook full of everything she’d known and you pressed the back of your hand to your mouth and you did not cry, quite, but it was a near thing.
—
You found Jungwon at the edge of the garden. He was standing at the low stone wall that separated the formal garden from the fields beyond it, the ones where you used to chase the chickens, the ones that looked in winter like a grey-green painting of themselves. He had his coat on and his hands in his pockets and he was looking at the fields the way you’d been looking at the manor from the car yesterday — like something that was more inside him than outside. “Jungwon,” you said.
He turned. Registered your face. “What happened?” You hadn’t known it showed. You’d been careful on the way out of the house.
“I found something,” you said. “In her room.” You took the envelope out of your jacket. Held it out so he could see both your names on it. He looked at it for a long time without moving. The winter fields were quiet behind him. The house was warm and lit behind you. You were standing exactly between the two of them, which felt like something your grandmother would have arranged if she could have. Maybe she had.
Jungwon reached out and took the envelope from your hand. He turned it over. Ran his thumb across the handwriting. “She wrote both our names,” he said.
“She said to open it together. When the time was right.”
He looked up at you. “Is it?”
You thought about the notebook in your jacket. About the woman’s name recurring through seven years of entries. About the company and the figures and the connection between your families that neither of you had been told about. About the seven of spades and the east corridor and the third door. About the passage room, two chairs, a candle. About him asking how you were from three years and three thousand kilometres away through the relay of your grandmother’s voice. “Not yet,” you said. “But soon.”
He nodded slowly. He held the envelope for a moment longer and then he held it back out to you. “You keep it,” he said. “She gave you the house. She’d want it kept here.”
You took it. Put it back inside your jacket. “There’s something else,” you said. “The notebook. I need to tell you about it. Not now, not here—” you glanced back at the house, at the lit windows, at the shapes of people moving behind glass— “but soon. There are things in it about the company. Your family and mine.”
Something moved behind his eyes. Just a fraction. “How much do you know?” he asked. His voice was careful. Professional. The voice he used in the sitting room, not the voice from the passage with the candle.
“Enough to know you might know some of it already,” you said. He held your gaze. The wind moved between you.
“Tonight,” he said. “Passage room.”
“Tonight,” you agreed. He nodded and turned back to the fields. You stood beside him for a moment, not saying anything, looking at the same grey-green view, and it was almost like being ten years old again except that you were both carrying things ten-year-olds don’t carry and the weight of it was very quietly changing the shape of everything.
“She kept a photo of us,” you said. “In the passage room. Do you know who took it?”
“She did,” he said. “She had one of those cameras with the timer. She set it up on the shelf.” A pause. “She has about fifteen of them. Of us, from different years. She kept them in the tin.”
You thought about the olive green tin. The photograph beneath the note beneath the playing card. “I only found the one,” you said.
“There’s a second tin,” he said. “She showed me once. It’s in the east corridor study.” He paused. “Third door.” You looked at him. He looked back at you. Not everything buried is lost.
“Tonight,” you said again. And you both stood at the wall in the winter garden and looked at the fields where you used to chase chickens and neither of you said anything about the thing that had been living in the space between you for longer than either of you had names for it yet.
—
The Yang family came at seven. Your mother had spent the afternoon directing the staff with the focused energy of a woman who needed something to control. The good dishes. The good wine. Flowers on the table that were tasteful and seasonal and had been ordered from the florist your grandmother had used for forty years because some things you don’t change even when you are quietly furious at the dead person who used to order them. You’d spent the afternoon in your room with the notebook open on your bed and your laptop beside it, cross-referencing what your grandmother had recorded in her careful case-note hand against what you could find publicly about your father’s company and the Yang Group. You’d built a partial picture. Partial was enough to make your chest feel tight in a way that had nothing to do with the altitude change from Barcelona.
You closed everything at six-thirty and got dressed and looked at yourself in the mirror of your childhood bedroom. The room still had your things in it. Sketchbooks on the shelf. A poster from a Barcelona exhibition you’d sent home because you’d had no wall space. A corkboard above the desk with old photos and ticket stubs and a hand-drawn map of the manor’s ground floor that you’d made when you were twelve and that contained, you now noticed, three rooms that weren’t on it that you’d known about since you were nine. She’d taught you to keep secrets the way other grandmothers taught you to knit. Quietly. Practically. With the implication that the skill would matter someday.
You put your earrings in and went downstairs. Jungwon’s father, Yang Junho, had the big laugh and the easy warmth of a man who had learned early that charm was infrastructure. He embraced your mother, clapped your father on the shoulder, kissed your cheek and said look at you, all grown up and making us all feel old in the way that powerful men say things to young women — benevolent, slightly proprietary, not quite seeing you. Yerin arrived in something that was architecturally perfect for the occasion. You noticed it the way you noticed good design — involuntarily, with a kind of professional appreciation that sat alongside everything else. She was very good at this. At the surface of things.
She found your eyes across the hall and smiled. You smiled back. Jungwon was behind her, talking to your father, and you watched the two of them shake hands and exchange the warm professional pleasantries of men from families that had known each other a long time and you thought about the notebook in your room and the figures on page four and the way your father’s hand had been on your shoulder after the will reading, and you kept your face very still. Haeun arrived late, which was a statement, with Minjae in tow, which was a footnote.
Dinner was served at eight.The dining room in winter was all candlelight and dark wood and the accumulated weight of every meal that had ever been eaten in it. Your grandmother’s empty chair was still at the head of the table. Still nobody suggested moving it or filling it. It sat there and presided. You were seated between your father and Jungwon’s father, which was either an accident of place settings or your mother’s idea of diplomacy or the universe testing your ability to eat soup while sitting on top of a secret. Jungwon was diagonally across from you. Yerin beside him, her hand on the table near his, not quite touching. She had positioned herself with the precision of someone who understood rooms and sightlines and what it meant to be seen next to the right person. You understood rooms and sightlines too.
The first course arrived. Conversation did what conversation does at these dinners — it found the safe channels and moved through them. Business. The economy. A mutual acquaintance’s new venture. Your Barcelona degree, which Yang Junho asked about with genuine interest and which you answered clearly and concisely and felt Jungwon listening to without looking at you. “Architecture,” Junho said, nodding. “Your grandmother always said you’d do something with buildings.”
“She said I’d do something with spaces,” you said. “She made a distinction.” Junho looked pleased by this in the way people look pleased when they’re reminded of someone they miss. “That sounds like her.”
“She was very specific about words,” Jungwon said. He was looking at his wine glass. “She used to correct my crossword answers even when they technically fit.”
“Because fitting and being right are different things,” you said, before you could decide not to. He looked up. Found your eyes. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what she said.” Yerin reached for her wine.
Haeun chose the main course to begin her campaign. She did it beautifully. That was the thing about your sister — she was genuinely skilled at this, at the long game of dinner table conversation, at the way you could introduce a subject so casually that by the time people realized they were discussing it they’d already committed to a position. “It’s such a comfort,” she said, during a lull, with the warm sincerity of a woman who had rehearsed warmth until it became real, “that grandmother’s things will stay in the family. The records, especially. The architectural history of this place.” A smile at you. “I know how much it means to you.”
“It does,” you said.
“It’s just interesting,” Haeun said, tilting her head slightly, “that grandmother felt those should be — separated out. From the general estate. Don’t you think, Mum?” Your mother’s expression didn’t change. “Your grandmother had her reasons.”
“Of course.” Haeun smiled. “She always did. I’m just thinking about practicality. If we’re going to manage the estate jointly, having certain documents siloed with one person seems—”
“Haeun,” your father said. Quiet. Warning. “I’m just raising it,” Haeun said pleasantly. “This is family. We can talk about family things.” The table had gone the particular kind of quiet where everyone is pretending not to listen while listening completely. You set your fork down. “Grandmother specified it in the will,” you said. “Mr. Oh read it out. I’m not sure what there is to discuss.”
“I’m not disputing the will,” Haeun said. “I’m asking whether it makes sense.”
“She thought it made sense,” you said. “I trust her judgment.”
“She was eighty-one and she hadn’t left this house in two years.” The silence that followed that sentence was a different quality entirely. Your mother put her glass down very carefully. Yang Junho cleared his throat and said something about the food being excellent, which was what men like him did when a table needed rescuing and he was the one with the social capital to do it. Your father laughed too quickly at something that wasn’t funny. Minjae became deeply interested in his plate. Jungwon wasn’t looking at your sister — instead at you — with an expression that was too controlled to read and too attentive to be neutral. Yerin said, lightly, pleasantly, into the recovering silence: “It must be wonderful to have a place like this to come home to. Even under sad circumstances.” She was looking at you when she said it. Even under sad circumstances. “It is,” you said. You held her gaze. “I’ve missed it.”
“Barcelona must be quite the change,” she said. “All that sun. All that distance.”
“I like distance,” you said pleasantly. “It gives you perspective.” Her smile stayed exactly where it was. “I imagine it does,” she said.
like it owed him something. “Your sister,” he said.
“I know.”
“She’s going to contest it.”
“She’s going to try,” you said. “She won’t succeed. Grandmother was meticulous.”
“She was,” he agreed. A pause. “She was meticulous about everything.” You thought about the notebook upstairs. The passage room tonight. The envelope against your chest earlier, both your names in her handwriting. “How much do you know?” you asked. Quietly. The same question as the garden, but in here it landed differently. In here it was just you two and the too-loud clock and the chipped tile and fifteen years of history in the walls. He looked at his hands on the table. “About the company — some. Not all. My father has been—” he paused, choosing the word— “selective about what he’s handed over.”
“Jungwon.”
“I know.” He looked up. “I know there’s something. I’ve been finding the edges of it for six months.” He held your gaze. “What did she leave you?”
“A notebook,” you said. “Seven years of notes. Dates, names, figures.”
He was very still. “My father’s name is in it,” you said. “Yours is too.” He looked at the table again. The muscle in his jaw moved once. “Tonight,” he said. “Show me tonight.”
“I will.” The clock ticked. The kitchen held you both the way it always had — indiscriminately, warmly, without judgment or agenda. Through the door you could hear the distant murmur of the sitting room. Your families on the other side of a wall. All their history and all their secrets and all the careful surfaces they maintained. “She sent me a tangerine once,” you said. Not because it was relevant. Because you needed a second.
Jungwon looked up.
“From the tree in the garden,” you said. “She packaged it up and posted it to Barcelona. Just one tangerine, wrapped in tissue paper, with a note that said the tree had a good year. Thought you should taste it. Nothing else.”
He was quiet for a moment. “She sent me a crossword clue once,” he said. “Just one clue. In the post. No puzzle, no page, just the clue on a card.” He almost smiled. “Seven letters. What two people share when they stop pretending.”
You looked at him. “Did you figure it out?” you asked.
“Eventually,” he said. He looked away first. “Honesty.” The clock ticked. The sitting room murmured. Neither of you said anything for a while, and the kitchen held you both, and outside the window the winter garden was dark and the fields beyond it were darker and somewhere in the walls of this house there were secret rooms and hidden documents and a dead woman’s careful architecture and the net was holding, still holding, over an abyss neither of you had looked directly at yet.
The door opened. Yerin stood in the doorway. Her eyes moved from you to Jungwon and back to you in a fraction of a second and her face showed nothing and showed everything. “There you are,” she said. Just to him.
“Just getting water,” Jungwon said. He stood up. Straightened. The professional composure settling back over him like a coat. Yerin’s eyes found yours one more time. The smile was small and precise and had teeth somewhere inside it. “Of course,” she said. Jungwon followed her out. You stood in the kitchen alone and listened to the clock tick and looked at the stool he’d been sitting on and thought about seven letters and everything that word contained and didn’t contain and how your grandmother had sent it to him in the post like a key and trusted him to find the lock eventually. You finished your water. You went upstairs. You sat on your bed with the notebook and the envelope and the Calvino and you waited for midnight.
—
Midnight in the manor sounded like this: The grandfather clock in the east corridor striking twelve with the particular resonance of something that had been marking time in the same place for longer than anyone alive could remember. The house settling into itself, old wood finding its resting position. Wind against the north-facing windows. And underneath all of it, the specific silence of a building full of sleeping people who didn’t know what was happening in its walls. You’d waited until one in the morning to be safe. You’d sat on your bed with the Calvino open to the Octavia chapter and read it three times and then put it face-down on the duvet and stared at the ceiling and thought about the crossword clue. Seven letters. What two people share when they stop pretending. Then you’d picked up the notebook and the envelope and the torch and gone to the third panel from the left.
Jungwon was already there. He’d brought a second candle and a blanket from somewhere, which was so specifically him — practical, quietly considerate, the kind of thoughtfulness that didn’t announce itself — that it did something small and inconvenient to your chest. He’d pushed the two chairs closer to the table and there was a thermos between them that smelled like barley tea and you stood in the entrance of the passage and looked at all of this and thought about your grandmother writing I have been patient because patience was what was needed and understood, not for the first time tonight, exactly what she had meant.
“You found the second tin,” you said. On the table beside the thermos: the olive green tin, open. And beside it, spread out in a loose arrangement, photographs. You crossed the room and looked at them. Fifteen photographs. Maybe more. All of you and Jungwon, all taken in this house, spanning — you picked them up one by one — what looked like a decade. You at nine in the passage room, cross-legged over the crossword, face screwed up in concentration. At eleven, standing in the kitchen covered in flour from some disaster you vaguely remembered involving a recipe and overconfidence. At thirteen, outside in the summer fields, both of you caught mid-run, the chickens a chaotic blur in the background, your face turned back toward the camera mid-laugh. At fifteen, sitting on the stone wall at the edge of the garden, shoulders touching, looking at something outside the frame, both of you with the particular quality of stillness that means you don’t know you’re being watched.
At seventeen. The last summer before Barcelona. The two of you in the library, you on the floor with a sketchbook, him in the armchair above you reading something, and neither of you looking at each other but the angle of your bodies saying everything that the lack of eye contact was trying not to say. Your grandmother had taken all of them. Arranged them. Put them in a tin in a secret room in the house she left specifically to you. I am leaving them the house and each other and every door I can think to unlock. “She documented us,” Jungwon said. He was standing beside you, looking at the photographs spread on the table. His voice was careful in the way it got when he was feeling something he hadn’t categorised yet.
“She documented everything,” you said. You sat down. He sat down. You poured the barley tea because your hands needed something to do. Then you put the notebook on the table. You walked him through it methodically the way your grandmother had recorded it — chronologically, without editorialising, the way she’d taught you to present information. Let the facts be the facts. Let them land before you decide what they mean. He listened without interrupting. That was one of the things about Jungwon that had always been true — he knew how to be still while someone was talking, genuinely still, not the performance of patience but the real thing. His father had it too but in him it felt like strategy. In Jungwon it had always felt like respect. You got to the woman’s name. The dates. The hotel in Busan. Jungwon looked at the notebook. “Your father.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Seven years that she documented. Possibly longer.”
He was quiet. “Does your mother know?”
“She knows something,” you said. “I don’t think she knows the shape of it.”
“Haeun?”
“I don’t know. Haeun would have used it by now if she did.” He nodded slowly. You turned to the next section. The company. The figures. The structure of the agreement between your families that had been built quietly over decades in the particular way that men build things they don’t want scrutinised — in pieces, in separate rooms, in the gaps between what was documented and what wasn’t. You watched Jungwon’s face while you walked him through it. He was very still. “You knew some of this,” you said. Not an accusation. A calibration.
“I knew the shape of it,” he said. “Not the detail.” He turned a page, read something, turned it back. “My father told me when I took over that there were legacy arrangements with certain partners that were — grandfathered in. His word. He said they were historical and that I didn’t need to concern myself with the mechanics, only the outcomes.”
“Did you accept that?” A pause. The candle moved. “For about four months,” he said. “Then I started finding things that didn’t add up and I started asking questions and my father told me I was looking too hard at things that didn’t need looking at.” He looked at the notebook. “I stopped asking questions to his face. I kept looking on my own.”
“What did you find?”
“Enough to know there’s a liability,” he said. “Enough to know that whatever this arrangement is, it would not survive scrutiny. Not legal scrutiny.” He looked at you. “Enough to know that if it came out, both companies would be implicated. Both families.” The candle. The stone walls. The photographs on the table.
“She knew,” you said. “She knew all of it and she left the documentation to me and she left you the crossword clue and she trusted us to—” you stopped. “To what?” he said.
“I don’t know yet,” you said honestly. “But she didn’t do this so we’d bury it again.”
He looked at the notebook for a long time. Then he reached out and turned to the last entry. Read it. His expression did something very quiet and very complicated. I trust them. I always have. He sat back. Pressed his hand over his mouth for a moment. Dropped it. “She should have told us,” he said. Not angry. Just — something underneath anger that hadn’t found its shape yet. “She told us everything,” you said. “We just didn’t have the key yet.” He looked at the photographs again. The one from the library, you on the floor, him in the chair, both of you tilted toward each other without knowing it. “She saw everything,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” you said. The word sat between you. Everything had a weight in this room, in this house, with these photographs spread on the table between you and the barley tea going cold and your grandmother’s handwriting on the pages of a notebook she’d spent seven years filling for this exact moment. You reached into your jacket and put the envelope on the table. Both your names. Her handwriting. Jungwon looked at it. “Now?” he said. You thought about the Octavia chapter. About nets and abysses and the things that hold. About patience, and what it was for, and when it ended. “Not yet,” you said. “There’s still the east corridor. The third door.”
He looked at you. “You want to go now.”
“I want to go now.” He almost smiled. It was the almost that got you — the way it stopped just short, the way the boy who had chased chickens with you was right there behind the composed professional surface, three millimetres from the outside, held back by three years and a girlfriend and a company and everything that had accumulated in the space your absence had left. He stood up. Picked up the torch. “Third door,” he said.
The east corridor at one in the morning was a different place entirely from the east corridor in daylight. The wallpaper, pale blue, faded at the seams, turned grey in the torchlight. The portraits of your grandmother’s family watched you pass with the unsettling patience of people who had been watching things happen in this house for a very long time. You moved quietly, both of you, the old instinct from childhood — sock feet on the floorboards, weight on the outside of the step, don’t breathe past the third portrait because the floor creaks. You didn’t breathe past the third portrait. Jungwon didn’t either. The third door. It was heavier than the others — solid wood, original to the house, with an iron handle that your grandmother had refused to replace with something modern. You turned it slowly and pushed and the room opened up in the torchlight.
Your grandmother had called it the old study. Your father and Yang Junho used it when they met here — papers spread on the desk, the door closed, the polite fiction of privacy in someone else’s house. It smelled of old paper and woodsmoke and faintly, underneath that, the cedar and something clean that you’d noticed when Jungwon had hugged you in the sitting room two days ago and had been careful not to think about since. He’d been in here recently. “You came here,” you said. Not an accusation. “After she died,” he said. He moved into the room, swept the torchlight along the walls. “I wanted to understand what my father and yours were doing in here. What they kept here.”
“Did you find anything?”
“The desk was clean,” he said. “Whatever they kept here they took when she died. Or before.” He stopped the torch beam at the far wall. “But she was smarter than that.” The far wall was bookshelves. Floor to ceiling, the same as the library on the other side of the passage, filled with the kind of books that accumulate in old houses — mismatched, well-read, organised by a logic that was entirely your grandmother’s. You crossed to them and ran the torchlight along the spines and then you remembered something. Third door, her note had said. And then: start with the east corridor. Not the room. The door itself. You turned back. The door was solid wood, original to the house. Iron handle. And on the back of it — you moved the torch slowly — carved into the wood at hip height, almost invisible, a small symbol. A circle with a line through it. The same symbol your grandmother used to mark the starting square of any puzzle she set you. Start here.
You crouched down. Ran your fingers along the bottom of the door frame. A loose board. Not rotten, not accidental. Deliberately loosened, the nails removed and replaced with something that held the board in place but gave when you pressed the right spot. You pressed the right spot.nThe board lifted. Inside: a metal document box, dark with age, sealed with a combination lock. Three digits. Jungwon crouched beside you. His shoulder against yours again. “She changed the combination every year,” he said. “She told me that once. She said the only constant was the starting number.”
“Seven,” you said immediately. He looked at you. “She always started with seven,” you said. “Every combination, every puzzle. Seven was the beginning. She said it was the only number that looked like someone thinking.” He took the box. Turned the dial. Seven. Then you looked at each other. “Her birthday,” you said. “The month.”
“Four,” he said. Seven. Four. One digit left. “The crossword clue,” you said slowly. “Seven letters. She sent it to you. The answer—”
“Honesty,” he said. “Eight letters.”
“No,” you said. “Think about what she actually wrote. What two people share when they stop pretending.” You looked at the lock. “She wouldn’t use the answer. She’d use the question.” Jungwon was quiet for a second. “The number of the clue,” he said. “She sent me one clue.”
“Which number was it?” He thought. The candle from the passage room was far away now, just a distant suggestion of warmth. In the torchlight his face was all shadow and focus and the particular expression he’d had at nine years old whenever a puzzle was almost solved. “One,” he said. “It was clue one across.”
Seven. Four. One. The lock opened. Inside the metal box: A folder of documents. Financial records, correspondence, agreements bearing both your fathers’ signatures, dated across fifteen years. The architecture of the thing your grandmother had recorded in her notebook, now in primary source form — not her observations but the actual evidence, the originals, the paper trail that would make a lawyer sit up very straight. She had not just documented it. She had collected it. For fifteen years she had quietly, methodically, with the patience of someone who understood that the right time was not now but was coming, gathered every piece of paper that passed through this house and made copies and built a case and put it in a box under the floor of the room where the men who didn’t know she was watching met to do their careful, private business.
Jungwon sat on the floor of the study with the documents spread around him and read. You sat beside him and read. The candle burned down in the passage room. At some point you’d both ended up with your backs against the wall beneath the window, shoulders touching, documents in your laps, and the torch propped against the skirting board pointing at the ceiling and making the room dim and amber. Outside, the manor was completely silent. Inside, the only sound was the occasional turning of a page.
Around three in the morning Jungwon said, quietly: “He knew I’d find this eventually.”
“My father?”
“Mine.” He turned a page. “He structured it this way on purpose. Grandfathered it in so that when I took over I’d inherit the liability without inheriting the knowledge.” He paused. “He was protecting himself. He thought if I didn’t know the detail I couldn’t be held responsible for knowing and saying nothing.”
“He was wrong,” you said.
“Yes,” Jungwon said. “He was.” You looked at the document in your lap. Your father’s signature at the bottom of an agreement dated eleven years ago. Neat, confident, the signature of a man who did not expect to be looked at too closely. “What do we do with this?” you said.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But we don’t bury it.” She didn’t do this so we’d bury it again. Your own words from earlier, back to you. “No,” you agreed. “We don’t.” You sat on the floor of the old study in the dark with the evidence of your families’ careful deceptions around you and the envelope with both your names in your jacket and the photographs in the passage room and the clock somewhere in the east corridor counting its six extra minutes that nobody else knew about.
Jungwon’s head tipped back against the wall. He looked at the ceiling. “I used to think about what it would be like,” he said, “when you came back.” You were very still. “I’d built this whole — picture of it,” he said. “You walking in. Me being normal about it.” A short almost-laugh. “I was not normal about it.”
“You were professional,” you said. “You were very professionally warm.”
“I know,” he said. He sounded tired in a way that had nothing to do with three in the morning. “I’ve been professionally warm about a lot of things for a long time.” The torch light flickered. Steadied. “Jungwon—”
“Not yet,” he said quietly. He turned his head and looked at you and his face in the low amber light was very close and very tired and very much the face of someone carrying something he didn’t have a name for yet. “I know. I know there are — I know.” You looked at him. He looked at you. The house was completely silent. “Okay,” you said. Quietly. “Not yet.” He nodded. Looked back at the ceiling. You both sat there for another hour, reading your families’ secrets in the dark, shoulders touching, not saying the thing, the envelope in your jacket ticking like a clock. Outside, eventually, the dark began to grey at the edges. “We should go back,” you said.
“Yes,” he said. Neither of you moved for another minute. Then he gathered the documents with the careful deliberate hands of a man who had decided something, put them back in the box, locked it. Looked at the combination — seven, four, one — and then at you. “She really did plan everything,” he said.
“Down to the last detail,” you agreed. He almost smiled again. Three millimetres from the outside. “Infuriating woman,” he said. With so much love it wasn’t an insult at all. You put the box back under the board. You both stood up. In the corridor you walked in single file, sock feet, outside edge of the step, not breathing past the third portrait. At the point where the corridor split — your wing, his — you stopped. He stopped. “The envelope,” he said.
“Soon,” you said. He looked at you for a moment. The grey pre-dawn light from the window at the end of the corridor fell across half his face and left the other half in shadow and he looked like something your grandmother would have photographed — like something that belonged to this house, to this particular quality of light, to the specific hour before the world woke up and everyone put their surfaces back on. “Okay,” he said. He went left. You went right. You lay on your bed as the manor began to fill with the sounds of morning and you stared at the ceiling and you held the envelope on your chest over your heartbeat and you thought about seven letters and what they contained and you thought:
Soon.
—
You slept for three hours. It wasn’t restful sleep — it was the kind that happens to you rather than for you, pulling you under between one thought and the next and depositing you back on the surface before you’d actually recovered from anything. You dreamed about the passage room. About the photographs spread on the table. About your grandmother’s handwriting, the letters getting smaller and smaller until they were too small to read and you were pressing your face to the page trying to find the last thing she’d written and waking up with your cheek against the envelope. You lay there for a moment with the morning light coming through the curtains at the angle your grandmother had approved of and you listened to the manor breathing around you.
Somewhere below, the kitchen was already alive — the smell of rice and something warm coming up through the house the way it always had, the particular smell of this house in the morning that had lived in your memory for three years like a frequency you couldn’t quite tune out. In Barcelona your mornings smelled like coffee and exhaust and the bread from the bakery two streets over. You had loved that smell. You had also, on certain mornings, stood in your yellow-tiled kitchen and closed your eyes and tried to remember this one.
You got up. Showered. Dressed. Put the envelope in the drawer of your childhood desk beneath a sketchbook, which felt both insufficient and like exactly what your grandmother would do — hiding things in plain sight, in the most obvious containers, trusting the right people to know where to look. Then you went downstairs. The kitchen at eight in the morning held your mother, a cup of tea, and the particular quality of silence that meant she’d been sitting there long enough for the silence to have settled into something deliberate. She looked up when you came in. Her eyes moved over your face the way mothers’ eyes do — reading something, calibrating, deciding how much to say. “You were up late,” she said.
“Couldn’t sleep,” you said. Which was true. She nodded. Looked at her tea. “Your grandmother used to do that. Walk the house at night.” A pause. “She said the house was different in the dark. That you could hear it thinking.” You poured yourself tea and sat down across from her.
In the morning light your mother looked her age in a way she rarely allowed. The grief was closer to the surface now, unguarded, the performance of composed widowhood resting somewhere else for the hour before the house fully woke up. She had loved Han Sooja with the complicated ferocity of a daughter who had never quite understood her mother and had spent sixty years trying to. That love was real. You had never doubted it. “Are you alright?” you asked.
She looked at you for a moment. Something moved across her face — an assessment, a decision. “I’m managing,” she said. Which was not the same as yes and they both knew it. You wrapped your hands around your mug and thought about the notebook. About the woman’s name and the dates and Busan. About your grandmother sitting in this house for seven years watching your father’s careful second life and recording it and saying nothing to your mother because your mother had chosen not to see and Han Sooja had respected that choice while quietly preparing for the consequences of it. You thought about how to carry what you knew and not let it show. You were apparently not as good at this as your grandmother. “What is it?” your mother said.
“Nothing,” you said. “I’m just tired.” She looked at you for another moment. Let it go. “Haeun called a lawyer this morning,” she said. Conversational. Almost. “Her own lawyer. She says it’s just to understand her options.”
“Of course she did,” you said.
“She’s not—” your mother stopped. Started again. “She’s not wrong that your grandmother could have been clearer about her reasoning. For the records. The architectural documents.”
“She was very clear,” you said, carefully. “She put it in the will.”
“I know she did.” Your mother’s hands moved around her cup. “I know.” A pause that had more inside it than its length suggested. “Your grandmother kept a great deal to herself. I accepted that. I spent my whole life accepting that.” Something small and old in her voice. “I sometimes wonder what she knew that she didn’t tell me.” The kitchen clock ticked. You looked at your mother’s face. At the grief in it, and underneath the grief the older, more weathered thing that had been there longer. The thing that had learned to sit next to an absence and call it marriage. She knows something, you’d told Jungwon. I don’t think she knows the shape of it. “She loved you,” you said. “She just loved you in her own way.” Your mother smiled. Small, tired, true. “Yes,” she said. “She did.”
You found Haeun in the formal sitting room at nine with her laptop open and a woman you didn’t recognise sitting across from her — late forties, professional, the kind of person who carries a briefcase as a personality trait. The lawyer. Already here, already seated, already opening something on her tablet. Haeun looked up when you came in. Her smile was immediate and warm and about as genuine as a show home. “Good morning,” she said. “You look tired.”
“Good morning,” you said. “I see you’ve been busy.”
“Just preliminary conversations,” Haeun said lightly. “You know me, I like to understand things properly. This is Ms. Bae, she specialises in estate law.”
Ms. Bae nodded at you with the professional neutrality of someone being paid to have no opinions. “Haeun,” you said. “Grandmother has been dead for three weeks.”
“I know that.”
“Her body is barely—”
“I know that,” Haeun said. Her voice didn’t change. Didn’t sharpen. Stayed exactly where it was, which was somehow worse. “I’m not doing this to hurt anyone. I’m doing this because grandmother made decisions that affect this whole family and I think it’s reasonable to—”
“She made her decisions very deliberately,” you said. “Specifically. With full possession of everything she knew and everything she was.”
“She was eighty-one and isolated and possibly—”
“Don’t,” you said. Quiet. “Don’t say it, Haeun. Not in this house.” A silence. Ms. Bae became deeply interested in her tablet. Haeun looked at you for a long moment. And then, beneath the performance of reasonableness, you saw something real — something that wasn’t greed, not exactly, but the older wound underneath it. The child who had grown up knowing their mother had a favourite. Not unloved but not — first. Never quite first. You understood it. You even felt for it. But you had a notebook upstairs and an envelope in a drawer and a dead woman’s trust and you were not going to let that be dismantled because your sister was still trying to win an argument with someone who was no longer here to have it.
“I’m not going to fight you,” you said. “But I’m also not going to make it easy. Whatever grandmother left me she left me for a reason and I intend to honour that.” Haeun held your gaze. “Fine,” she said. The warmth had gone down to its lowest setting. “Then we’ll let the lawyers talk.” You left the room.
Yerin found you at eleven. You were in the garden — the formal part, the clipped hedges and the stone paths, where you’d gone to be outside and think and be somewhere that wasn’t a room full of someone else’s agenda. You had your sketchbook with you out of habit, but you hadn’t opened it. You were just sitting on the bench near the old sundial, which had been telling the wrong time since the seventies and which your grandmother had also refused to correct. She came down the path alone. No Jungwon. That was intentional — you registered it immediately, the way you registered everything about Yerin, with the involuntary alertness of someone in the presence of a thing that requires careful watching. She was dressed impeccably even at eleven in the morning in someone else’s country house garden. She sat down on the other end of the bench without asking and crossed her ankles and looked at the hedge in front of her and said nothing for long enough that it became its own kind of statement. You waited. “You grew up here,” she said finally.
“Yes,” you said. “The families are neighbours.”
“But you treated this house like yours.”
“My grandmother lived here,” you said. “She made it feel like ours. Mine and Jungwon’s.” The name landed. You’d done it deliberately, put it out there plainly, because you were tired and had slept for three hours and were not in the mood for the slow-motion version of this conversation. Yerin turned and looked at you directly for the first time. She had remarkable eyes — dark, steady, the eyes of someone who had decided a long time ago that she would not be the one to look away first. “He talks about this place like it raised him,” she said.
“It did, partly,” you said. “His family’s estate is half a kilometre that way.” You gestured. “We were back and forth constantly. His mother and mine were close.” A pause. “He and I were close.”
“Were,” she said. “We haven’t seen each other in almost three years,” you said. “People change.”
“Do they,” she said. Not a question. You looked at the sundial. “I’m not here to cause problems,” you said. “I came home because my grandmother died.”
“I know why you came home,” Yerin said. And then, very precisely: “It’s not why you’re staying that I’m thinking about.” You looked at her. She looked back. That steady, unblinking gaze. “I know what you two were,” she said. “Not because he told me — he’s very careful about what he tells me. Because of the way he is in this house.” She paused. “He’s different here. He laughs differently. He moves differently.” Something moved across her face that was not quite hurt and not quite anger and was instead something more complicated and more honest than either. “I’ve been with him for a year and a half and I have never seen him laugh the way he laughed in that kitchen two nights ago.” The garden was quiet. You didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say that wouldn’t be a lie or a cruelty. “I’m not stupid,” Yerin said. “I know what his father wants. I know what my family wants. I know what this relationship is built on and I know what it isn’t built on.” She turned and looked at the hedge again. “But I’m also not going to simply—” she stopped. Started again. “I have worked very hard to be what he needs. What everyone needs him to have.”
“That sounds exhausting,” you said. Quietly. Without any edge. She was quiet for a moment. “It is,” she said. Which surprised you. The honesty of it, the sudden flatness of it, stripped of the careful surface. “It really is.” You sat with that. The sundial gave its wrong time to the grey winter sky. “I don’t have a plan,” you said. Truthfully. “I don’t know what I’m doing here beyond what I’ve told you. I came home for the funeral. I’m dealing with the estate. I’ll go back to Barcelona.”
Yerin looked at you. “Will you.”
“I have a life there,” you said.
“Yes,” she said. “You do.” She stood up, smoothed her coat, looked down at you with those steady dark eyes. “And he has one here. One that was built very carefully. One that a lot of people are depending on.” A pause. “I want you to remember that.” She walked back up the path toward the house. You sat on the bench and watched her go and thought about what she’d said and what she hadn’t said and the specific way she’d said I have worked very hard to be what he needs with the exhaustion of someone describing a job they are very good at and do not love. You thought about Jungwon laughing in the kitchen. The three millimetres. You thought about a net over an abyss and what it meant to finally look down. You opened your sketchbook. You didn’t draw anything. You just sat with the blank page.
He found you there at noon. He came down the same path Yerin had come down an hour earlier and you watched him come and thought about what she’d said — he moves differently here — and looked for it and found it immediately, the thing she’d named. He walked like the house was familiar to him at the cellular level. Like his body remembered it even when the rest of him was trying to be someone who’d moved on. “Yerin talked to you,” he said. Not a question. “How did you know?”
“She told me,” he said. He sat down on the bench — the middle of it, not the far end. Closer than Yerin had sat. “She said she needed to talk to you and I asked her not to and she did it anyway.”
“She loves you,” you said. He looked at the sundial. “I know.”
“And you—”
“Don’t,” he said. Quietly. You stopped. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, looking at the ground between his feet. His jaw was tight. The professional composure was not all the way up this morning — three hours of sleep and a garden and nobody watching except you and it had slipped. “I know what you’re going to say,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were going to ask if I love her.” He paused. “The answer is that I care about her and I respect her and I have not been—” he stopped— “I haven’t been fair to her. I know that. I’ve known it for—” another stop. Longer.
“Jungwon,” you said. He looked up. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” you said. “We’re not—” you gestured vaguely— “I’m not owed that.”
He looked at you for a long moment. “That’s the problem,” he said. His voice was very quiet. “That’s exactly the problem.” The wind moved through the formal garden. Somewhere across the grounds a door opened and closed. The manor held its breath. You looked at him. He looked at you. Three millimetres. “The envelope,” he said.
“Tonight,” you said. “Passage room.” He nodded. Looked away. Looked back. “She told me,” he said, “that you’d go back to Barcelona.”
“I have a life there,” you said. The same words.
“I know,” he said. He stood up. Straightened. The composure coming back up like a tide. “Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight,” you said. He went back up the path. You sat on the bench with your blank sketchbook page and the wrong-time sundial and the specific feeling of being someone standing at the edge of something enormous trying to decide whether enormous things were better walked toward or run from. Your grandmother had never run from anything. You closed the sketchbook.
—
The house went quiet at eleven. You heard it happen the way you always had — the gradual diminuendo of a building settling into night, the last doors closing, the last lights going off under the gap at the bottom of the corridor, the grandfather clock doing its twelve-stroke accounting of the hours. Your father had gone to bed early. Your mother had sat up reading, or pretending to read, until ten. Haeun and Minjae had retired without saying goodnight to you, which was its own kind of statement. Yang Junho had gone back to the Yang estate after dinner, taking his easy laugh and his careful warmth with him. Yerin was in the room at the end of the east guest corridor.
Jungwon was — you didn’t know exactly. His footsteps had gone past your door at ten-thirty and not come back. You sat on your bed with the envelope in your hands and the Calvino face-down beside you and you waited until the house was completely still.
Then you went to the third panel from the left.
He was already there. Both candles this time, placed at opposite ends of the small stone table, and the photographs still spread from two nights ago, and the barley tea thermos again because apparently this was something he did now — thought about whether you’d be cold, acted on it, said nothing about it. The second mismatched chair was pulled out at the angle that meant this is for you. You sat down. He sat down. You put the envelope on the table between the two candles.
Both your names. Her handwriting. The paper slightly worn at the fold from the number of times you’d handled it without opening it. You both looked at it. “I keep thinking,” Jungwon said, “that once we open it that’s it. Whatever she says becomes the thing she said. You can’t—” he paused— “you can’t unknow it.”
“We already know most of it,” you said.
“Not what she meant to do with it,” he said. “Not what she wanted from us.”
You looked at the envelope. “She wanted us to be ready,” you said. “That’s why she didn’t just leave it with the will. That’s why she put the notebook in the bedroom and the box under the floor and the photographs in the tin.” You turned the envelope over in your hands. “She was building up to this. She wanted us to find everything else first so that when we read this we’d—”
“Have the context,” he said.
“Be ready,” you said again.
He looked at you. “Are you?”
You thought about three years in Barcelona. About Sunday calls and tangerines in the post and the Calvino on your shelf and the way you’d stood in your yellow-tiled kitchen with a dead leaf in your hand and almost called him and didn’t. About the photograph on your grandmother’s dresser — your desk, your lamp, your small evidence of a life being built somewhere else. About the library. Seventeen years old. Him in the chair above you, you on the floor, neither of you looking at each other. “No,” you said honestly. “Open it anyway.”
He broke the seal. His hands were steady. Steadier than yours would have been — you knew that about yourself, that you went very shaken when things were enormous, that shakiness was your version of bracing.
He unfolded the paper with the care of someone handling something irreplaceable and laid it flat on the table between the candles. Her handwriting. Small, precise. Three pages, front and back, in the blue ink she’d used your entire life. You both leaned in and read.
To my granddaughter, and to Jungwon-ah.
I am writing this in October, which is the best month in this garden, and I am sitting at my desk with the window open and I can hear the tree. I want you to know that I am well as I write this. Clear-headed, if slower than I used to be. I have thought carefully about what I want to say and I have decided to say it directly because I am eighty-one years old and I have spent enough of my life being indirect and while I believe indirectness is an art form and frequently undervalued I think you two have earned something plainer.
First: the house. I am leaving it to you, my girl, because you understand what a building is. Not the walls or the deeds or the history that other people will try to tell you it represents. You understand that a house is a record of what happened inside it. That the walls remember. You will know what to do with what you find here and you will know what to do with the house itself when the time comes. I trust this completely.
Jungwon-ah: I am not leaving you the house because you already know where everything is. You have spent fifteen years learning its rooms and its passages and its particular way of holding secrets. You don’t need the deed. You need the person who has it.
Now. The harder things. I have kept records for seven years. You will have found them by now — the notebook, the box, all of it. I want to be clear about why I kept them. Not for revenge, though I will not pretend there is no satisfaction in the idea of your father finding out that I saw everything he thought he was doing privately. Not for leverage. I kept them because the truth was happening in my house and I refused to let it happen without a witness. Someone had to see it. I decided that person would be me. What you do with the records is your decision, not mine.
I have opinions, which I will share: the arrangement between the companies is not survivable in its current form and the longer it is maintained the larger the liability becomes. Jungwon-ah, your father built something with good intentions and poor judgment and the combination is always more dangerous than either alone. You are more careful than he is. You are also more honest, which he would consider a weakness and which I consider the only thing that will save you.
As for your father Y/N, I have watched him for twenty-two years. I have watched your mother choose not to watch him. I will not make that choice for her. When the time comes — and it will come, these things always do — she will need you both. Not to fix it. You cannot fix it. Just to stay.
And now the thing I have been working up to. I have watched you both for fifteen years. I have taken photographs and kept crosswords and sent tangerines in the post and asked questions I already knew the answers to and I have been, I think, excessively patient. I want to explain why. I was not waiting for the right moment. I was waiting for you both to become the people who could survive the right moment.
You were children and then you were young people and there is a specific kind of damage that happens when the right thing arrives before a person is ready to hold it and I was not willing to risk that with either of you. I believe you are ready now. I am saying this plainly because I am eighty-one and I have earned the right to be plain: I have never in my life seen two people more thoroughly and more stubbornly fail to see what was directly in front of them. I say this with tremendous love and only moderate exasperation.
You grew up beside each other. You ransacked my kitchen and chased my chickens and ran through my house with muddy shoes and I watched you do all of it and I watched what happened in the spaces between the noise, which is where the real things were. I watched you learn each other. I watched you become the people each other needed. I watched you not say it and not say it and not say it and I thought: they are seventeen, they have time.
And then you left, my girl. And I understood why, and I respected it, and I watched Jungwon-ah come and sit in my garden and not say anything about it for three years, and I watched you call me every Sunday from Barcelona and not ask about him directly, always sideways, always carefully, and I thought: they are going to need some help. This is the help.
I am giving you the house and I am giving you the records and I am giving you the passages and the photographs and the puzzles and the box under the floor. I am giving you October light through an open window and barley tea and two chairs in a room nobody else knows about. I am giving you every door I can think to unlock.
The rest is yours. I love you both. I have loved watching you. I am not afraid of where I’m going but I am sorry to miss what comes next. Take care of the tree.
— Halmoni.
P.S. Jungwon-ah; the seven of spades. You will remember what that means. It was always yours.
The candles burned. You read it once and then you sat back and looked at the stone ceiling and blinked several times in rapid succession. Your grandmother had said she was going to be plain and she had been plain and it had landed exactly as she’d intended it to, which was with the force of something that had been true for a very long time and had simply been waiting for someone to say it out loud.
Jungwon had not moved. He was still leaning forward, elbows on the table, reading the last page. Or re-reading it. Or sitting very still the way he did when something was enormous.
You looked at the side of his face. At the candlelight on it. At the line of his jaw and the way his eyes moved across the page and the three millimetres that had been there since you’d walked into the sitting room and found him across the room and felt your stomach drop straight through the floor. He sat back.He looked at the letter for another moment. Then he looked at you.
“The seven of spades,” he said. His voice was different. Quieter. Stripped of something.
“What does it mean?” you said. He reached into the pocket of his shirt. And he put something on the table. A playing card. The seven of spades. The one from the first tin, that you’d left there — or a second one, identical, worn at the edges with age.
“She gave it to me,” he said, “when I was sixteen. We were playing cards in this room and she dealt us both a hand and when I turned mine over there was a seven of spades on top and she said—” he paused— “she said that one’s yours. Keep it. And I didn’t know what she meant, I thought she was just being—” a brief sound that was almost a laugh— “herself. Being her. So I kept it.” He turned the card over in his fingers. “I’ve had it in my wallet for seven years. I take it out sometimes. I never knew what it meant.”
You looked at the card. “Seven of spades,” you said. “In cartomancy—”
“I looked it up eventually,” he said. “Three years ago. Right after you left.”
“What does it mean?”
He put the card down on the table. Looked at it. “Unfinished business,” he said. “Something that was set in motion and hasn’t resolved. Something that’s still—” he stopped.
“Still in motion,” you said.
“Yes.” The candles. The stone room. Fifteen photographs on the table. Your grandmother’s handwriting on three pages of blue ink telling you both the plainest truth she’d saved for last. I have never in my life seen two people more thoroughly and more stubbornly fail to see what was directly in front of them. “She was right,” you said quietly. “About the thoroughly and stubbornly part.”
“Infuriating woman,” he said again. But his voice broke slightly on the last word and it wasn’t exasperation at all, it was grief, it was the specific grief of missing someone who knew you completely and there was nothing to do with that kind of grief except let it be exactly as large as it was.
You reached across the table. Your hand over his. He looked down at it. He didn’t move for a moment. Then he turned his hand over beneath yours and held it. Just that — palm to palm, his fingers closing around yours, the simple warm weight of it. You sat like that for a while. “Jungwon,” you said eventually.
“I know,” he said.
“There’s—” you started. “There’s a lot happening. The records, the companies, Haeun, your father—”
“I know.”
“And Yerin.” His hand tightened slightly around yours. Not pulling away.
“I know,” he said. A third time. A different weight each time.
You looked at the letter. At the last line before the postscript. I am not afraid of where I’m going but I am sorry to miss what comes next. “She would have loved this,” you said. “Being right.”
“She would have been unbearable about it,” he said.
“She would have been so restrained,” you said. “She would have just looked at us and not said anything and somehow that would have been worse.” He made that almost-laugh sound again. It was closer this time. It was getting closer. “She sent me one tangerine,” you said.
“She made me finish the crossword,” he said.
“She kept fifteen photographs in a tin.”
“She put fresh batteries in the torch.” You both looked at the candles. “She planned everything,” you said.
“Everything,” he agreed. His thumb moved. Once, across your knuckles. The smallest possible thing.
The candle on the left burned down to its base and went out. The room got smaller. The remaining candle made everything amber and close and the stone walls pressed in gently and the photographs were spread on the table and his hand was in yours and outside the manor the winter was doing whatever winter does at two in the morning.
“Tell me something about Barcelona,” he said. Quietly. Like he was asking for something he’d wanted for a long time and had finally decided to ask for. You thought about it.
“There’s a building,” you said. “In the Eixample. Not famous, not on any list, nobody goes specifically to see it. But at five in the afternoon in autumn the light hits the facade in this particular way and it looks like—” you paused, finding the words— “it looks like it’s remembering something. Like the building is having a memory.” You paused. “I used to walk past it on the way home and think about this house. About how old buildings hold things.” He was quiet. “I used to think about you,” you said. Because your grandmother had spent three pages telling you to stop not saying things. “When I walked past it. About showing you.”
He looked at your joined hands. “I used to drive past the airport,” he said. Not looking up. “When flights from Barcelona came in. Not to meet anyone. Just—” he stopped.
“Just,” you said.
“Just,” he said. The last candle flickered. In the amber half-dark you looked at each other and everything your grandmother had written was true and had been true for longer than either of you had been willing to name it and the net was still holding, still holding, and below it was the abyss which you were both finally, for the first time, looking directly at.
He leaned forward. You leaned forward. The candle went out.
In the dark: his forehead against yours. His breath. Both your hands on the table between the photographs. Just that. Just the weight of it. The held thing, finally held between two people instead of inside one. “Not yet,” he said. Against your forehead. His voice was barely sound.
“I know,” you said.
“I have to—” he stopped. “There are things I have to do first. Things I have to say. To her. To my father. I can’t—” he exhaled. “I won’t do this like it’s something to hide. I won’t do that to you.”
Your eyes had adjusted to the dark. You could just see the shape of him. The outline. “Okay,” you said.
“Soon,” he said. And it was your word back to you, the one you’d been handing back and forth for days, and in his mouth it meant something different now. It meant a door about to open rather than one being held closed.
“Soon,” you said.
You stayed like that for another minute. Foreheads together in the dark. Hands on the table. The letter between the extinguished candles.
Then you both sat back. He found the torch. Clicked it on. The room came back. He looked at you in the white torchlight and you looked at him and there was something different in the air of the room now, something that had been there all along but had finally been acknowledged, and it was terrifying and it was also — underneath the terrifying — the most settled you had felt since you’d stepped off the plane.
He folded the letter carefully and put it back in the envelope. “Keep it with the notebook,” he said.
“I will.” He stood. You stood. He looked at the seven of spades on the table. He picked it up. Held it for a moment. Then he put it in your hand.
“She said it was mine,” he said. “I think she meant it was ours.” You closed your fingers around it. He picked up the torch. You followed the light out of the secret room and back into the walls of the manor, and the house held you both the way it always had, and somewhere in the east corridor the grandfather clock ticked through its six extra minutes that nobody else knew about, and the walls remembered everything.
—
Morning came in like it hadn’t been briefed on what happened the night before. Pale winter light through the curtains. The kitchen smell rising through the house. The grandfather clock doing its eight-stroke announcement of an hour you’d technically only slept through three of.
You lay on your back with the seven of spades on the nightstand beside the Calvino and the envelope in the drawer and you stared at the ceiling and felt the specific quality of a day that was going to be significant before it had done anything yet. Forehead against yours. His breath. Soon.
You got up.
You didn’t see Jungwon at breakfast. His seat was empty. Yerin’s too. You registered this with the carefully neutral expression of someone who had been trained by their grandmother to reveal nothing at inopportune moments and you ate your rice and drank your tea and listened to your father talk to Yang Junho about something that had nothing to do with anything your grandmother had documented and you watched your father’s face and thought about the woman’s name recurring through seven years of entries.
Yang Junho was in good form this morning. Easy, expansive, filling the room the way he always did. He’d stayed over — the guest room on the second floor, the one with the good view of the garden. He spoke warmly about your grandmother, about the estate, about the families’ long history together and what a comfort it was to be here, to be among people who understood the weight of a loss like this.
Your mother smiled at him. Your father nodded. You watched the space between the three of them and thought about what your grandmother had written. Your father built something with good intentions and poor judgment and the combination is always more dangerous than either alone. She had meant Yang Junho. But sitting here watching your own father nod along, the sentence fit like a coat made for two people.
Haeun arrived at half past eight with the bright eyes of someone who’d slept well because they’d externalised all their feelings into legal strategy. She kissed your mother’s cheek and sat down and accepted coffee and was charming to Yang Junho and you watched her work the table and thought: she has no idea. She is fighting about the wrong things entirely. None of them know what’s in this house. None of them know what’s in the walls.
You found out where Jungwon was at nine-fifteen when you were coming back from the garden and heard voices in the east corridor. Not arguing. Not quite. But the specific register of a conversation that was trying very hard not to become an argument and was losing. Yerin’s voice, low and controlled: “I just want to know if something changed.”
Jungwon’s voice, careful, deliberate, the voice he used when he was being honest and it was costing him: “Nothing happened.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
A pause. “Yerin—”
“Don’t.” A silence. “Don’t say my name like that. Like you’re managing me.” You had stopped walking. You were standing three metres from the bend in the corridor with your hand flat against the pale blue wallpaper and you were not moving.
“I’m not managing you,” he said. “I’m trying to—”
“You’ve been trying to say something since we got here,” she said. “I’ve been watching you try to say it for three days. And last night you didn’t come to bed until four in the morning and you thought I was asleep but I wasn’t.” A long silence.
When he spoke again his voice was different. Quieter. The professionalism gone all the way down. “I know,” he said.
“Is it her,” Yerin said. Not a question. The wallpaper under your hand was cool and slightly rough, the texture of something very old.
“It’s not—” he started.
“Jungwon.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “It was never—” a pause— “I didn’t come here intending for anything to—”
“I know you didn’t,” she said. And the thing in her voice was not what you expected. It wasn’t fury. It was the exhausted, clear-eyed honesty of someone who had known something for a long time and had chosen not to name it and had now run out of reasons not to. “I’ve known since we arrived. I think I knew before we arrived. I think I’ve known for—” she stopped herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. And he meant it. You could hear that he meant it completely.
“Don’t apologise for having feelings,” she said. “Apologise for letting me come here. For letting me stand in that sitting room and meet her and pretend I didn’t see it immediately.” Her voice wavered once, precisely once, and then steadied. “Apologise for making me the person who had to see it clearly while you were still pretending.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Different weight.
“Is it real?” she said. “Or is it just — this house, the history, grief making everything feel—”
“It’s real,” he said quietly. “It’s been real for a long time. Before Barcelona. Before the company. Before any of this.” A pause. “I should have known that before I—” he stopped. “I should have been more honest with you from the beginning. About what I was carrying.” You closed your eyes.
“Your father is going to be furious,” Yerin said. Not bitterly. Just factually.
“I know.”
“Mine too.”
“I know.” Another silence. Longer. You could hear the quality of two people recalibrating.
“I don’t hate her,” Yerin said finally. “I wanted to. It would be easier.” A short sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She’s exactly what I expected her to be. Which is somehow the worst part. I’m going to need some time,” she said. “And I’m going to need you to not be — kind about this. I can’t do kind right now.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Go sort out whatever you need to sort out,” she said. “I’ll handle the rest.” Footsteps. You moved. Fast, silent, back around the bend in the corridor and into the doorway of the linen room, pressing yourself into the shadow of it, heart going considerably faster than was dignified.
Yerin came around the corner and walked past you without seeing you. Her face was composed and dry-eyed and very, very tired and she walked like someone who had made a decision and was now simply executing it, one step at a time, down the corridor and around the next bend and gone. You stood in the linen room doorway and breathed.
You didn’t go to him. That was the right thing and you knew it was the right thing — he needed time, she needed time, the corridor needed to stop being the corridor where that conversation had happened before it was the corridor where you appeared. So you went to the library instead and sat in the armchair — his armchair, seventeen years old, the photograph, you on the floor — and opened the Calvino and read three pages without taking in a single sentence.
The library was the warmest room in the house in winter. South-facing windows, old rugs, the smell of paper and wood and decades of accumulated reading. Your grandmother had called it the room that minds its own business, which was the highest compliment she gave to spaces. You put the Calvino face-down on your knee and looked at the ceiling.
He’d said it. It’s been real for a long time. Before Barcelona. You thought about being seventeen in this room. Him in the chair above you. Neither of you looking at each other and both of you angled toward each other like plants toward light, so obvious in retrospect, so invisible from the inside. You thought about the morning you left for Barcelona. Five-thirty, still dark, your father loading the car. Your mother with tea in a thermos for the journey. And Jungwon — he’d come over, you hadn’t expected him, you’d seen the lights of his car in the driveway and felt something lurch in your chest and he’d gotten out and stood there with his hands in his pockets and said text me when you land and you’d said I will and the distance between you had been three metres and had felt like something that would grow and that you were choosing to let grow and that you were not going to say anything about.
That was all. Three years of Sundays with your grandmother and not once had you called him directly. Thoroughly and stubbornly, she’d written. I say this with tremendous love and only moderate exasperation. You pressed the book against your face and made a sound into it that was not your most dignified moment.
The knock on the library door came at eleven. Not Jungwon. You knew by the knock — two short, businesslike, the knock of someone who had decided they were coming in regardless of the answer. “Come in,” you said.
Your father. He came in and closed the door behind him with the careful quietness of someone who wanted this conversation to stay in the room. He was dressed well, as always, silver-templed, handsome in the way that photographs well, and this morning there was something different in the way he was holding himself. A tension in the shoulders. Something behind his eyes that was working too hard to look like nothing. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said.
“It’s a good room,” you said. He looked around it. Nodded. Came and sat in the chair across from you — not Jungwon’s chair, the other one, lower, the one your grandmother had used when she wanted to read facing the garden.
“How are you doing?” he said. “Really. With all of it.”
“I’m managing,” you said.
“The business with Haeun and the will—”
“I can handle Haeun.”
“I know you can.” He smiled. The practiced warmth of it. “You’re the most capable person in this family, you know that. You always have been. Your grandmother always said so.” You looked at him. He was too eager to know what the letter said, too careful about the manor.
“She mentioned you in the letter,” you said. You hadn’t planned to say it. But you were your grandmother’s granddaughter and you had learned from the best and sometimes the direct approach was the one that told you the most. His face did not change. That was the tell — a different face would have changed, would have shown surprise or curiosity, would have asked what did she say?
His face stayed precisely where it was, which meant he’d been expecting this, which meant he’d been thinking about what she might have known and deciding how to handle it. “That’s kind,” he said. “She was a remarkable woman.”
“She was,” you said. “She was also very thorough.”
“What do you mean?” he said. Light. Careful.
“She kept records,” you said. “Of the house. Of the people in it. Of — everything, really. You know how she was.”
“Of course,” he said. The smile staying exactly where it was.
“Dad,” you said. Quietly. Not an accusation. Just his name. And something shifted. Something small but real — a crack in the surface, so quick you’d have missed it if you weren’t watching carefully, if you hadn’t been trained your whole life by the woman who’d taught you that the truth lived in the space between what people said and what their face did when they said it.
“Whatever you think you know,” he said. Still quiet. Still composed. “I want you to understand that things between your mother and I are—”
“Complicated?” you said.
“Adult,” he said. “They’re adult. They’re not—” he stopped. Reorganised. “Your grandmother had opinions about my marriage that she never fully expressed to me but which I was always aware of. Whatever she wrote—”
“I haven’t decided what to do with it yet,” you said. That landed. He looked at you. Really looked at you, for the first time in the conversation, with the eyes of a man recalibrating what he was dealing with.
“You’re very like her,” he said. Slowly. And it wasn’t a compliment exactly and it wasn’t a threat exactly and it sat in the space between those two things doing something complicated.
“Thank you,” you said. As if it had been a compliment.
He stood up. Straightened his jacket. Moved toward the door. At the door he stopped. “The architectural records,” he said. Without turning around. “The original documents. The floor plans.” A pause. “Is there anything in them that would be — relevant to current matters.”
You thought about the metal box under the floor of the third room. The fifteen years of documents. His signature at the bottom of an agreement dated eleven years ago. “I haven’t gone through everything yet,” you said. He nodded. Once. And left.
—
The thing about a house full of people keeping secrets is that the secrets create pressure. And pressure, sustained long enough, finds the weakest point. The weakest point turned out to be the sitting room at two in the afternoon when the families had reconvened in the way they kept reconvening, pulled together by the gravity of the occasion and the shared fiction that everything was normal, that this was simply a gathering of old friends in mourning, that the ground was solid.
Yang Junho was telling a story about your grandmother — a good one, genuinely funny, about a business meeting she had attended thirty years ago and dominated completely without ever raising her voice. Your mother was laughing. Your father was laughing. Even Haeun was laughing.
Jungwon was sitting across the room. He’d come in ten minutes ago and taken the chair by the window and met your eyes briefly when he sat down and then looked away. He hadn’t spoken much. Yang Junho had put his hand on his son’s shoulder when he came in and Jungwon had not visibly reacted and you had watched the specific quality of that not-reacting and understood that something had already happened between them this morning.
Yerin was not in the room. Nobody had asked where she was.
You were watching the fire when Haeun’s phone rang. She glanced at it, made a small apologetic gesture, and stepped out. Two minutes later she came back in and her face had done something you hadn’t seen it do in a very long time — it had gone genuinely, unperformatively still. The stillness of shock. She looked at your father. “I need to speak with you,” she said. “Now.”
The room shifted. Your father’s laugh ended. “Haeun—” your mother said.
“Not you,” Haeun said. Still looking at your father. Her voice had no warmth in it at all, no performance, nothing. “Just him.”
“Whatever you need to say—” your father started.
“I was just on the phone with Ms. Bae,” Haeun said. And something in her voice made everyone in the room go very still. “She’s been going through the estate filings. The things that were submitted publicly as part of the probate record.” She paused. The pause was a grenade with the pin already pulled. “She found a company filing. Seven years ago. A subsidiary registered under a holding name.” She looked at your father. “Your name is on it. And so is the name of a woman who is listed as a joint director.”
The fire crackled. Your mother turned to look at your father. And on your father’s face — just for a moment, one unguarded moment before the composed surface came back up — was the expression of a man who had known this day was coming for seven years and had convinced himself it wouldn’t. “Haeun,” he said. Warning.
“Her name is Park Jooyeon,” Haeun said. She said it clearly, without hesitation, the way you rip off a plaster because fast is kinder than slow. “She’s been listed as a director of your subsidiary for seven years. The filing also shows a residential address which is—” she glanced at her phone— “not this house.” Your mother said nothing. The room held its breath.
“I think,” Yang Junho said, standing up with the practiced authority of a man who had been managing rooms for forty years, “that this is perhaps a family conversation—”
“Sit down, Junho,” your mother said. He sat down. Everyone looked at your mother. She was looking at your father. Her face was doing something you had never seen it do and hoped never to see again — not anger, not shock, but the specific expression of a person watching something they already knew become something they could no longer choose not to know. The shape of it finally arriving. The avoidance finally over. “How long,” she said. Your father opened his mouth. “Don’t lie to me,” she said. Very quietly. “I have lived in the shape of this lie for long enough. Don’t make me hear another one.”
“Mum—” you said.
“Not now,” she said. Without looking at you. Still looking at him.
“At least twenty years,” Haeun said. She’d gone very pale. Her voice had lost its edge — she’d wanted ammunition and she’d gotten a detonation and they were different things and she was just now feeling the difference. “Ms. Bae found earlier filings. Different company name. Same address.”
Twenty years. The number went around the room. Your mother stood up. “I would like everyone to leave this room,” she said. With the composure of someone who had spent sixty years learning from Han Sooja how to be still when everything was breaking. “Except for my husband.”
People stood. Moved. Yang Junho put his hand briefly on your mother’s shoulder as he passed and she didn’t acknowledge it and he didn’t require her to. You stood in the doorway. Your mother looked at you. Her eyes were dry. They would probably stay dry — that was her way, the Han way, grief and fury going inward first and only surfacing when she was ready to let them. You recognised it because you did it too. She gave you the smallest nod.
The corridor outside the sitting room. Jungwon was there. He’d come out just ahead of you and he was standing at the window at the end of the corridor with his back to the room, looking out at the winter garden, his hands loose at his sides. You came and stood beside him.
Below: the formal garden, the stone paths, the sundial giving its wrong time. The bench where Yerin had sat beside you. The path where you’d watched him walk back to the house with his composure settling over him like a coat. “She planned this too,” you said quietly. “Not the sitting room. But — she knew this would happen. Eventually. She wrote it in the notebook. It will come, these things always do.”
“Yes,” he said.
“She wanted us here when it did.”
“Yes,” he said again. You looked at the garden.
“Your father,” you said. “This morning.” He exhaled. Not a sigh — something more deliberate than that. Something he’d been holding since before breakfast.
“He came to me at eight,” he said. “He’d already spoken to yours. Some kind of warning system they’d apparently arranged.” His jaw tightened. “He told me there might be some questions raised about the companies in the coming days and that I should be prepared to manage the narrative.”
“Manage the narrative,” you said.
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him,” Jungwon said carefully, “that I’d been looking at the companies for six months and that I thought what he’d built with your father was a liability and that I wasn’t prepared to manage any narrative that involved me pretending I didn’t know what I knew.”
“How did he take that?”
“About as well as you’d expect.” You looked at his profile. The set of his jaw. The tiredness in him that was different from yesterday’s tiredness — this was the tiredness of someone who had said the honest thing to their father and was living in the aftermath.
“Yerin left,” he said. “An hour ago. Her driver came.”
“I know,” you said. “I heard — I was in the corridor. This morning. I didn’t mean to hear.”
He looked at you. “How much?”
“Enough,” you said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He looked back at the garden. “She was right about all of it. I wasn’t fair to her.” A pause. “She deserved better than what I gave her.”
“She’s going to be alright,” you said. Because it was true — you’d seen it in Yerin’s face, that hard clear-eyed competence. She would grieve this in private and then she would be formidable again. Women like Yerin always were.
“I know,” he said. “That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” you said. “It doesn’t.” Below, the sundial. The wrong time. Your grandmother’s unrepentant refusal to correct anything that she’d decided was fine as it was. Inside the sitting room your mother was having the conversation that had been twenty years in the making.
In the walls of the house the passages waited, the photographs on the table in the candlelit room, the seven of spades somewhere in your jacket. “What happens now?” you said.
He turned from the window and looked at you directly and his face had none of the professional composure on it and none of the careful distance and was just — him. Tired and honest and present in the way he’d been at one in the morning on the floor of the old study and in the way he’d been at seventeen in the library and in the way he’d always been when it was just you and the house and none of the surfaces required. “Now,” he said, “everything falls apart for a while.”
“And then?”
He looked at you for a long moment. “And then we see what’s left,” he said. From behind the sitting room door, muffled and distant, your mother’s voice. Not loud. Never loud. But with an edge in it like a clean cut, precise and final, the voice of a woman who had decided that the shape of this particular truth was one she was done living inside.
The house held it all. The grief and the reckoning and the long-delayed arrivals of things that had been on their way for years. The walls remembered. They always had. Your grandmother had known that. She’d counted on it.
—
The house didn’t sleep that night. Not really. It had the shape of sleeping — quiet corridors, dark rooms, the grandfather clock marking hours into silence — but underneath it was awake the way houses get when something significant has happened inside them. Like the walls were still processing. Like the rooms needed time to absorb what they’d held that afternoon.
Your mother had come out of the sitting room at four o’clock. She’d walked past you in the corridor with her back straight and her face composed and her eyes doing the thing they did — grief going inward, fury going inward, everything going inward to be dealt with in private on her own terms in her own time. She’d touched your face with one hand as she passed. Just that. Her palm against your cheek for three seconds, warm and dry, and then she’d gone upstairs.
Your father had left the sitting room twenty minutes later. He’d taken his coat from the rack by the front door and gone outside and you’d watched from the corridor window as he walked down the front drive and stood at the gate and made a phone call and you had not needed to wonder who he was calling.
Haeun had found you at five and said I didn’t mean for it to come out like that and you’d said I know because you did know — she’d wanted leverage and had accidentally dismantled the family instead and the gap between those two things had clearly shaken her more than she’d expected. You’d made her tea. You’d sat with her in the kitchen while she held the mug and stared at the table. That was the most honest you’d been with each other in years, sitting in silence while your family reconfigured itself in the rooms above you.
Yang Junho had left at six. Businesslike, minimal. He’d shaken your father’s hand when your father came back in and something had passed between them in that handshake — something that looked like a renegotiation — and then he was gone.
Jungwon had stayed. You’d seen him at dinner, which was quiet and reduced and nothing like the dinners this house was built for. Your mother had come down and eaten and said almost nothing and your father had sat at the opposite end of the table from her and the distance between them had the specific quality of a distance that had always existed but had only just been measured.
Haeun and Minjae had left after dinner. Minjae had squeezed your shoulder on the way out, which was the most he’d ever communicated to you directly and which you’d appreciated. And then the house had gone quiet. And you had lain on your bed and stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep and sleep had declined the invitation.
The clock in the east corridor struck two when you were already in the kitchen. You hadn’t turned the overhead light on. Just the small light above the stove, the one that had always been there, the one that turned the kitchen amber and warm and made it look the way it looked in every memory you had of it.
You were standing at the counter with both hands wrapped around a mug of tea you hadn’t drunk yet and you were looking at the window above the sink and the darkness outside it and you were thinking about your mother’s palm against your cheek. Just to stay, your grandmother had written. Not to fix it. You cannot fix it. Just to stay.
You heard him before you saw him. The particular sound of his footsteps — the outside edge of the step, old habit, the way you moved in this house at night without deciding to. The door opened. You didn’t turn around. He came in. Stopped. Registered the amber light and you at the counter and said nothing for a moment. Then he crossed the room and stood beside you at the counter and looked at the dark window and also said nothing. You handed him your tea. He took it. Drank. Handed it back. “How is she?” he said. Quietly.
“She went to bed at nine,” you said. “I don’t think she’s sleeping either.”
“No,” he said.
“He’s in the guest room,” you said. “The east one. He didn’t try to go to their room.”
“Small mercies,” Jungwon said. The clock in the east corridor was very faint from here. Just a suggestion of ticking. The kitchen had its own sound — the refrigerator’s low hum, the settling of the old pipes, the back door with the broken latch occasionally sighing in the wind.
“Your father,” you said.
“We talked again after dinner,” he said. “When you were with your mother.” He paused. “I told him I’ve been building a case for six months. That I know what the arrangement is. That I’m going to have to restructure the company’s position and that it’s going to require disclosure and that he needs to be prepared for that.”
“How did he take it?”
“He told me I didn’t understand business.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him I understood it well enough to know that what he’d built was going to collapse eventually and that the only question was whether we were the ones who dismantled it carefully or whether it fell on us.” A pause. “He said I sounded like your grandmother.”
“Good,” you said. Something moved in Jungwon’s face. Almost a smile. You put the mug down. Turned around and leaned against the counter with your arms crossed not as a defence but as something to do with your hands. He turned too, mirroring you, and you stood there facing each other in the amber kitchen light and the house was completely quiet and you were both in old clothes — him in a dark t-shirt and soft trousers, you in whatever you’d put on when sleep became definitively not happening — and there were no surfaces up at two in the morning in this kitchen. There never had been. That was the thing about this room. It didn’t allow for them.
“She’s going to be alright,” you said. About your mother. About the specific quality of her composure.
“I know,” he said. “She’s a Han woman.”
“Don’t let her hear you say it like that or she’ll take it as an insult.”
“She’d be right,” he said. “It was completely a compliment.”
You looked at him. He looked at you. The refrigerator hummed. “Jungwon,” you said.
“Yes,” he said. Not a question.
“What you said this morning. To your father. About the company.” You held his gaze. “That was the hard version. The harder version than anything I’ve asked you to do.”
“It needed to be done,” he said.
“I know. I’m saying — I know what it cost.” He looked at you for a moment. Something in him settling, like a weight redistributed. “She would have approved,” he said.
“She would have handed you the crossword and not said anything and that would have been the approval,” you said. He made that sound again, the almost-laugh, and this time it came all the way out — quiet, real, and the boy who had chased chickens was fully present in it and the three millimetres collapsed entirely and you felt it in your sternum like a struck bell.
He reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind your ear. His hand stayed. Cupped the side of your face. You went very still. His thumb moved along your cheekbone. The same gesture your mother had used in the corridor except that this one was slow and deliberate and asking something.
“I talked to Yerin,” he said. Quietly. “She called tonight. We — it’s done. It’s properly done. I wanted you to know that.”
“Okay,” you said. Your voice was not entirely steady.
“I told you I wouldn’t do this like something to hide,” he said. “I meant it.”
“I know you did.” His eyes moved over your face. Unhurried. The way he moved in this house — like he knew every room and had time.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about what to say. Since the passage room. I had things arranged. Sentences.” The corner of his mouth. “They’re all gone.”
“Say it without sentences,” you said.
He looked at you. “I drove past the airport,” he said. “Every time a flight came in from Barcelona. I did that for three years. I told myself it was nothing. I told myself I was just—” he stopped. “I didn’t tell myself anything, actually. I just drove there.”
Your hand came up and covered his where it held your face. His breath shifted slightly. “I have my grandmother’s crossword clue for you in my head,” you said. “Seven letters. I keep thinking about it.”
“Honesty,” he said.
“Honesty,” you said. And then neither of you said anything else.
He closed the distance — not rushed, not after all this time, not after three years and this house and fifteen photographs and both your names on an envelope — he closed it like he’d been planning the exact geometry of it for longer than either of you were going to admit, one hand still cradling your face and the other coming to rest at your waist and his mouth meeting yours with the specific quality of something that had been waiting long enough that when it arrived it felt less like a beginning than like a return.
You kissed him back with every Sunday call you hadn’t made and every time you’d almost said something and every seven of spades and every tangerine in the post and the whole accumulated weight of it came through in the way your hands went to the front of his shirt like they already knew where they were going.
He made a quiet sound against your mouth. His hand moved from your waist to the small of your back and pulled you closer and you went, easily, completely, like a thing that had been resisting gravity for three years finally letting go. He tasted like tea and the faint ghost of something warmer and he kissed the way he did everything in this house — like he knew the rooms, like he had time, thorough and unhurried and devastatingly present.
His hand slid from your face into your hair and tipped your head back and you made a sound you didn’t intend to make and felt him inhale sharply at it. “Hi,” he said against your mouth. His voice low and a little wrecked already.
“Hi,” you said.
He pulled back just enough to look at you. His hand still in your hair, yours still twisted in his shirt, both of you breathing like you’d been doing something more athletic than standing in a kitchen.
In the amber light his eyes were dark and his mouth was slightly swollen and he was looking at you with an expression that had nothing professional or composed or carefully maintained about it whatsoever. He was looking at you the way he looked at the passages when they opened — like something that had been there all along and was finally, finally being seen. “Three years,” he said quietly.
“More than three years,” you said. He kissed you again and this one was less careful — his hands moving down your back, yours sliding up to his shoulders, the counter behind you taking your weight as he pressed closer.
He kissed down the line of your jaw and you tilted your head back and looked at the amber ceiling and thought distantly that your grandmother had planned everything except possibly this specific configuration in her kitchen at two in the morning and that she would have been insufferably pleased about it.
“Upstairs,” you said. He lifted his head. Looked at you. Checking.
“Yes,” you said, to the question he hadn’t asked.
Your childhood bedroom with the sketchbooks on the shelf and the Barcelona exhibition poster and the corkboard above the desk looked different at two in the morning with Jungwon closing the door behind him and turning to look at you across the room. He looked at the room first. The way he always looked at rooms — registering, cataloguing, the thing your grandmother had done too, the thing you did.
Then he looked at you. “I used to stand outside this door,” he said. “When we were kids. Waiting for you to come out.”
“I know,” you said. “I could always hear you.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I liked knowing you were there,” you said. Something in his face. Something very warm and very undone. He crossed the room. There was a quality to being undressed by someone who had known you for fifteen years that had nothing to do with unfamiliarity and everything to do with its opposite — the specific intimacy of someone who already knew the shape of you in other ways and was learning this one slowly, like a new room in a house they’d lived in for years.
His hands were unhurried. His attention was total. He treated each thing like it mattered and it made your chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with sadness. You pulled his shirt over his head and put your hands flat against his chest and felt his breathing. “Still thinking in sentences?” you asked.
“Not even close,” he said. He took your chin between his fingers and tilted your face up and kissed you properly — deep and unhurried and completely in charge of it — and you felt the dynamic settle into place like something clicking. Jungwon had always had this quality. This absolute certainty. In every other context you’d spent years watching it from the outside.
You pushed him back onto the bed. He pulled you with him, one hand at your waist, and you landed against his chest and he rolled you gently and hovered over you and looked at your face again with that same thoroughness, like he was memorizing you. Then he moved down your body and the careful part began.
He took his shirt off first — unhurried, watching your face while he did it — and then he came over you and looked down and something in his expression was focused and warm and entirely certain. “I’m going to take my time,” he said. Like a statement of intent. Like he was informing you.
“Okay,” you managed.
“You’re going to let me.” Not a question.
“Yes,” you said.
He kissed your cheek again — that specific tenderness, completely at odds with the authority in his voice — and then his mouth moved to your throat and the careful, methodical dismantling began. He learned you like a map he intended to memorize. His mouth at your collarbone, the inside of your wrist — pausing there when your breath hitched, pressing his lips back to the same spot twice — your stomach, the soft curve of your hip. His hands moved with his mouth, cataloguing, noting, and every time you made a sound his eyes came to your face briefly. Checking. Watching. “Good?” he murmured against your ribs.
“Yes,” you breathed. “Yes.”
“Good girl,” he said quietly, and continued. His fingers found the edge of your underwear and he looked up at you from where he was and raised an eyebrow. Asking without asking. You lifted your hips. He drew them down slowly, dropped them, and settled between your thighs and looked at your pussy with an expression of complete, focused attention that made you want to press your thighs together out of sheer overwhelm.
He didn’t let you. His hands pressed your thighs apart, firm and certain. Held them there. “Don’t,” he said simply. Then his mouth found your clit and your back left the mattress.
He ate you out like he had nowhere else to be and no interest in being anywhere else — long slow strokes of his tongue through your folds, his lips sealing over your clit and applying exactly the right pressure, his eyes coming up to your face every few moments to read your expression and adjust accordingly. He was thorough in the way that only someone genuinely paying attention could be, cataloguing every hitch of your breath, every clench of your thighs against his hands.
The sound that left you was embarrassingly loud. His eyes came up. “Shh,” he said against your folds — not unkind, just certain. Then he pressed two fingers against your lips. Firm. “Here.”
You opened your mouth and took them in. “Good.” His voice low and approving. He pressed them deeper against your tongue and returned his mouth to your cunt with noticeably more intent — like your compliance had unlocked something — his tongue working faster, two fingers from his other hand pushing slowly into your hole and curling upward. You moaned around his fingers and clenched around the ones inside you and he made a low sound against your pussy that you felt everywhere.
He worked you with complete focus — his tongue on your clit, his fingers curling inside your hole, your wetness absolutely everywhere and him making quiet reverent sounds about it that were muffled against your folds. Your hand went to his hair and gripped and he let you, kept going, his fingers in your mouth pressing down on your tongue every time you got too loud.
“Look at me,” he said against you. You looked down at him. Dark eyes looking up at you from between your thighs. That eye contact while his mouth was on your cunt was almost more than you could process. “Stay with me,” he said. “Right here.”
When you came it crashed through you in deep rolling waves, your cunt clenching hard around his fingers, your moan muffled completely by his hand, your thighs pressing around his face and his hands not letting them close. He worked you through every single pulse — not stopping, not slowing — until you were pulling at his hair and trembling. He pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to your inner thigh. Then another.
Then he was kissing up your stomach, your ribs, your collarbone, the corner of your mouth. “There she is,” he murmured against your cheek. “How are you doing?”
“I’m—” You laughed weakly. “I’m good. Really good.” He kissed your cheek.
“Yeah you are.” He reached for the bedside drawer himself, sorted himself out, and came back to you and looked at your face and brushed your hair back from your forehead with both hands like you were something worth being careful with.
Then he took both your wrists and pressed them above your head, his hand wrapping around them, pinning them to the pillow. “Keep them here,” he said quietly.
“And if I don’t?” you said. The look he gave you was patient and very slightly dangerous.
“Keep them here,” he said again. He pushed inside you slowly — that long, aching stretch — and the sound you both made was simultaneous and involuntary, his a low broken groan, yours a gasp that turned into his name.
He held there for a moment, fully seated, his forehead dropping to yours, his hand still pinning your wrists above your head. “Okay,” he breathed. Like a reset. Like he needed a second.
“Jungwon—”
“I know.” He kissed the corner of your mouth. “I know. You feel—” He stopped. Pressed his lips to your cheek. “Perfect. You feel perfect.”
He started to move. Long and deep and measured, his hips rolling in that deliberate rhythm, his cock filling you completely with every stroke and withdrawing slowly — the kind of pace that was specifically designed to make you lose your mind.
Your hands stayed above your head because he’d told them to and because his hand around your wrists was warm and present and you weren’t going anywhere. “Good girl,” he murmured. Watching your face. “Look at you.”
“Jungwon — harder—”
“Not yet.” Steady. Infuriatingly steady. “When I say.”
He kept the pace exactly where he wanted it — deep and thorough, hitting somewhere inside you that made your toes curl — and his free hand found your clit and worked it in slow circles and you arched up into him. “There,” he said. Dark and satisfied. “Feel that?”
“Yes—”
“Yeah.” The circles on your clit tightened. His hips snapped forward once, harder, and you gasped. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
He built you up carefully and completely, his cock and his fingers working in tandem, his eyes on your face the entire time — that absolute quality of attention that dismantled you, that had always dismantled you, fifteen years of it turned toward this single purpose.
“Close,” you managed. “Jungwon, I’m—”
“I know.” He didn’t slow down. “Give it to me.” The second one rolled through you deep and long and he watched your face through every second of it — your mouth falling open, your back arching, your hands straining against his grip above your head — and he kept going through all of it, his fingers not stopping until you were clenching and crying his name and he said “there she is, good girl, there she is” against your cheek like a quiet litany.
Then he released your wrists and pulled you up.
“Your turn,” he said. He lay back and you understood immediately. You swung your leg over him and his hands went to your waist — not guiding, not yet, just there — and you sank down onto him and the sound that left him was the most gratifying thing you’d ever heard. Low and wrecked and completely involuntary.
You rolled your hips. “Fuck,” he breathed. His hands tightened. “Do that again.” You did. Set your own pace, slow and grinding, finding the angle that made your vision blur and staying there.
His head pressed back into the pillow, his jaw tight, his eyes on your face with that dark focused expression cracking at the edges into something rawer. “Look at you,” he said, rough and quiet. “You’re perfect. Do you know that?” His jaw went tight as you clenched around him. “God.”
“Don’t stop talking,” you said breathlessly. “Please—”
“You feel incredible.” His hands moved you faster without asking permission. “Your pussy is—you have no idea. No idea what you—”
He sat up suddenly, arms wrapping around you, and kissed you deep and you rolled your hips and he held you through it and you came for the third time with your face in his neck and your nails raking down his back and he groaned at the sting of it — not pulling away, pressing closer, like he wanted that, like he’d been waiting for your nails.
He rolled you back down. Both of you past careful now — his cock driving into you deep and purposeful, your legs over his shoulders, his hand pinning your wrists above your head again. His other hand pressed flat to your lower stomach and he felt himself moving inside you and his expression went somewhere completely undone.
“Eyes on me,” he said. You looked at him. He looked at you. Dark and certain and something underneath it — something fifteen years old — looking out. “You’re mine,” he said quietly. Not possessive. Just true. Like he was finally saying something he’d always known.
“Yes,” you said. “Yes, Jungwon—”
“Good girl.” Driving deeper. “My good girl.” Your nails went to his back again — raking down — and he hissed through his teeth and his rhythm stuttered and then he was coming, buried as deep as possible, your name in his mouth, his whole body shuddering through it in slow waves while you held him and felt every pulse of it.
Afterward you lay in the narrow single bed of your childhood bedroom with his arm around you and your head on his chest and his heartbeat slowing gradually back to something normal under your ear. The house was very quiet.
Outside the window the winter garden. The sundial. The stone wall at the edge of the fields where you’d stood together three days ago and looked at the grey-green view and said nothing about the thing that had been living in the space between you.
“The tree,” you said. Against his chest. Almost asleep.
“What?”
“Her letter. At the end. Take care of the tree.” He was quiet for a moment.
“The tangerine tree?” he said.
“I don’t know how to look after a tangerine tree.”
“I do,” he said. “She taught me.” Of course she had. You made a sound into his chest that was grief and fondness and exhaustion and something newly made and warm all at once. His arm tightened around you. “Sleep,” he said. Quietly. Into your hair.
“There’s still so much to sort out,” you said. “The companies. Your father. Mine. The records. Haeun—”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “All of it tomorrow.”
You were quiet. “She would have liked this,” he said. “She would have smiled like she’d won something.”
“She did win something,” you said. He made the sound — the real laugh, quiet and warm, in the dark.
“She won everything,” he said. The house breathed around you. The walls remembered. The tree stood in the winter garden under the wrong-time sundial and the six extra minutes ticked by in the east corridor and outside the window the fields were dark and still and the net held, the net held, it had always been holding.
—
Morning came differently. Not the grey reluctant morning of the days before — this one had actual light in it, thin and winter-pale but present, coming through the curtains at the angle your grandmother approved of and landing across the bed in a way that felt almost deliberate. Like the house had decided something had shifted and was adjusting its lighting accordingly.
You were awake before him. This was not surprising. You had always been the one who woke first — in Barcelona, in studio all-nighters, in every version of your life you’d constructed away from this place. Your brain came online quickly and completely and then immediately started cataloguing everything that needed to be dealt with, which was both a useful quality and an exhausting one.
You lay still and let it catalogue. Your mother down the hall. Your father in the east guest room. The notebook in your desk drawer and the metal box under the floor of the third room and fifteen years of documentation that was going to require very careful decisions made by people who were currently in various states of devastation. Haeun, who had driven home last night after dismantling the family dinner table and was presumably now sitting in her very expensive apartment feeling something she didn’t have a script for. Yang Junho, who had been told by his son that the careful architecture of his business legacy was going to be pulled apart and rebuilt into something honest. The tangerine tree in the garden.
You turned your head. Jungwon was asleep. This was — notable. He slept with the specific quality of someone whose body had been running on insufficient rest for days and had finally been given permission to stop. On his back, one arm still loosely around you, his face completely unguarded in a way it almost never was when he was awake. The professional composure was entirely absent. He looked like the boy in the photographs on the passage room table.
You looked at him for longer than was strictly necessary. Then you carefully moved his arm, and got up, and got dressed, and went to find your mother.
She was in the garden. Not the formal garden — the kitchen garden at the back, the working one, where your grandmother had grown things with the same methodical attention she gave everything. It was winter-bare now, the beds turned over, the herbs cut back, but your mother was standing at the edge of it with a cup of tea in both hands and her coat over her pyjamas and her hair not yet done and looking at the dormant beds like they owed her a conversation. You came and stood beside her. She looked at you. Her eyes moved over your face the way they had yesterday in the corridor — reading, calibrating. This morning they stilled on something and she looked at you for a beat longer than usual and you thought: she knows. Of course she knows. She is a Han woman and she has been reading rooms since before you were born.
She said nothing about it. “The mint comes back every year,” she said instead. Nodding at one of the beds. “No matter what. Your grandmother never planted it twice.”
“Persistent,” you said.
“Invasive, she called it,” your mother said. “But she never pulled it out.”
You stood beside her. The kitchen garden in the early morning, both of you in coats, tea and no tea. “How are you?” you said.
“I’ve been better,” she said. Dry. Almost wry. A Han woman’s version of honesty.
“Mum—”
“I’m not broken,” she said. “I want you to know that before you start.” She looked at the mint bed. “I’ve known the shape of this for a long time. Not the detail. Not the name, not the company, not the—” she stopped briefly— “not all of it. But the shape.” She turned her mug in her hands. “Your grandmother knew I knew the shape. We never discussed it because discussing it would have made it real in a way I wasn’t ready for.”
“I know,” you said.
“She left you the records,” your mother said. “Because she knew you’d know what to do with them.”
“I’m still figuring that out,” you said honestly. Your mother nodded slowly.
“Whatever you decide — about the companies, about the documentation — I want you to know that I don’t expect you to protect him on my account.” She looked at you directly. “I’ve done enough of that for both of us. You don’t inherit that.”
You looked at her. “She wrote about you,” you said carefully. “In the letter. She said you’d need us to stay. Not to fix it. Just to stay.”
Your mother’s face did something very small and very real. “That sounds like her,” she said.
“She loved you,” you said. “The jewellery she left you — she chose it specifically. I know she did.”
“She chose everything specifically,” your mother said. And then, quietly: “She was infuriating.” Her mouth curved, just slightly, just for a second, the specific curve of someone who misses a person and is furious at them and loves them all at once. “She was the most infuriating woman I have ever known and I have been her daughter for sixty years and I would give almost anything for one more conversation with her.”
Your throat. You put your arm around your mother’s shoulders. She leaned into it. Just slightly. Just enough. “The mint will come back,” you said. “It always does,” she said.
—
Your father found you at nine. You were in the library — the room that minded its own business — with the notebook open on the table and your laptop beside it and three years of your grandmother’s documentation laid out in the order you’d decided to present it. You’d made decisions in the kitchen garden with your mother’s shoulder under your arm and the winter light coming up over the dormant beds, and the decisions were clear and final and felt like the most your grandmother’s-granddaughter thing you had ever done. Your father came in and looked at the table and went still. “Sit down,” you said.
He sat. He looked at the notebook. He looked at the laptop. He looked at your face. “I’ve been through all of it,” you said. “The notebook, the financial records from the box, the subsidiary filings that Haeun’s lawyer found. I have a complete picture.” You held his gaze. “I want to tell you what I’m going to do with it before I do it, because she would have done that. She would have told you directly.” He was very still.
“Jungwon and I are going to work with our respective company counsel to restructure both companies’ positions and make the necessary disclosures. The arrangement your father and his built — the liability your grandmother documented — will be unwound properly. Not buried, not managed. Dealt with.” You turned a page in the notebook. “There will be consequences. Probably financial, possibly regulatory. We’re going to take them straight rather than sideways.”
He opened his mouth. “I’m not finished,” you said quietly. He closed it.
“The personal documentation — your relationship with Park Jooyeon — is not something I intend to make public or use. That’s not mine to use. That’s between you and Mum and whatever comes next for the two of you.” You looked at him steadily.
“But I want you to know that I have it. That grandmother had it. That she saw everything and chose the moment and the recipient very carefully.” You paused. “She trusted me with it because she knew I’d tell you directly rather than use it as leverage. So I’m telling you directly.”
Your father was quiet for a long time. He looked older than yesterday. Something had come down overnight — a structure he’d maintained for twenty years, load-bearing, invisible until it wasn’t. “She always knew,” he said. Not a question.
“Yes,” you said.
“Your mother—”
“Is dealing with it on her own terms,” you said. “In her own time. That’s between you and her and I’m not going to be in the middle of it.” You closed the notebook. “But I am going to be here. For her. For as long as she needs.”
He looked at the closed notebook. “You’re very like her,” he said again. The same words as the library yesterday, same tone — not compliment, not threat, something that had moved past both into something more complicated and more honest.
“Good,” you said again.
He stood up. He looked at you for a moment with the eyes of a man who was reassessing something fundamental and finding the reassessment uncomfortable and necessary in equal measure. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For — all of it. The parts that touched you.”
“I know,” you said. He left. You sat in the library for a minute after he’d gone, in the room that minded its own business, and you breathed and looked at the ceiling and thought about your grandmother writing case notes in her precise blue hand for seven years and choosing you and trusting you and leaving you every door she could think to unlock.
I trust them. I always have.
“I know,” you said to the empty room. “I know you did.”
—
Jungwon was in the kitchen when you came down at ten. He’d made breakfast — actual breakfast, not just tea, the kind of breakfast that required navigating someone else’s kitchen and finding things and making decisions about eggs. You stood in the doorway and looked at this and something in your chest did a quiet complicated thing.
He looked up. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” you said.
“I found the eggs,” he said. “I hope that’s alright.”
“It’s very alright,” you said. You came in and sat at the kitchen table — the big scrubbed one, the one you’d sat at a thousand times — and watched him move around the kitchen with the ease of someone who had been in it almost as often as you had, who knew which drawer had the spatulas and which cupboard had the good salt, who knew to use the second burner because the first ran hot.
“I talked to my father’s lawyer this morning,” he said. Back to you, watching the pan. “Started the process. It’s going to take months. There’ll be restructuring costs, probably some regulatory disclosure, definitely some uncomfortable conversations with the board.” He turned around. “But it’s started.”
“I talked to my dad,” you said. “The personal side — I left that between him and my mother. But the business — he knows what’s coming.” Jungwon nodded.
He brought two plates to the table and sat across from you and for a moment you both just looked at the food. “She would have had opinions about the eggs,” you said.
“She would have said I used too much butter.”
“You absolutely used too much butter.”
“The correct amount of butter,” he said, “for a kitchen that has been through what this kitchen has been through in the last four days.” You looked at him. He looked at you. The kitchen held you both in its amber morning warmth and the back door sighed in the wind and the clock ticked its slightly-too-loud tick.
“Barcelona,” he said. Your fork stopped. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “About what you said. The building at five in the afternoon. The light.” He looked at his plate. “I want to see it.” You looked at him. “I want to see where you’ve been. What you’ve built. The studio, the yellow tiles, all of it.” He looked up. “I’m not asking you to come home. I’m not — I know you have a life there and I’m not going to be the person who asks you to fold that up.”
“Jungwon—”
“I’m saying I want to come to you. If that’s—” he stopped. “If you want that.”
You thought about your Barcelona apartment. The yellow tiles you’d hated and grown to love. The building in the Eixample at five in the afternoon. The Sunday light coming flat and amber through the kitchen window and you standing there with a dead leaf and almost calling him. “When?” you said.
Something shifted in his face. The last of the composure, the very last of it, releasing. “As soon as I can arrange it,” he said.
“The companies—”
“Will take months to sort out. I can do that from anywhere with a phone and a laptop.” He looked at you steadily. “I’ve been doing everything from this house and this office and this city for three years and I think—” he paused— “I think I’ve been using that as a reason to not go anywhere I actually wanted to go.”
You held his gaze. “There’s a market on Sundays,” you said. “Near the apartment. They have good tomatoes even in winter, I don’t know how.”
“I’ll need to know where to get good coffee,” he said.
“I know three places,” you said. “Ranked.”
“Of course you do,” he said.
“The first one is wrong,” you said. “Everyone thinks it’s the best and they’re wrong. The second one is correct.” He smiled. The real one, the full one, no millimetres of distance at all. You smiled back.
Outside the kitchen window the winter garden was pale and still. The tangerine tree stood at the edge of the formal garden where it always had, bare-branched, patient, waiting for the season that would bring it back. The sundial offered its wrong time to the thin morning light. The fields beyond the stone wall were grey-green and quiet.
Inside: two plates of eggs with the correct amount of butter, and the kitchen clock ticking, and the back door with the broken latch, and the house breathing around you in the way old houses breathe when something they’ve been waiting for has finally arrived.
“Take care of the tree,” you said.
“I will,” he said.
“She’ll want a report,” you said. “I’ll take notes,” he said.
“In a small book,” you said.
“Obviously,” he said.
You ate breakfast in the warm kitchen of your grandmother’s house while the morning came properly through the windows, and the walls remembered everything, and somewhere in the passage behind the library fireplace the candles had burned down to nothing and the photographs were still on the table and the letter was in your desk drawer with both your names on it in blue ink, and Han Sooja had been right about all of it, every last word, and the tree would come back in spring and so would you.
SPRING
The tangerine tree bloomed in April. Jungwon sent you the photograph at seven in the morning Barcelona time, which meant he’d been in the garden at eight Korean time, which meant he’d gone specifically to check and then specifically to tell you. No caption. Just the photograph — pale blossoms on the bare-becoming-green branches, the stone wall behind it, the edge of the formal garden catching the early spring light.
You were in bed with your phone and the yellow morning light coming through the kitchen tiles and you looked at the photograph for a long time.
Then you typed: she knew it would.
He replied immediately: she knew everything.
Then: flight lands Friday. Is the second coffee place still correct?
Still correct, you typed. I checked yesterday.
Of course.
You put the phone down and looked at the ceiling of your Barcelona apartment and listened to the street coming alive below and thought about the building in the Eixample at five in the afternoon and the light that made it look like it was remembering something, and you thought about what it meant to show someone the life you’d built from scratch in a city that had been yours alone, and you thought about your grandmother in her garden in October with the window open writing three pages of blue ink to two people she trusted to be ready.
You were ready.
You went to the kitchen and put the coffee on and stood at the window with the yellow tiles warm in the morning light and outside the bakery two streets over was already sending its bread smell into the world and somewhere behind you on the shelf the Calvino stood between its neighbours and in the back of it, tucked where it had always been, the recipe card with the hand-drawn map of a house full of secret rooms.
Not everything buried is lost. Some things are just waiting for the ground to be ready.
The coffee finished. You poured two cups out of habit and then looked at the second one and smiled and didn’t move it.
Wow wow wow. Crosswords and tangerine trees. This story settles into your bones and makes you feel like everything will work itself out because it always does.
⤷ ˚‧ You got a fast car, I want a ticket to anywhere ˊ˗
PAIRINGS. 박성훈 x f !reader
TROPES. Tutor/student, forbidden romance, class difference, small town/big dreams, learning disability representation, opposites attract, second chance love
SUMMARY. Millbrook, Indiana. 1989. Your life is perfectly planned—until you’re assigned to tutor Park Sunghoon, the school’s most infamous senior. He’s failing English (again), lives for street racing, and couldn’t care less about rules. But he’s not stupid—just misunderstood. As you help him learn, he shows you a different way to live. Somewhere between late nights and quiet moments, your carefully mapped future starts to shift… and so do your feelings.
WORD COUNT. 20.4k
WARNINGS. Explicit sexual content (18+), kissing, penetrative sex, grinding, fingering, safe sex, depictions of undiagnosed learning disability, academic struggle, parental pressure, familial conflict, class differences, street racing, alcohol consumption, period-typical attitudes, strong language.
LACEYS NOTE. this was asked for a few times and I finally decided to post it so pls enjoy😽😽 this anon asked for it so ty for asking xx I hope you love Sunghoon and this story as much as I loved writing him. Thank you for reading— reblogs, likes and comments always keep me writing! Please enjoy
Principal Morrison's office smells like coffee and disappointment. You've been here before—student council meetings, scholarship recommendations, the kind of visits that end with praise and college brochures. Today feels different. Today, Mrs. Morrison's smile has an edge to it.
"I have a special assignment for you," she says, settling behind her desk. Outside, the hallway bustles with the chaos of first period passing. It's only the second week of senior year and you already have three AP classes, student council, yearbook committee, and exactly zero free periods.
"Of course," you say automatically, because that's what you do. Say yes. Exceed expectations. Maintain the 4.0 that's going to get you into Stanford. "What do you need?"
"I need you to tutor someone." She pauses, and something in that pause makes your stomach drop. "Park Sunghoon. Senior English. He's taking it for the fourth time."
Oh. Everyone knows Park Sunghoon. Hard not to when he rolls into the parking lot every morning in a black Mustang that's louder than the first bell, leather jacket slung over one shoulder, looking like he walked out of a movie about teenagers your parents wouldn't let you watch. He's in your English class this year—always in the back row, usually late, definitely not paying attention. "I don't know if I'm the right person—"
"You're exactly the right person. Top of the class, excellent communication skills, patient." Mrs. Morrison leans forward, her expression softening into something that looks almost like desperation. "He needs to pass this class to graduate. And between you and me, I think he needs someone who won't give up on him."
The weight of expectation settles on your shoulders—familiar, heavy, accepted. This is what you do. You help. You achieve. You make your parents proud and your teachers grateful and everyone believes you can fix anything if you just try hard enough. "When would I—"
"Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. Library, four to five. I've already cleared it with him." She smiles like this is settled. "Thank you. I knew I could count on you." You leave her office with a sinking feeling and the distinct impression that you've just been assigned the impossible.
—
Thursday afternoon, 4:02 PM. You're in the library with your AP Lit textbook, notes on The Great Gatsby, and growing certainty that Sunghoon Park isn't going to show up.
At 4:15, you're proven wrong. He walks in like he's doing you a favor—leather jacket, ripped jeans, boots that definitely violate dress code. His dark hair falls into his eyes, and when he spots you at the corner table, something crosses his face. Resignation, maybe. Or irritation. "You're my tutor?" he says by way of greeting, dropping his backpack on the table with a thud that makes the librarian shoot him a warning look.
"Looks like it." You gesture to the empty chair. "Have a seat." He sits, sprawling in the chair like he owns it, and pulls out an absolutely destroyed copy of Of Mice and Men. The cover's hanging by threads, pages dog-eared and crumpled. "So," you start, trying to figure out where to begin. "Mrs. Morrison said you're taking senior English again?"
"Fourth time." He says it flat, like it doesn't bother him, but you see the tension in his jaw.
"Okay. What's giving you the most trouble?"
He laughs—short and bitter. "All of it. The reading. The writing. The whole goddamn thing."
"Have you read the book?" You nod at Of Mice and Men.
"I tried." He flips it open randomly, stares at the page like it personally offended him. "The words just—they don't make sense. I read the same line five times and still don't know what it says."
Something clicks in your brain. The way he's holding the book. The frustration that seems deeper than just dislike. The fact that he's clearly not stupid—he wouldn't have made it to senior year four times if he was—but something's not connecting. "Can you read this page out loud for me?" you ask gently.
His expression shuts down immediately. "No."
"Sunghoon—"
"I said no." He's already standing, grabbing his bag. "This is pointless. I'm not some charity case for you to fix so you can put it on your college applications."
"That's not—" You're standing too now, and the librarian is definitely watching. "I'm trying to help."
"I don't need help. I need people to stop pretending I'm going to magically get this shit." His voice is low, controlled, which somehow makes it worse. "I'm stupid. Everyone knows it. Let's not waste each other's time."
"You're not stupid."
He looks at you then—really looks—and for a second you see past the armor. There's hurt there. Years of it. "Yeah?" he challenges. "Then why can't I read a fucking book that every other senior finished in a week?"
"Because I think you might be dyslexic." The word hangs between you. He goes very still.
"What?"
"Dyslexia. It's a learning disability that affects reading. The way you described it—reading the same line multiple times, words not making sense—those are classic signs." You're speaking carefully now, aware that this could go very wrong. "My cousin has it. He's brilliant. Mechanical engineer at Purdue. But reading was hell for him until he got diagnosed and learned strategies."
Sunghoon is staring at you like you're speaking another language. "That's not—I'm just—" He stops. Tries again. "Nobody ever said—"
"Have you ever been tested?"
"No. Teachers just kept saying I wasn't trying hard enough." The bitterness is back, but underneath it there's something else. Hope, maybe. Fragile and dangerous.
"Sit down," you say quietly. "Please. Let me show you something." He hesitates, then slowly sinks back into the chair. You pull out a blank piece of paper and write a sentence in clear print: THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT. "Read this."
He stares at it for a long moment. "The... cat... sat..." He stops, frustrated. "Some of the letters keep moving."
"Exactly." You pull out a red plastic sheet—the kind photographers use for color correction—from your bag. Your cousin's old trick. "Try reading it through this."
He looks skeptical but places the red sheet over the paper. His eyes widen. "The cat sat on the mat." He reads it perfectly. Looks up at you with an expression you can't quite name. "What the fuck."
"Colored overlays help some people with dyslexia. The colored filter reduces visual stress and makes the letters more stable." You're trying to keep your voice steady, professional, but your heart is racing. "This doesn't mean you're stupid, Sunghoon. It means your brain processes visual information differently."
He's still staring at the paper through the red sheet, reading the sentence over and over like he can't believe it. "All this time," he says finally, voice rough. "All these fucking years, and it was just—"
"Not your fault," you finish firmly. "Never your fault." He looks at you then, and something shifts in his expression. The armor cracks, just a little.
"Can you—" He stops, clears his throat. "Can you teach me? Actually teach me, not just make me read shit I can't understand?"
"Yes," you say without hesitation. "But we're going to need more time than an hour twice a week."
"I work at my dad's garage after school most days. Can't really get out of that."
"Evenings?"
He hesitates. "There's a diner. Miller's, out on Route 40. They have booths in the back, it's quiet. I could meet you there. After the garage closes. Seven?"
Your mother is going to have opinions about you spending evenings at a diner with Park Sunghoon. Your father is going to ask if this is really the best use of your time when you should be focused on AP classes and scholarship applications. "Seven works," you hear yourself say.
His smile is small but genuine. "Okay. Tuesday?"
"Tuesday." He leaves with the red plastic sheet folded carefully in his pocket, and you sit there in the empty library wondering what you've just started.
Mrs. Henderson, the librarian, appears at your elbow. "That was kind," she says quietly.
"I just showed him a color filter."
"You gave him hope." She pats your shoulder. "Sometimes that's more important."
You pack up your things slowly, thinking about Sunghoon's expression when he read that sentence. About years of being told he wasn't trying hard enough. About intelligence that doesn't fit in the boxes that schools make. About the fact that you just agreed to spend your evenings in a diner with the most dangerous boy in school.
And the scariest part? You're looking forward to it.
—
Tuesday night arrives too fast and too slow at the same time. You tell your mother you're studying at the library. It's not technically a lie—you are helping someone study. She doesn't need to know the someone is Park Sunghoon or that the library is actually a diner on the edge of town.
Miller's Diner looks like it hasn't changed since 1955. Red vinyl booths, checkerboard floor, a jukebox in the corner playing Tiffany. The smell of coffee and frying oil. A handful of truckers at the counter, a couple of farmers in the corner booth, and exactly zero people from school.
Sunghoon is already there, sitting in the last booth by the window. He's changed out of his leather jacket into a plain black t-shirt, and there's grease under his fingernails. He sees you and something in his expression softens. "You came," he says, like he half-expected you to bail.
"I said I would." You slide into the booth across from him, setting down your bag full of books and teaching materials. "Did you think I wouldn't?"
"People make promises they don't keep." He shrugs. "Had a few tutors give up before."
"I'm not going to give up."
"We'll see."
A waitress appears—Sally, her name tag says, probably in her fifties with kind eyes and a skeptical expression when she looks at Sunghoon. "What can I get you kids?"
"Coffee, black," Sunghoon says. "And a chocolate milkshake."
You raise an eyebrow. "Both?"
"Coffee's for staying awake. Milkshake's for when reading gives me a headache." He looks almost defensive. "What?"
"Nothing. I'll have the same."
Sally writes it down, her skepticism softening into something that might be approval. "Be right back."
When she's gone, you pull out your materials. You've spent the past four days researching dyslexia, strategies, techniques. Your cousin sent you a care package—more colored overlays, a reading ruler, special paper with slightly tinted backgrounds that's easier on dyslexic eyes. "Okay," you start, spreading everything out. "First things first. I'm not a diagnostician, so I can't officially test you for dyslexia. But I can teach you strategies that help people with dyslexia read more effectively."
"Like the red sheet."
"Exactly. Different colors work for different people." You push the stack of overlays toward him. "Try these on a page of your book. See which one makes the words most stable."
He pulls out Of Mice and Men, that same destroyed copy, and starts testing. Blue—no good. Yellow—better. Green—worse. Red— "Red's still best," he says finally.
"Then red it is. I also got you this." You slide over a reading ruler—a long transparent strip with a colored bar that helps track lines of text. "And this paper." Special cream-colored pages. "Some people find it easier to read on colored backgrounds."
He's looking at all of it like you've just handed him gold. "You did all this for me?"
"It wasn't a big deal. My cousin had extras."
"It's a big deal to me." His voice is quiet. Genuine. "Nobody's ever—" He stops. Starts again. "Thank you."
Your heart does something complicated in your chest. "You're welcome. Now let's see if we can get through chapter one together."
For the next hour, you work. You read passages out loud while he follows along with the red overlay and reading ruler. You stop every few paragraphs to discuss what's happening, to make sure he's comprehending. When he gets frustrated with a particularly difficult section, you break it down sentence by sentence. The milkshakes arrive halfway through. You're both so focused you barely notice Sally setting them down.
"This is about friendship, right?" Sunghoon says suddenly. You're on chapter three now, George and Lennie planning their dream farm. "Like, George takes care of Lennie even though it makes his life harder."
"Yes. Exactly." You're surprised by how quickly he's grasping the themes. "Why do you think George does that?"
"Because Lennie's the only person who sees him as more than just some ranch hand. Because having someone need you is better than being alone." He pauses. "And maybe because George knows what it's like to be different. To not fit."
You stare at him. That's a deeper reading than half your AP class came up with. "That's—that's brilliant, Sunghoon."
He looks up, startled. "Really?"
"Really. You're understanding the emotional core of the story. That's harder than just reading the words."
"But I can't write a paper about it. Can't spell half the words I'd need."
"So we'll work on that too. Writing strategies. Spell check. Audio recording your ideas and transcribing them." You're already making notes. "There are ways around every obstacle."
"You really believe that?"
"I really do."
He takes a long drink of his milkshake, studying you over the rim of the glass. "Why are you doing this? And don't say it's for college apps. You've got those locked down."
The question catches you off guard. You consider lying, giving some easy answer about community service or helping others. But something about the way he's looking at you—open, genuine, vulnerable—demands honesty. "Because nobody should feel stupid when they're not," you say finally. "Because intelligence comes in so many forms and school only tests for one. Because you deserve someone who sees you as more than just a problem to fix."
His expression does something complicated. "You don't even know me."
"Then tell me about you. Who is Park Sunghoon when he's not in the back of English class?"
He hesitates, then: "I work at my dad's garage. Park's Auto Repair, down on Fifth Street. Been working there since I was twelve. Can rebuild an engine blindfolded."
"Really?"
"Really. Cars make sense to me. They're logical. If something's broken, there's a reason. A fix. It's all mechanical. No hidden meanings or metaphors or bullshit."
"Unlike English class."
"Unlike English class." He grins—the first real smile you've seen from him. It transforms his whole face. "But mostly I build cars. Race them, sometimes."
"The Mustang?"
"The Mustang. '67 Fastback. Bought it for five hundred bucks three years ago when it was basically a rusted shell. Been rebuilding it piece by piece ever since." There's passion in his voice now, the same passion that's been missing when he talks about school. "She's almost done. Just needs a new transmission and some body work."
"She?"
"All cars are she." He says it like it's obvious. "You probably think it's stupid. Racing."
"I think it sounds exciting. Terrifying, but exciting."
"You scared of going fast?"
"I'm scared of everything going wrong."
He studies you for a moment. "You're not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"Stuck-up. Judgmental. Like everyone else who's got their shit together." He's playing with his milkshake straw now, not quite looking at you. "But you're not. You're... nice. Actually nice, not fake nice."
"You're not what I expected either."
"What did you expect?"
"Honestly? Someone who didn't care. Someone who'd blow off tutoring or not even try." You pause. "But you're trying really hard. You care about this even though it's difficult."
"I care about graduating. Getting out of this town."
"Where would you go?"
"Anywhere. Indianapolis, maybe. Or Detroit. Somewhere with real garages, real racing circuits. Somewhere I'm not the Park kid who can't read." The bitterness creeps back into his voice.
"You can read. You're reading right now."
He looks down at the book, the red overlay, the progress you've made. "Yeah. I guess I am."
For a moment, you just sit there. The diner's nearly empty now, the jukebox playing something slow. Through the window, you can see the Mustang parked under a streetlight, all black paint and chrome, beautiful and dangerous. "Same time Thursday?" you ask.
"Same time Thursday." He pauses. "And... thanks. For not giving up on me after one session."
"I told you I wouldn't."
"Yeah, but people say a lot of things."
"I'm not people."
His smile is small but genuine. "No. You're really not."
You leave the diner at nine, and your mother's waiting up when you get home. "The library was open until nine?" she asks, voice carefully neutral.
"I was helping someone study. Lost track of time."
"Someone?"
"A classmate." Not technically a lie.
She studies your face, and you wonder if she can see it—the flutter of something new and dangerous. The feeling that tonight was about more than just teaching someone to read. "Just be careful," she says finally. "Senior year's important. Don't let anyone distract you from your goals."
"I won't, Mom."
But later, lying in bed, you think about Sunghoon's smile when he read that first sentence. About the passion in his voice when he talked about his Mustang. About the fact that you're already looking forward to Thursday. And you wonder if maybe, possibly, you're already distracted.
—
The next six weeks blur together in a pattern: School. Student council. Thursday tutoring in the library for appearances. Tuesday and Thursday nights at Miller's Diner for actual progress.
You learn things about Sunghoon: He drinks his coffee black because his dad taught him that's how men drink it, but he'd secretly prefer cream and sugar. He's left-handed. He has a younger sister, Soo-ah, who's in eighth grade and wants to be a vet. His mom left when he was ten and he doesn't talk about it. He can identify any car by the sound of its engine. He's terrified of failing English again. He thinks Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye is whiny but he understands why the character's so angry at everything.
You learn how to teach him: Breaking chapters into smaller sections works. Audio books help, but he feels guilty using them, like they're cheating. He comprehends better when he can discuss ideas out loud rather than writing them down. His spelling is creative but phonetic. When he's frustrated, he needs five minutes to walk it off before trying again. Positive reinforcement matters more than criticism. He works twice as hard as anyone you've ever met.
You learn things about yourself: that you look forward to Tuesday and Thursday nights more than any other part of your week. You started leaving your hair down instead of in a ponytail. You think about him during AP Calc. The sound of an engine makes your heart race now, wondering if it's his Mustang. You're lying to your parents about where you spend your evenings and you don't feel guilty enough about it.
By mid-October, Sunghoon's reading at a tenth-grade level—not great, but light years beyond where he started. He got a B-minus on his Of Mice and Men essay. Mr. Peterson, the English teacher, wrote "significant improvement" on the top. "I can't believe it," Sunghoon says, staring at the paper like it might disappear. You're in your usual booth at Miller's, chemistry homework spread out in front of you (because you still have actual classes), his English work in front of him.
"I can. You earned it."
"We earned it. I couldn't have done this without you."
"You did the work. I just showed you different strategies."
He looks up, and there's something intense in his expression. "It's more than that. You believed I could do it. That matters."
The air between you feels charged suddenly. You're very aware that you're sitting in a back booth of a diner where nobody from school ever comes, that it's just the two of you and Sally wiping down counters, that Sunghoon is looking at you like you're something more than just his tutor. "I should—" You gesture vaguely at your chemistry homework. "Midterm next week."
"Right. Yeah." He clears his throat, looking away. "You want help?"
"You want to help with chemistry?"
"I'm good at it. Sciences make sense. They're like cars—everything has a reason, a reaction, a cause and effect." So you trade. He helps you understand molecular bonds and chemical reactions, explaining them with an ease that surprises you. You help him with his reading comprehension questions for Catcher in the Rye.
It's past ten when you finally pack up. Sally's given up pretending she's not watching you two, a small smile on her face as she tops off Sunghoon's coffee for the third time. In the parking lot, you walk toward your car—a sensible Honda Civic your parents bought you junior year—but Sunghoon catches your wrist. "Hey," he says. "You want to see something?"
"See what?"
"The Mustang. Properly. I finished the transmission last week."
You should say no. It's late. Your mom's going to ask questions if you're not home by ten-thirty. You have homework still. "Yeah," you hear yourself say. "I'd like that."
He leads you to the Mustang, parked under the streetlight like always, but this time he opens the hood. The engine gleams underneath—chrome and steel and meticulous care. "You rebuilt all of this?" you ask, genuinely awed.
"Most of it. Dad helped with some of the specialized stuff, but yeah. Took three years." There's pride in his voice. "Want to hear her run?"
"Please." He slides into the driver's seat, and when he turns the key, the engine roars to life. It's loud and powerful and sounds like controlled chaos. He revs it once, and you can feel the vibration in your chest.
When he kills the engine and gets out, he's grinning. "What do you think?"
"I think she's beautiful."
"Yeah?" He's standing close now, close enough that you can smell motor oil and coffee and something that's just him. "You want to go for a ride sometime?"
Your heart's racing. "Where would we go?"
"Anywhere. Nowhere. There's this place, about twenty minutes out of town. The quarry. People race there sometimes." He pauses. "I could teach you to drive stick shift."
"My parents would kill me."
"They don't have to know."
It's a terrible idea. Sneaking around. Going to the quarry where kids race and drink and do all the things that good students don't do. Getting into a car with a boy your parents definitely wouldn't approve of. "Saturday?" you ask.
His smile is worth every risk. "Saturday. Pick you up at eight?"
"I'll meet you. The QuickMart on the edge of town."
"You don't want me picking you up at your house."
"My dad owns a shotgun and strong opinions about boys. So no."
He laughs—full and genuine. "Fair enough. QuickMart at eight."
You drive home with butterflies in your stomach and the sound of that engine still echoing in your ears. When you slip in the front door at 10:45, your mom's reading on the couch. "Library close late again?" she asks.
"Big project. Sorry."
She studies you over the top of her book. "You're smiling a lot for someone who's been doing homework all night."
"Just had a productive study session."
"Uh-huh." She doesn't believe you, but she doesn't push. "Get some sleep. You look tired."
In your room, you try to focus on chemistry but your mind keeps drifting to Saturday. To the Mustang. To Sunghoon's smile and the way he looked at you in the parking lot. Your phone rings. The landline extension in your room. You pick up. "Hi." It's him. You don't know how he got your number, but you're glad he did.
"Hi."
"I just wanted to make sure you got home okay."
"I'm fine. It's like fifteen minutes."
"I know. But still." He pauses. "I'm looking forward to Saturday."
"Me too."
"Good. Get some sleep. I'll see you Thursday."
"See you Thursday." You hang up, and you're smiling so hard your cheeks hurt. Your best friend Wonyoung is going to lose her mind when you tell her about this. If you tell her about this. Because maybe some things are meant to be secret. Maybe some things are just yours.
—
Saturday night at 7:55 PM. You're standing in the QuickMart parking lot wearing jeans and a sweater, telling yourself this is fine. This is normal. Lots of people go to the quarry on Saturday nights. (Except you're not lots of people. You're the girl who spends Saturday nights doing extra credit or organizing student council activities or watching movies with Wonyoung while she talks about her on-again-off-again thing with Jake Sim.)
The Mustang rumbles into the parking lot at exactly eight, all black paint and chrome gleaming under the fluorescent lights. Sunghoon leans over to open the passenger door, grinning. "You came."
"You sound surprised."
"Half-expected you to bail. Come to your senses."
"Maybe I came to my senses by showing up."
His grin widens. "Get in." You do. The interior's been restored too—black leather seats, a tape deck, the smell of new upholstery and possibility. "Buckle up," he says, and then he's peeling out of the parking lot, and you're pressed back against the seat as the engine roars.
He drives fast but controlled, taking the roads out of town with easy confidence. The radio's playing—some rock station, The Bangles bleeding into Bon Jovi. The windows are down and the October air is cold and crisp and perfect. "Where'd you tell your parents you were going?" he asks over the music.
"Wonyoung's house. Movie night."
"She covering for you?"
"She doesn't know. I'll call her later, make sure our stories match if anyone asks." You glance at him. "Where'd you tell your dad?"
"That I was going to the quarry. He doesn't care as long as I'm home by midnight and don't wreck the car."
"Different parenting styles."
"You could say that."
The quarry is exactly what you expected and nothing like it at the same time. It's an old limestone quarry, abandoned for years, now filled with water that's probably freezing and definitely not safe to swim in. There's a flat area at the top that's become the unofficial racing strip—a quarter mile of cracked pavement with enough room for two cars to line up side by side.
There are maybe twenty cars already there when you arrive. You recognize some from school—Jay Park's Camaro, Jake Sim's pickup truck, a few others. Music blasts from someone's stereo. A group of kids stands around a bonfire that's definitely illegal. Sunghoon parks at the edge of the group, and immediately people start gravitating toward the Mustang. "Yo, Hoon!" A guy you vaguely recognize from auto shop class—Jay, you think—jogs over. "Transmission finally done?"
"Finished her last week." Sunghoon gets out, popping the hood. "Want to see?" You get out too, feeling wildly out of place in your neat jeans and sweater while everyone else is in leather and ripped denim and the kind of casual confidence that comes from belonging.
"Holy shit," Jay says, looking at the engine. "You did this yourself?"
"Mostly. Dad helped with the specs."
More people gather, asking technical questions about compression ratios and torque and things you don't understand. You stand slightly apart, and that's when you notice her. A girl about your age, leaning against a cherry-red Corvette, watching you with undisguised curiosity. She's gorgeous—leather jacket, dark lipstick, the kind of effortless cool you've never managed. She walks over. "You're new."
"I'm—yeah. First time here."
"I can tell." She's not mean about it, just observational. "I'm Ryujin. That's my car." She gestures to the Corvette. "You're Sunghoon's tutor, right?"
Apparently everyone knows. "Yeah. How did you—"
"Small town. Word travels." She studies you with sharp eyes. "You seem nervous."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Little bit. But don't worry. Nobody bites. Well, Jay bites sometimes, but only if you ask nicely." Despite yourself, you laugh. "There we go. You have a smile." Ryujin nods toward where Sunghoon's still showing off his engine. "He talks about you, you know."
Your heart skips. "He does?"
"All the time. 'My tutor this, my tutor that. She's so smart. She actually believes I can pass.'" Ryujin's expression softens. "It's good for him. Having someone who sees past the reputation."
"What reputation?"
"Park's delinquent kid. The one who can't hack it academically. The loser who's going to end up pumping gas at his dad's garage for the rest of his life." She says it matter-of-factly, but there's an edge of anger underneath. "People are assholes."
"He's not—he's brilliant. He's just dyslexic."
"I know. But nobody else seems to get that." She glances back toward Sunghoon. "Anyway. I'm glad he brought you. He doesn't bring people here. It's his space, you know? The fact that he wanted to share it with you means something."
Before you can process that, Sunghoon's back, sliding an arm around your waist casually, naturally, like he's done it a hundred times before. "You good?" he asks.
"Maybe." They're grinning at each other, and you realize this is friendship. This is his people—the ones who see him as more than the kid who failed English three times.
"I'll race you later," Ryujin says. "Right now, I think you were going to teach your girl to drive stick." Your girl. The words settle warm in your chest.
Sunghoon leads you back to the Mustang, away from the crowd. "You ready for this?"
"To drive your baby? The car you've spent three years restoring?"
"To learn something new." He opens the driver's door. "Come on. Slide in." You do. The driver's seat feels different—powerful, dangerous. Sunghoon gets in the passenger side, talking you through the basics.
"Clutch, brake, gas. Three pedals instead of two. You're going to push the clutch all the way down, put her in first gear, then slowly let the clutch out while giving her gas. Too fast, she'll stall. Too slow, she'll—" The engine dies immediately. "—stall. That's okay. Everyone does that the first time. Try again."
It takes six tries before you manage to actually move forward without stalling. By try seven, you're doing laps around the parking area, grinding the gears occasionally but mostly getting it. "You're a natural," Sunghoon says, and he sounds impressed.
"I'm terrible at this."
"You're learning. That's different." He guides you through shifting to second, then third. "Feel that? The way she catches when you hit the right spot? That's perfect."
You do three successful laps, and on the fourth, you catch him watching you instead of the road. "What?"
"Nothing. You just—you look happy."
"I am happy."
"Good."
You park after the fifth lap, heart racing with adrenaline and something else. Something that might be dangerous. "That was amazing," you say.
"You did great."
"No, I mean—this. Being here. Learning something completely unrelated to school or college applications or my parents' expectations. Just—doing something for me."
He's looking at you with that intense focus that makes your stomach flip. "You don't do things for yourself much, do you?"
"I'm busy."
"That's not an answer."
"No," you admit. "I don't. Everything I do has a purpose. An end goal. Get into Stanford. Make my parents proud. Secure my future."
"What do you want? Not your parents. You."
The question catches you completely off guard. Nobody's asked you that before. Nobody's cared to ask. "I don't know," you say finally. Honestly. "I've spent so long doing what I'm supposed to do, I'm not sure what I want anymore."
"That's sad."
"That's realistic."
"Maybe." He shifts in the seat, turning to face you fully. "You want to know what I think?"
"What?"
"I think you're scared. I think you've built this perfect life, this perfect plan, and you're terrified of anything that might mess it up. But I also think—" He pauses. "I think you're only here, in this car, at this quarry, because part of you wants something different. Something real."
Your heart is pounding. "And if I do?"
"Then maybe you should let yourself have it."
You're sitting in his Mustang, at a quarry where people race and break rules, with a boy who makes your heart race faster than any engine, and you're tired. So tired of being good. Of being perfect. Of doing everything right. "Teach me to race," you say suddenly.
His eyes widen. "What?"
"Teach me to race. Actually race. Not just drive around a parking lot."
"That's—do you know how dangerous that is?"
"I'm asking anyway."
He studies you for a long moment. "You're serious."
"Completely."
A slow smile spreads across his face. "Okay. But not tonight. You need more practice first. Real practice. We'll come back next Saturday. And the Saturday after that. I'll teach you everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything." The word hangs heavy with promise. The night continues. You meet more people—Jay, who's loud and funny and clearly Sunghoon's best friend. Yuna, who drags her boyfriend Sunoo around by the hand and asks you about student council. Niki, who's only sixteen but drives better than half the seniors here.
You watch three races. Ryujin wins two of them, Sunghoon wins the third. The way he drives is like watching art—controlled chaos, perfect timing, raw skill. At eleven, he takes you back to your car at the QuickMart. "Same time next week?" he asks.
"Same time next week."
"And Thursday. Diner."
"I'll be there."
He leans across the console, and for a moment you think he might kiss you. But instead, he just tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. "Drive safe," he says.
"You too." You call Wonyoung from the parking lot, apologizing for the short notice, establishing your alibi. She's suspicious but covers for you without question, because that's what best friends do.
When you get home, your mom's asleep but your dad's still up, reading in his study. "Good movie?" he asks.
"Great movie."
"You and Wonyoung have fun?"
"Always."
He studies you over his reading glasses, and you wonder if he can see it—the change. The fact that his perfect daughter just spent the evening at an illegal street racing spot with a boy he'd definitely disapprove of. "Get some rest," he says finally. "You have SAT prep in the morning."
"Right. SAT prep."
In your room, you strip off your sweater, and it smells like motor oil and bonfire smoke and freedom. You should wash it immediately. Instead, you fold it carefully and put it in the back of your closet, where the smell might linger just a little longer. You lie in bed thinking about Sunghoon's hands on the steering wheel. About the way he looked at you when you said you were happy. About the fact that for the first time in your carefully planned life, you have a secret that's just yours.
And you're not sorry about it at all.
—
November arrives cold and sudden, turning Millbrook into a postcard of autumn—all orange leaves and early frost, the smell of wood smoke and approaching winter. You and Sunghoon fall into a rhythm. Tuesdays and Thursdays: Miller's Diner. Books and milkshakes and watching him improve week by week. He's reading at grade level now. Got a B on his Catcher in the Rye essay. Mr. Peterson keeps looking at him like he doesn't quite believe the transformation.
Saturdays: The quarry. Learning to drive—really drive. Stick shift, speed shifting, the physics of acceleration and control. The first time you beat Niki in a practice race (his reaction time was slow, you didn't actually outdrive him, but still), you screamed so loud Sunghoon laughed until he cried. Weekdays: Stolen moments between classes. His hand brushing yours in the hallway. Notes passed during English (ironic, since he can actually read them now). The way your heart jumps every time you see the Mustang in the parking lot.
It's not dating. You're not calling it dating. That would make it real, and real things have consequences. But it's something. Something that makes you smile when you should be concentrating on calculus. Something that has Wonyoung giving you knowing looks across the lunch table. "You're going to have to tell me eventually," she says one Monday, stealing a fry from your tray.
"Tell you what?"
"Who he is. The guy you're sneaking around with."
Your heart stops. "I'm not—"
"Please. You smell like motor oil every Saturday night. You smile at your phone. You're distracted in student council meetings." She grins. "I'm your best friend. I know everything."
"It's complicated."
"Complicated is fun. Uncomplicated is boring." She leans closer, voice dropping. "Is it Park Sunghoon?"
You nearly choke on your water. "What? No. Why would you—"
"Because he looks at you in English class like you're the only person in the room. And you look back the same way when you think nobody's watching."
"We're—I'm tutoring him. That's all."
"Uh-huh. And I'm the Queen of England." But she doesn't push, because Wonyoung gets boundaries. "Just be careful, okay? I know you. You're all-or-nothing. When you fall, you fall hard." The problem is: she's right. You're falling.
—
The first time Sunghoon holds your hand (really holds it, not just brushes against it), you're at the diner on a Thursday night in mid-November. You've just finished analyzing a chapter of Lord of the Flies, and he's frustrated because the symbolism still doesn't quite click. "Why can't the conch just be a conch?" he says, stabbing at his milkshake with a straw. "Why does everything have to mean something else?"
"Because that's how literature works. Golding's commenting on society, civilization, human nature—"
"Through a fucking seashell."
"Through a symbol that represents order and democracy." You're trying not to smile at his frustration. "You're overthinking it."
"I'm underthinking it. That's my problem. Everyone else sees this deep meaning and I just see a story about kids on an island."
"The story IS about kids on an island. The symbolism is just another layer."
He looks at you, and something in his expression softens. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Make me feel like I'm not stupid even when I don't get something."
"Because you're not stupid. You just learn differently."
His hand reaches across the table, covering yours. It's not accidental this time. It's deliberate, warm, sending electricity up your arm. "Thank you," he says quietly. "For everything. For not giving up. For making me believe I could actually pass this class."
Your throat is tight. "You're going to pass. You're going to graduate."
"Because of you." He doesn't let go of your hand. Neither do you. Sally comes by to refill coffee and doesn't comment on it, but you see her smile.
When you leave that night, he walks you to your car like always, but this time he doesn't step back. He stands close, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating off him even in the November cold. "I've been wanting to ask you something," he says.
Your heart's in your throat. "Okay."
"There's a race next Saturday. Real race, not just practice. Winner takes two hundred bucks." He pauses. "I want you to come. Not to race. Just to watch. To be there."
"I'm always there on Saturdays."
"I know, but—" He runs a hand through his hair, looking uncertain for the first time since you've met him. "I want you there as mine. Not my tutor. Not my friend. As—as my girl."
The world narrows to just the two of you, standing in a diner parking lot under harsh fluorescent lights that suddenly feel romantic. "Sunghoon—"
"I know it's complicated. I know your parents wouldn't approve. I know I'm not the kind of guy you're supposed to be with." The words rush out. "But I like you. More than like you. Have for weeks. And I think—I hope—you might feel the same?"
You should say no. Should remind him about Stanford, about your carefully planned future, about all the reasons this is a terrible idea. Instead, you reach up and kiss him. It's brief and sweet and tastes like chocolate milkshake and possibility. When you pull back, he's staring at you like you've performed a miracle. "Yeah," you say, breathless. "I feel the same."
His smile is brilliant. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." You kiss him again, longer this time, his hands coming up to cup your face, gentle and sure. "I'll be there Saturday. As yours."
"As mine," he repeats, like he's testing out the words. "I like the sound of that."
You drive home giddy and terrified, the taste of him still on your lips. Your phone's ringing when you get to your room—the landline, Sunghoon's voice on the other end. "Hi," he says.
"Hi. You just saw me twenty minutes ago."
"I know. I missed you already." You can hear the smile in his voice. "Is that stupid?"
You talk for an hour about nothing and everything. About his sister's soccer game and your student council drama and what it felt like to finally kiss each other after weeks of dancing around it. When you finally hang up, it's past midnight, and you have a chemistry test tomorrow you haven't studied for. You don't even care.
—
Saturday's race is different from practice runs. There's money on the line, real stakes. The crowd's bigger—maybe thirty cars, fifty people. You spot a few seniors from school and hope they don't recognize you. Sunghoon's racing against Jay, best two out of three. The Mustang versus the Camaro. Both engines roar at the starting line, and you're standing with Ryujin and Yuna, heart in your throat. "He's good," Ryujin says, watching the cars line up. "But Jay's reckless. Could go either way."
"Sunghoon's better," you say with more confidence than you feel.
"Look at you. All defensive of your man." She grins. "It's cute."
The flag drops. They're off—two bullets of metal and gasoline, neck and neck down the quarter mile. Sunghoon takes the first race by half a car length. Jay takes the second by less. The third race is for everything.
You can barely watch. Can barely breathe. The engines scream, the crowd roars, and then Sunghoon crosses the finish line first by inches. The crowd erupts. Jay's laughing, shaking Sunghoon's hand, because it's all good fun until it's not. Money exchanges hands. And then Sunghoon's walking toward you, adrenaline-high and grinning, and he picks you up and spins you around right there in front of everyone. "Did you see that?" he says, breathless.
"I saw. You were amazing."
"I had good motivation." He sets you down but doesn't let go, his forehead resting against yours. "Wanted to win for you."
"Sunghoon—" He kisses you, right there in front of everyone, and it's not brief or sweet. It's deep and claiming and says mine more clearly than words ever could.
When you break apart, half the people there are staring. Including Jake Sim, who's in your AP History class and definitely knows who you are. "Shit," you mutter.
"What?"
"Jake goes to our school. This is going to be all over by Monday."
Sunghoon's expression hardens. "Is that a problem?"
"My parents—they're going to—"
"Hey." He cups your face, making you look at him. "If you want to keep this quiet, we can keep this quiet. I get it. I'm not exactly parent-approved material." The hurt in his voice kills you.
"No. I don't—I don't want to hide." The words surprise you, but you mean them. "I'm tired of hiding. Of being perfect. Of living my life for everyone else's approval."
"You sure?"
"Completely."
His smile is slow and genuine. "Good. Because I'm done pretending you're just my tutor."
The rest of the night is perfect. You meet his friends properly—Jay and his girlfriend Jungwon, Niki who's secretly a poetry nerd, Yuna and Sunoo who are the most wholesome couple you've ever seen. They accept you immediately, and it's strange and wonderful to be part of a group that doesn't care about GPAs or college applications or any of the things that usually define you.
Around eleven, Sunghoon pulls you away from the crowd, leading you to a spot overlooking the quarry. The water's black and still below, stars reflected on the surface. "I've been thinking," he says, sitting on the hood of the Mustang and pulling you to stand between his legs. "About after graduation."
Your stomach drops. "What about it?"
"I'm not going to college. Can't afford it even if I wanted to, and honestly? I don't want to. I want to work with my dad, take over the garage eventually. Maybe open my own shop someday."
"That sounds perfect for you."
"But you're going to Stanford. All the way across the country." The reality of it sits heavy between you. You've been so focused on now—on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturday nights—that you haven't let yourself think about graduation. About what happens when your carefully planned future collides with this unexpected present.
"Maybe I don't go to Stanford," you say quietly. His eyes widen."Maybe I stay. Go to Indiana State or Purdue. Somewhere closer."
"No." He says it firmly. "Absolutely not. You're not giving up Stanford for me."
"It wouldn't be giving up. It would be choosing—"
"You'd resent me. Eventually. You'd look back and wonder what if, and you'd hate me for it." He takes your hands. "I care about you too much to let you do that."
"So what, we just break up when I leave?"
"I don't know." The honesty in his voice breaks your heart. "I haven't figured that part out yet. All I know is that I want you to go chase your dreams, even if it means losing you."
You kiss him to shut him up, to stop the conversation from going somewhere too painful. His hands settle on your waist, pulling you closer, and for a while there's nothing but this—the two of you, the Mustang, the stars overhead. "We have seven months," you murmur against his mouth. "Seven months before we have to figure any of that out."
"Seven months."
"So let's make them count."
"Yeah." He kisses you again, deeper. "Let's make them count."
You stay like that for a while—his hands in your hair, yours in his, the city glittering below and the night cold around you—and the kissing shifts into something else slowly, the way things do when you’ve been holding back for a long time and the holding back finally stops. "Hey," he says softly, pulling back just enough to look at you. His hands frame your face, thumbs tracing your cheekbones. "You sure?"
You’ve never been more sure of anything. "Yes." He kisses you again—slower now, intentional, one hand sliding down your waist—and then he’s reaching past you to recline the passenger seat, and you climb over the console and into his lap, and the Mustang’s interior is small and warm and entirely yours.
He undresses you carefully, methodically, like he’s done everything in his life—with patience and complete attention. Your sweater first, then his jacket, his eyes on your face the whole time, watching for hesitation. There isn’t any.
"You’re beautiful," he says, and it’s so simple and so honest that it lodges somewhere in your chest and stays there.
His hands are warm everywhere they touch—down your sides, over your hips, learning you the way he’s learned everything that matters to him: slowly, thoroughly, like he means to know it forever. When his fingers find the hem of your jeans, he pauses. "Still yes?"
"Still yes." He takes his time. That’s the thing about Sunghoon—he has always taken his time with things that matter. His mouth finds your throat, your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder, and you’re acutely aware of the city lights through the windshield and the sound of both of you breathing and how small and perfect this space is.
He works you open with his fingers first—slow and attentive, watching your face, adjusting when your breath catches—his thumb circling your clit in a rhythm that makes your hips roll against his hand involuntarily. You grip the headrest behind him and he says your name, just your name, low and reverent. "Okay?" he asks.
"More than," you manage. "Don’t stop." He doesn’t. He keeps going until you’re shaking and breathless, until you come with your forehead dropped against his shoulder and his name in your mouth like a prayer. He holds you through it—both arms, steady—and presses his lips to your temple like it matters, which it does, which everything does with him.
When you finally shift, rising over him, his eyes stay on yours. His hands settle warm on your hips, steadying but not directing—letting you set the pace, the depth, the whole thing, because that’s always been how he is with you. He gives you the wheel.
You take him in slowly. He exhales long and low, jaw tight, hands gripping your hips hard enough to feel it, and you understand in that moment that he’s been holding back too. That there has been patience on both sides of this for months, accumulating. "You okay?" he asks, voice rough.
"Perfect," you say, and mean it in every possible sense. You move together—unhurried, finding the rhythm, his cock filling you completely, his thumb finding your clit again as you roll your hips—and it’s nothing like you expected and exactly what it should be. He tips his head back and watches you with dark eyes and that unguarded expression he only ever gives you, the one that has no performance in it at all.
His hands slide up your sides, thumbs brushing the underside of your tits, and you arch into the touch. He sits up, mouth finding your throat, and the change in angle makes you gasp. "There," you breathe. "Right there—"
"I’ve got you," he says against your skin, and he does. His arms wrap around you, pulling you tight against him, and he rocks into you from below, steady and deep, and you hold on and let go at the same time. The second orgasm builds faster, sharper, and when it breaks you’re holding his face in your hands and looking right at him and he’s looking back with something in his expression that you have no word for but will spend a long time remembering.
He follows you, his whole body pulling you closer as he does, your name on his lips like a finish line he’s been driving toward this whole time.
Afterward you stay tangled together in the reclined seat. The city still glitters through the windshield. His heartbeat slows under your palm. Your head fits perfectly in the curve of his neck, like it was made for exactly that purpose, which you are starting to believe it was. "Seven months," you say quietly, into the warmth of his chest.
He presses his mouth to the top of your head. "Seven months," he agrees. "Every single one."
—
Monday arrives with exactly the fallout you expected. Jake Sim must have told someone, who told someone else, who told everyone, because by second period the entire school knows you're dating Park Sunghoon. The reactions vary:
Wonyoung: "FINALLY. I've been waiting for you to admit it. Also, he's hot. Well done." Your lab partner in Chemistry: "I didn't know you were into bad boys." Some random freshman: "Aren't you supposed to be smart?"
The worst is lunch. You're sitting with Wonyoung and your usual student council crowd when Sunghoon appears. "Can I sit?" he asks, looking directly at you, ignoring everyone else.
The table goes silent. This is unprecedented. Park Sunghoon doesn't sit with the honor students. The honor students don't sit with the kids who've failed English three times. But you're not most honor students. "Yeah," you say, scooting over to make room. "Sit."
He does. Drops his lunch tray next to yours like he belongs there, which apparently he does now. The student council people exchange glances. Wonyoung's grinning like Christmas came early. "So," Sunghoon says, stealing a fry from your tray. "What are we discussing? Student council stuff? World domination?"
"Both," Wonyoung says immediately, because she's never met an awkward silence she couldn't fill. "We're planning the winter formal. Theme, decorations, the whole thing."
"What's the theme?"
"Winter Wonderland. Very original, I know."
"You could do Winter Racing. Decorate with checkered flags and—" He stops, looking at your expression. "What?"
"That's actually not a terrible idea."
"Don't sound so surprised."
The conversation continues, and slowly, impossibly, your two worlds start to merge. Wonyoung asks Sunghoon about cars. He asks her about whatever Jake drama is currently happening (apparently there's always Jake drama). Your student council friends warm up when they realize he's funny and not actually scary. By the end of lunch, it almost feels normal.
Until you're walking to English and Principal Morrison stops you in the hall. "Can I see you in my office?" she asks. Not quite a question.
Your stomach sinks. "Now?"
"Now."
Sunghoon squeezes your hand once before you follow Morrison down the hall. Her office still smells like coffee, but there's no warmth in her smile today. "I've been hearing things," she says once the door closes. "About you and Mr. Park."
"We're dating." You say it firmly, even though your heart's racing. "Is that a problem?"
"That depends. Is this relationship interfering with your tutoring duties?"
"No. He's doing better than ever. You've seen his grades."
"I have. Which is why I'm concerned." She leans forward. "You're an exceptional student with a bright future. Stanford. Pre-law. You've worked very hard to get where you are."
"I'm aware."
"Park Sunghoon is a nice young man, but he's not on the same path you are. I'd hate to see you distracted. To see your focus shift away from your goals." The implication is clear: he's not good enough for you. He's going to drag you down.
"With respect, Mrs. Morrison, my personal life is my business." Your voice is steady even though you're shaking. "I'm maintaining my grades. I'm fulfilling my student council responsibilities. What I do outside of school isn't up for discussion."
"I'm just trying to look out for you—"
"I don't need looking out for. I need people to trust that I can make my own decisions." You stand. "Is there anything else?"
She sighs. "Just—be careful. That's all I'm saying."
"I will be. Thank you." You leave her office furious and shaking, and Sunghoon's waiting in the hall even though he's definitely supposed to be in class.
"What did she say?" he asks.
"That I'm making a mistake. That you're going to ruin my future." The words taste bitter.
His expression shuts down. "Maybe she's right."
"Don't." You grab his hand. "Don't do that. Don't let other people's opinions make you doubt this."
"I'm not good enough for you. Everyone thinks it. Hell, I think it sometimes."
"Good enough according to what? Their standards? Fuck their standards." The profanity feels good, rebellious. "You make me happy. That's what matters."
"Your parents are going to lose it when they find out."
"They'll find out when I'm ready to tell them." You kiss him quick, not caring who sees. "And when they do, I'm not changing my mind."
His smile is small but real. "You're kind of badass when you're angry."
"I'm learning from you."
"Nah. This was always in you. You just needed permission to let it out."
—
Thanksgiving arrives, and with it, the dreaded family dinner where your parents expect you to discuss your college applications and your perfectly planned future. Instead, you spend the morning texting Sunghoon while your mother prepares turkey. Sunghoon: What are you wearing?
You: Why, are you coming over to see me?
Sunghoon: No, but I'm thinking about you. Want to picture it accurately.
You: Sweater and jeans. Very exciting.
Sunghoon: Everything about you is exciting.
You: Smooth talker.
Sunghoon: I'm working on my English skills. My tutor's really good.
You: Your tutor thinks you're pretty great too.
Sunghoon: Just pretty great?
You: Fishing for compliments?
Sunghoon: Maybe. Is it working?
You: You're incredible. Happy now?
Sunghoon: Very. What time's dinner?
You: Six. Why?
Sunghoon: Because I'm picking you up at eight. There's a place I want to show you.
You: It's Thanksgiving. I can't just leave family dinner.
Sunghoon: Sure you can. Tell them you're going to Wonyoung's.
You: I use that excuse too much.
Sunghoon: Then tell them the truth. That you're seeing your boyfriend.
The word stops you. Boyfriend. He's never used it before. You've never defined what this is, too scared to put labels on something so new and fragile. You: Is that what you are? My boyfriend?
The little text bubble appears, disappears, appears again. Finally: Sunghoon: I want to be. If that's okay with you.
Your heart soars. You: It's more than okay. I'll see you at eight, boyfriend.
Sunghoon: See you at eight, girlfriend.
Dinner is exactly as expected—your dad asking about Stanford applications, your mom discussing scholarship opportunities, your older brother (home from MIT for the holiday) pontificating about the importance of networking. Around seven-thirty, you clear your throat. "I'm going out after dinner," you announce.
Your mother looks up from the pumpkin pie. "Out where?"
"To see someone."
"Wonyoung?"
"No. A friend. From school."
Your father's fork pauses halfway to his mouth. "What friend?"
This is it. The moment of truth. You could lie, make up another excuse, keep hiding. Instead: "His name is Sunghoon. He's my boyfriend." The silence is deafening.
"Boyfriend?" your mother repeats faintly.
"Since when do you have a boyfriend?" your brother asks.
"Since October. We've been seeing each other for about two months."
Your father sets down his fork carefully. "Who is this boy? Do we know his family?"
"Park's Auto Repair. His dad owns it."
Recognition flashes across your father's face. "The Park boy? The one who's failed English multiple times?"
"He's passing now. Because I've been tutoring him."
"That's what this is about?" Your mother's expression clears with relief. "You're tutoring him. That's not dating, honey."
"It started as tutoring. It became dating. There's a difference."
"Absolutely not." Your father's voice is firm. "You are not dating that boy."
Your heart pounds, but you keep your voice steady. "I am. And I'm going to see him tonight."
"You are not leaving this house."
"I'm eighteen. You can't stop me."
"We can take away your car. Your allowance. We can make this very difficult for you."
The threat hangs in the air. Your mother looks distressed, your brother shocked, your father furious. "Do what you need to do," you say quietly. "But I'm still going." You stand, grabbing your coat, and your father stands too.
"If you walk out that door to see that boy, there will be consequences."
"I understand."
"You're throwing away your future for someone who isn't worth it."
That snaps something in you. "He's worth more than you know. He's kind and smart and he works harder than anyone I've ever met. The only people who can't see that are people who judge based on grades and class and things that don't actually matter."
"Grades matter. Your education matters. Stanford matters."
"I know. And I'm still going to Stanford. I'm still maintaining my 4.0. I'm still doing everything I'm supposed to do." You pause at the door. "I'm just also choosing to be happy." You leave before they can respond.
The Mustang's idling at the end of your driveway, and when you climb in, Sunghoon takes one look at your face and knows. "You told them."
"I told them."
"And?"
"And my dad's pissed. My mom's horrified. My brother thinks I've lost my mind." You buckle your seatbelt. "But I did it. I chose you."
His expression does something complicated. "You didn't have to—"
"Yes, I did. I'm tired of hiding. Tired of living my life for other people's approval." You take his hand. "Where are you taking me?"
"Somewhere special. You'll see."
He drives out of town, past the quarry, along back roads you've never seen. The radio plays soft—Fleetwood Mac, "Landslide"—and his hand stays linked with yours. After twenty minutes, he pulls onto a dirt road that leads to a field. In the distance, you can see Indianapolis's skyline glittering, all lights and possibility. "What is this place?" you ask.
"My spot. When everything gets too much—school, my dad, all of it—I come here." He parks, and you both get out. The November air is freezing, but he pulls a blanket from the trunk, spreading it on the hood of the Mustang. You climb up, and he settles behind you, arms wrapped around your waist, chin on your shoulder. The city sparkles in the distance, close enough to see but far enough to feel like a different world.
"I've been coming here since I was fifteen," he says quietly. "Whenever I felt like I didn't fit anywhere, I'd drive out here and look at the city. Remind myself that there's more than just Millbrook. More than just people who think I'm stupid."
"You're not stupid."
"I know that now. Because of you." He holds you tighter. "You changed everything for me. Not just teaching me to read—though that's huge. But making me believe I'm worth something. That I have value beyond fixing cars."
"You always had value. I just helped you see it."
"Same thing you did for me, you did for yourself." He turns you to face him. "Before us, you were so focused on being perfect that you forgot to be happy. Now look at you. Standing up to your parents. Choosing what you want instead of what you're supposed to want."
"I'm terrified."
"Good. Being terrified means it matters."
You kiss him as the city lights blur behind your closed eyes, and it feels like standing at the edge of a cliff—scary and exhilarating and exactly where you're supposed to be. "I'm falling in love with you," you whisper against his mouth. The admission feels huge, terrifying.
He pulls back to look at you, his expression soft and open and completely vulnerable. "Good," he says. "Because I fell in love with you weeks ago. Just been waiting for you to catch up." You laugh, and cry, and kiss him again, and in the distance Indianapolis glitters like a promise that maybe, just maybe, everything's going to be okay.
—
Your parents aren't speaking to you. Well, they're speaking—terse, polite conversations about dinner times and whether you need the car—but the warmth is gone. Your mother looks at you like you're a stranger. Your father's disappointment is a physical presence at every meal.
They took away your allowance but not your car (you need it for student council, and they're not quite willing to sabotage that). They've forbidden Sunghoon from coming to the house. They've made it clear that this relationship is temporary, a phase, something you'll grow out of when you come to your senses. You've made it equally clear that you disagree. The upside is: You're no longer sneaking around. The downside: Everything is harder now. But you have Sunghoon, and somehow that makes it bearable.
—
The first real snow falls on a Tuesday in mid-December. You and Sunghoon are at Miller's Diner, working through a Lord of the Flies essay that's due Friday. He's gotten good at this—organizing his thoughts verbally, using voice-to-text for first drafts, then going back to clean up spelling and grammar. "So Piggy represents intelligence and reason," he says, "but nobody listens to him because he doesn't fit their idea of what a leader should be."
"Exactly. What does that say about society?"
"That we're idiots who value the wrong things?" He grins. "That sound about right?"
"Bit cynical, but not wrong." You're making notes for him to reference later. "What evidence supports that?"
He flips through the book—using his red overlay, reading more fluently than he did three months ago. It's not perfect. It's probably never going to be easy. But it's worlds better than where he started. "Here," he says, pointing to a passage. "Where they're voting for chief and everyone picks Ralph because he's good-looking and has the conch, even though Piggy's clearly smarter."
"Perfect. Use that quote, explain why it matters, connect it to real-world examples."
"Real-world examples like people thinking I'm dumb because I can't read?"
Your heart squeezes. "Yeah. Like that."
He's quiet for a moment, then: "You know what's weird? I used to hate English. Hated everything about it. But now—" He gestures at the books, the notes. "It's not so bad. Some of it's actually interesting."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I mean, Golding's kind of depressing, but he's got a point. People do judge based on stupid shit. They make assumptions. And the conch thing—order versus chaos—that actually makes sense when you think about it."
You're grinning so hard your cheeks hurt. "You're doing literary analysis. Voluntarily."
"Don't sound so shocked."
"I'm not shocked. I'm proud."
His smile is soft, genuine. "Thanks. For not giving up on me."
"Never." Sally brings your milkshakes—chocolate for him, strawberry for you, a routine she's memorized by now. The diner's nearly empty, just a couple of truckers at the counter and you two in your usual booth.
"How are things at home?" Sunghoon asks carefully.
"Tense. My mom keeps leaving college brochures on my desk like I've forgotten about Stanford. My dad barely looks at me." You stir your milkshake. "But I'm not backing down."
"I hate that I'm causing problems with your family."
"You're not. Their expectations are causing problems. I'm just finally standing up to them."
"Still." He reaches across the table, taking your hand. "If you ever want to—if this gets too hard—"
"Don't." You squeeze his fingers. "I'm not giving up on us. Not for them. Not for anyone."
"Even if they cut you off? Refuse to pay for Stanford?"
The fear in his voice breaks your heart. "I'll figure it out. Loans, scholarships, whatever it takes."
"You shouldn't have to—"
"But I will. Because you're worth it." You mean every word. "Besides, I'm not doing this just for you. I'm doing it for me. For the first time in my life, I'm choosing what I want instead of what everyone else wants for me."
His expression softens. "What do you want?"
"You. Stanford. A future where I don't have to choose between love and ambition." You pause. "Is that too much to ask?"
"No. It's exactly right."
You work for another hour, then Sunghoon walks you to your car like always. The snow's still falling, turning the parking lot into a winter postcard. His hands settle on your waist, pulling you close. "You cold?" he asks.
"A little." He shrugs out of his jacket—that same leather jacket he always wears—and drapes it over your shoulders. It's warm from his body heat and smells like him, motor oil and cologne and something that's just Sunghoon. "You're going to freeze," you protest.
"I'll survive. Besides, you look good in my jacket." You do. You've seen yourself in mirrors, in car windows—his too-big jacket swallowing you up, making you look dangerous and claimed and exactly like someone who'd date Park Sunghoon.
You kiss him in the falling snow, and it's perfect. Movie-perfect. The kind of moment that would be cheesy if it wasn't so real. "I love you," he says against your mouth.
"I love you too."
"Even though I'm causing problems with your parents?"
"Especially because of that. You make me brave."
His smile is everything. "You were always brave. You just needed permission to show it."
—
The winter formal is the third Saturday of December, your mother assumes you're going with Wonyoung or solo. She's bought you a dress—beautiful, conservative, exactly the kind of thing the future Stanford student should wear. "I'm going with Sunghoon," you tell her Friday night at dinner.
She nearly drops her fork. "Excuse me?"
"To the winter formal. Sunghoon's my date."
"Absolutely not."
"I'm going either way. You can't stop me."
Your father sets down his newspaper. "We can forbid you from going at all."
"Then I guess I'm forbidden." You stand, taking your plate to the sink. "But I'm still going. So you can either accept that I'm going with Sunghoon, or you can spend the evening knowing I'm there against your wishes. Your choice." You leave before they can respond, and you're shaking but proud. Standing up to them is getting easier, but it still takes everything you have.
Saturday arrives clear and cold. You get ready at Wonyoung's house—she's going with Jake (they're on-again this week), and she helps you with your hair and makeup. "You're really doing this," she says, watching you in the mirror. "Going with him. In front of everyone."
"Yeah."
"Your parents are going to lose it."
"They already have."
"And you're okay with that?"
You think about it—really think about it. About the future you'd planned, the one where you did everything right and made everyone proud. About the future you're building now, messier and scarier but entirely yours. "Yeah," you say finally. "I'm okay with it."
The dress your mother bought hangs in your closet at home. Instead, you're wearing something Wonyoung helped you find—still nice, still appropriate, but edgier. A dark red dress that your mother would call too much and you call perfect. Sunghoon picks you up at Wonyoung's at seven, and when he sees you, he stops mid-step. "Wow."
"Good wow or bad wow?"
"Incredible wow." He's wearing actual dress clothes—dark slacks, button-down, tie. He looks unfamiliar and handsome and still completely him. "You're beautiful."
"You're not so bad yourself."
He hands you flowers—simple roses from the grocery store, but the gesture makes your heart melt. "Ready?"
"Completely."
The dance is in the school gym, transformed with the Winter Racing theme that won the student council vote (Sunghoon's idea, your influence). Checkered flags, silver and white decorations, lights that make everything sparkle. When you walk in together, conversations stop. People stare. This is unexpected—the valedictorian and the kid who failed English, together at the most visible school event of the year. But Sunghoon's hand is firm in yours, and you're done hiding. "Want to dance?" he asks.
"I should warn you—I'm terrible at it."
"Then we'll be terrible together."
He leads you to the dance floor just as a slow song starts. His hands settle on your waist, yours on his shoulders, and you sway to music that's probably supposed to have actual dance steps but you're both improvising. "People are staring," you murmur.
"Let them."
"Doesn't it bother you?"
"Used to. But then I figured out that people's opinions don't change who I am. I'm still the guy who rebuilt a Mustang from scrap. Still the guy who's finally passing English. Still the guy who's somehow dating the smartest, most beautiful girl in school." He pulls you closer. "Their opinions don't matter."
"When did you get so wise?"
"I have a really good tutor." You laugh, and the tension breaks. The next song is faster, and Wonyoung drags you both into a group dance with her and Jake and some other student council people. Sunghoon's terrible at dancing but enthusiastic, and watching him attempt choreography he's clearly making up is the highlight of your night.
Around nine, you slip outside for air. The December night is freezing, and you're shivering in your dress when Sunghoon's jacket settles around your shoulders. "You need to stop giving me your jacket," you say. "You're going to get hypothermia."
"Worth it." He stands behind you, arms around your waist, chin on your shoulder. "You having fun?"
"The most fun. You?"
"Better than I expected. Though I still think the refreshments are weak. Diner milkshakes are better."
"Obviously."
You stand there in comfortable silence, watching your breath fog in the cold air, and you think about how much has changed since September. How you've changed. "What are you thinking?" Sunghoon asks.
"That I'm happy. Really, genuinely happy. And that scares me."
"Why?"
"Because happiness like this doesn't last. Because we're graduating in June and you're staying here and I'm going to California and—" Your throat tightens. "Because I don't know how to keep this when everything's pulling us apart."
His arms tighten around you. "We'll figure it out."
"How?"
"I don't know yet. But we will." He turns you to face him. "I love you. That's not going to change just because you're three thousand miles away."
"Long distance is hard."
"So? Lots of things are hard. Reading's hard. Racing's hard. Standing up to your parents is hard. But we do them anyway because they matter." He cups your face. "You matter. We matter. And I'm not giving up on us just because it's going to be difficult."
You kiss him, tasting determination and promise and the future you're both trying to hold onto. "Seven months," you say. "We have seven more months before Stanford."
"Then let's make them count."
The rest of December passes in a blur of finals and family tension and stolen time with Sunghoon. You ace your finals (because some things don't change). He passes English with a B-minus (because some things do). Christmas is awkward. Your parents got you practical gifts—a new laptop for college, organizational systems, things that say we're investing in your future whether or not we approve of your present.
You spend Christmas night at the quarry with Sunghoon and his friends, sitting around a bonfire, drinking hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps that Ryujin brought. "To surviving senior year," Jay toasts, raising his mug.
"To graduation," Niki adds.
"To getting the hell out of Millbrook," Ryujin says.
"To the people who make staying worthwhile," Sunghoon says, looking directly at you.
Everyone drinks, and you lean into Sunghoon's side, warm despite the December cold, surrounded by people who've become your friends as much as his. This is what family should feel like, you think. Not obligation and expectation, but choice and acceptance and love. "What are you thinking?" Wonyoung asks. She's on Jake's lap (they're very on-again), but her eyes are on you.
"That I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be."
"Even though it's complicated?"
"Especially because it's complicated."
She smiles. "Good answer."
Later, Sunghoon drives you home, but instead of dropping you off, he parks down the street. "I got you something," he says, pulling a small wrapped box from his jacket pocket. "For Christmas."
"Sunghoon, we said no gifts—"
"I know. But I saw this and thought of you." You unwrap it carefully. Inside is a keychain—simple silver, with a tiny Mustang charm attached. "It's from my car," he explains. "Well, a replica. Because wherever you go, whatever happens, you'll have a piece of us. A piece of this."
Your eyes are burning. "It's perfect."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." You lean across the console to kiss him. "I love it. I love you."
"I love you too."
You sit there in his Mustang, engine off, snow falling outside, and you make promises you hope you can keep. That distance won't change things. That you'll make it work. That love is enough. You want to believe it. You have to believe it. Because the alternative—losing him—is unthinkable.
—
January through March pass faster than you want them to. Stanford acceptance letter arrives in early March—thick envelope, congratulations, everything you've worked for. Your parents are ecstatic. They throw you a celebration dinner, invite relatives, act like your relationship with Sunghoon is a phase that's ending now that you've gotten into your dream school. You don't correct them. You just smile and accept congratulations and hold the letter that represents your future while thinking about the boy who represents your present.
Sunghoon's proud when you tell him. Genuinely, completely proud. "Stanford," he says, kissing you in the diner parking lot. "That's huge."
"It doesn't feel huge. It feels like goodbye."
"It's not goodbye. It's—" He pauses, searching for words. "It's see you later."
"That's optimistic."
"I'm learning optimism from you."
Spring arrives with brutal honesty about the future. Graduation is June seventh. You leave for Stanford's summer orientation June twentieth. That gives you less than two weeks after graduation before everything changes. The quarry races continue through April, and you've gotten good. Not as good as Sunghoon or Ryujin, but good enough to win against Niki (who's actually trying now) and to place second against Jay (who's still reckless but respects your skill). "You should race for real," Ryujin says one Saturday night in mid-April. "There's a circuit in Indianapolis. Real tracks, real prizes. You could do it."
"I'm going to California in June."
"But you're here now."
You look at Sunghoon, who's watching you with that expression that means he's proud and scared and trying not to show either. "One race," you say. "Before I leave. A real one."
His smile is beautiful and sad. "Yeah. One real race."
You tell your parents you're staying after school for a student council project on the last Friday of April. Instead, you drive to Indianapolis with Sunghoon, Ryujin following in her Corvette, to register for your first real race. The track is terrifying and exhilarating. Professional. Dangerous. Everything the quarry isn't. "You don't have to do this," Sunghoon says as you're filling out forms.
"I want to."
"Why?"
"Because I've spent my whole life playing it safe. Doing the smart thing. The responsible thing." You sign your name with a flourish. "I want one irresponsible thing to remember. One time I did something just because it scared me."
"Racing scares you?"
"Terrifies me. That's why I have to do it."
The race is scheduled for the second Saturday in May. That gives you two weeks to practice, to prepare, to possibly come to your senses (you don't). You practice at the quarry every Saturday, and Sunghoon teaches you things he's learned from years of racing. How to take curves at speed. When to brake and when to accelerate. How to listen to the engine, to feel when the car's about to lose traction. "You're good at this," he says after a particularly clean run. "Natural."
"I have a good teacher."
"Best teacher you ever had?" He's grinning, cocky.
"Most humble, definitely."
The night before the race, you can't sleep. Sunghoon calls at midnight. "You nervous?" he asks.
"Terrified."
"Good. Use that. Fear keeps you sharp."
"What if I crash?"
"You won't."
"But if I do?"
"Then I'll be there to pull you out and tell you you're an idiot for racing in the first place." His voice softens. "But you won't crash. You're too good for that."
"How are you so sure?"
"Because I've watched you do impossible things. Ace AP classes. Stand up to your parents. Take a kid who couldn't read and teach him to love literature. Racing is just one more impossible thing you're going to conquer." You fall asleep with your phone pressed to your ear, his breathing steady on the other end, feeling brave and terrified and ready.
Race day arrives sunny and perfect. The track in Indianapolis is packed—real racers, real crowds, real stakes. You're racing in the amateur division, but that doesn't make it less intimidating. Your parents think you're at a college prep seminar. Wonyoung knows the truth and made you promise to be careful. Sunghoon's in the pit area, having helped prep the Mustang (you're borrowing his car for this, because yours is sensible and slow and entirely wrong for racing). "You ready?" he asks, checking the tire pressure for the third time.
"Ask me after."
"You're going to be great."
"You're biased."
"Completely. Doesn't make it less true."
Ryujin appears, already in her racing suit. "You're up in fifteen. Stop overthinking it."
"I'm not overthinking—"
"You're absolutely overthinking. It's what you do." She grins. "Just drive like you do at the quarry. Pretend you're trying to beat Niki's sorry ass."
"I heard that!" Niki calls from somewhere nearby.
The fifteen minutes pass too fast. Suddenly you're in the Mustang, helmet on, strapped in tight. The engine's roar is familiar now, comforting. You can do this. The flag drops. You're off, and for the first few seconds you can't think, can barely breathe. Then muscle memory kicks in. Sunghoon's lessons, hours of practice, raw instinct.
The track blurs. You're not first—not even close—but you're not last either. Sixth out of twelve. Holding your own. Lap two: you pass someone. Fifth place. Lap three: someone passes you. Back to sixth. Lap four (final lap): You see an opening. A gap between two cars. It's risky. Probably stupid. You take it.
The Mustang responds perfectly, threading the needle, and suddenly you're fourth. The finish line approaches and you're laughing inside the helmet because you're doing it, you're actually doing it— You cross the line in fourth place. Not first. Not even podium. But fourth out of twelve in your first real race, and when you pull into the pit area, Sunghoon's there pulling you out of the car and spinning you around and kissing you right there in front of everyone. "Fourth place!" he's saying. "In your first fucking race!"
"I can't believe I did that."
"I can. I knew you would." He's grinning so wide it must hurt. "You were amazing."
Ryujin finished second (because of course she did), and she's laughing at both of you. "Not bad for a brainiac. You've got real potential."
"Thanks."
"You racing again?"
The question makes your stomach drop. Because the answer is no. You're leaving in five weeks. This was it. Your one race. Your one irresponsible thing. "Probably not," you say quietly.
Ryujin's expression shifts to understanding. "Right. Stanford." She squeezes your shoulder. "Then I'm glad you got to do this one. Fourth place is nothing to sneeze at."
The rest of the afternoon passes in a celebration. Jay brings beer (illegal but who cares), and you all sit in the parking lot reliving the race, analyzing turns, celebrating small victories. This is freedom, you think. This is what it feels like to do something just because you want to, not because it's part of a plan or looks good on applications or makes anyone proud. This is what it feels like to be young and reckless and alive.
Later, Sunghoon drives you back to Millbrook, and you're quiet, processing. "You okay?" he asks.
"Yeah. Just thinking."
"About?"
"About how in five weeks this is over. This—" You gesture between you. "—is over."
His hands tighten on the steering wheel. "It doesn't have to be over."
"How? You're here. I'm going to be three thousand miles away."
"We'll figure it out. Phone calls. Visits. We'll make it work."
"Do you really believe that?"
He's quiet for a long moment. "I want to. I'm trying to."
"But?"
"But I'm scared." The admission costs him. "I'm scared that you'll get to California and realize there's a whole world of guys who aren't broken. Who can read without colored filters. Who graduated on time and don't work at their dad's garage."
"Sunghoon—"
"I'm scared you'll forget about the small-town kid who fell in love with you over milkshakes and car engines."
You reach across the console, taking his hand. "I could never forget you. You changed my life."
"For now. But in a year? Two years?"
"Forever," you say firmly. "You changed me forever."
He pulls over at your usual spot—the overlook of Indianapolis, the city glittering in the distance. Turns to face you fully. "I love you," he says. "I'm always going to love you. But I also love you too much to make you choose between me and your dreams."
"What does that mean?"
"It means—" He swallows hard. "It means when you leave for Stanford, I'm not going to hold you back. I'm not going to guilt you or make you feel bad for living your life. I want you to experience everything. To be free."
"I don't want to be free. I want to be with you."
"You can't have both. Not really. Not with three thousand miles between us."
Tears are streaming down your face now. "So what, we just break up? Pretend this never happened?"
"No. We love each other for the next five weeks. We make every moment count. And then—" His voice cracks. "And then we let each other go."
"I don't want to let you go."
"I don't want to let you go either. But we have to."
You climb into his lap in the front seat of the Mustang, kissing him desperately, trying to memorize everything—the taste of him, the feel of his hands, the way he holds you like you're precious and breakable and strong all at once. "Five weeks," you whisper against his mouth.
"Five weeks," he agrees. "Let's make them perfect."
He drives. Not back to town—not yet. He takes the back roads out past the quarry, past the field where you used to watch Indianapolis glow, until he finds a stretch of empty road where the stars are visible and the nearest person is miles away. Then he parks. Neither of you speaks for a moment. The Mustang idles and then goes quiet and the May night presses warm against the windows. "Come here," he says softly.
You go. You cross the console and fit yourself against him and he holds you so tight it almost hurts, his face buried in your hair, both of you breathing like you’ve been running. This time it isn’t urgent the way the first time was—that first night at the overlook, the months of held breath finally released. This time it’s slower and sadder and more deliberate, the way you do something when you know you’re doing it for the last time in a long time.
He undresses you like he’s memorizing it. Like he’s filing it away somewhere safe. Every piece of clothing that comes off, his hands follow—mapping your shoulders, your waist, the curve of your spine—and you do the same for him, learning by touch what you already know by heart. His chest, the line of his collarbone, the old scar on his ribs from a car part that slipped when he was sixteen. "I love you," you say, against his shoulder. Not for the first time. But with a weight to it you haven’t used before.
"I love you," he says back, and pulls you closer. He lays you back in the reclined seat and takes his time. His mouth traces down your throat, your collarbone, the curve of your breast—lips finding your nipples, soft at first and then less so, until your fingers are in his hair and you’re arching up toward him. He smiles against your skin and keeps going.
His hand slides down your stomach, fingers stroking through your folds with the ease of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing now, who has paid close attention every time before this. He finds your clit and works it slow and steady until your hips are rocking against his hand and you’re whispering his name at the dark of the car ceiling. "Sunghoon—"
"I know," he says. "I’ve got you. I always have you." He pushes two fingers into your pussy and curls them, thumb still on your clit, and you come apart quietly—the way you do now, the way you’ve learned to, teeth pressed into your lower lip, breathless and shaking and his. He holds you through it, watching your face like he’s trying to memorize that too.
Then he settles between your thighs and presses into you slowly—taking his time even now, or maybe especially now—and you wrap your legs around him and pull him closer and closer until there’s no space between you at all. He moves like the night is long and he intends to use all of it. Deep and unhurried, his cock filling you completely with every thrust, his forehead resting against yours so you’re breathing the same air, his eyes open and on yours the whole time. It’s almost too much—the eye contact, the closeness, the specific weight of knowing what this is. You don’t look away. Neither does he.
He shifts his angle and you gasp and his jaw goes tight and he keeps it there—that exact angle, the head of his cock dragging against the right place every time—until the tension winds up tight and sharp and breaks in a long wave that makes you clutch his shoulders and hold on. He follows you—"I love you," he says, rough and honest and helpless, right at the end—and stays there, arms around you, both of you catching your breath while the Indiana night hums outside.
You stay tangled together for a long time. Long enough that the windows fog. Long enough that somewhere in the dark a car passes on the far road and its headlights sweep briefly across yours and neither of you moves. "Don’t let go yet," you say quietly.
His arms tighten. "Not yet," he says. "Not yet."
—
The last five weeks of senior year pass in a blur of lasts. Last student council meeting. Last AP exam. Last time sitting in your assigned seat in English class. Last ordinary Tuesday at Miller's Diner. You and Sunghoon make a pact: No talking about Stanford. No discussing the future. Just now. Just these five weeks. It's denial and it's beautiful and it's breaking both your hearts.
Prom happens the third weekend of May. You go together—officially, publicly, to hell with anyone who has opinions. Your parents don't speak to you for three days after, but you don't care because you have pictures of you and Sunghoon in formal wear, his arms around your waist, both of you smiling like nothing bad is coming.
Senior Week is a blur of parties and celebrations. The quarry fills up every night with graduates celebrating freedom and dreading change. You race twice more—not officially, just for fun—and win once against Jay (he claims the track was slippery).
Wonyoung throws a party at her house the Saturday before graduation. Her parents are gone for the weekend (conveniently), and half the senior class shows up. "I can't believe this is almost over," she says, slightly drunk on the punch that someone definitely spiked. "We're leaving. All of us. Going to different colleges, different states. Everything's changing."
"Not everything. We'll still be friends."
"Promise?"
"Promise." But even as you say it, you wonder if it's true. If friendships survive distance and change and growing up. If anything survives that.
The Tuesday before graduation, you and Sunghoon are at Miller's Diner for the last time. You both know it without saying it—after graduation, this routine ends. Sally brings your milkshakes without asking. "Last week of school?"
"Last week of everything," Sunghoon says.
She pats his shoulder sympathetically. "You kids going to be okay?"
"We're going to try to be."
When she's gone, you're both quiet. There's no homework to do. No tutoring needed. Sunghoon passed English with a B. He's graduating. Everything you worked for together is complete. "I've been thinking," he says finally. "About us. About what happens after."
"You said no future talk."
"I know. But we need to talk about it. We can't just pretend—"
"I know." You take a shaky breath. "What have you been thinking?"
"That I love you. That I'm always going to love you. But that trying to hold onto something when we're both moving in different directions is just going to hurt more in the end."
The tears are already falling. "So what are you saying?"
"That I think we should make a clean break. After graduation. You go to Stanford, I stay here, and we don't drag it out with phone calls and promises we can't keep."
"I could keep them. I would keep them."
"For how long? A semester? A year? Eventually you'd meet someone there. Someone smart and ambitious who's going places. Someone who fits your future better than a mechanic from Millbrook."
"Don't do that. Don't diminish yourself."
"I'm being realistic. You deserve someone who can give you everything. I can only give you parts and pieces and long-distance phone calls."
You're crying harder now. "You give me everything that matters. You make me happy. Isn't that enough?"
"Not when it means holding you back."
"You're not—"
"I am. Your parents are right about that." He reaches across the table, taking both your hands. "You're meant for amazing things. And I'm so proud to have been part of your journey. But I can't be the thing that keeps you from flying."
"I don't want to fly without you."
"You don't have a choice. We both know this was always temporary. We just pretended it wasn't."
You're sobbing now, and Sally's watching from behind the counter with sad eyes, and Sunghoon's crying too even though he's trying to hide it. "I don't want this to end," you manage.
"Neither do I. But it has to." He stands, pulling you up with him, holding you while you both fall apart. "But we still have four more days. Let's not waste them being sad."
—
Graduation Day arrives. You're wearing your honor cords, valedictorian medal, all the symbols of everything you've achieved. Sunghoon's in his cap and gown next to you in the alphabetical lineup, grinning like a kid because he's actually here, actually graduating. "We did it," he says.
"You did it. This was all you."
"Couldn't have done it without you."
The ceremony is long. Principal Morrison gives a speech about futures and potential. You give your valedictorian speech about change and growth and becoming who you're meant to be. (You wrote it thinking about Sunghoon. Everyone assumes it's about college.) When they call his name—"Park Sunghoon"—the cheering is loud. His dad is in the stands, looking proud and slightly shocked. His sister's jumping up and down. You're clapping so hard your hands hurt.
He walks across the stage, accepts his diploma, and when he looks out at the audience, he finds you. Smiles. Mouths "we did it." You mouth back "you did it."
After the ceremony, there are pictures and celebrations. Your parents are polite to Sunghoon when he appears in family photos, but the frost is still there. His dad shakes your hand, thanks you for helping his son, doesn't quite meet your eyes. "Party at the quarry tonight," Jay announces to everyone. "Everyone's invited. Last blowout before we all scatter." You and Sunghoon exchange glances. Tonight. This is it.
The quarry is packed for graduation night. Someone's brought a whole sound system. The bonfire's huge. There's alcohol and celebration and the particular bittersweet feeling of knowing everything's about to change. You stay close to Sunghoon all night. Dancing when the music's good, sitting on the hood of the Mustang when you need quiet, kissing like you're trying to memorize the taste of him.
Around midnight, he pulls you away from the crowd. "Come with me. I want to show you something." He drives out to the overlook—your spot, where Indianapolis glitters in the distance. Parks the Mustang and leads you to sit on the hood, arms around you, both of you looking at the city. "I'm going to miss this," he says quietly. "Every part of this."
"Me too."
"You changed my life, you know. Before you, I thought I was stupid. Broken. Going nowhere. But you saw something in me that nobody else did. You made me believe I could be more."
"You were always more. I just helped you see it."
"Same thing." He turns you to face him. "I'm going to let you go tomorrow. It's going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. But I need you to know that you're the best thing that ever happened to me. That these eight months were the happiest I've ever been." You're crying again, and he wipes your tears with his thumbs. "I need you to promise me something," he continues. "Promise me you'll go to Stanford and be brilliant. Promise me you'll chase every dream. Promise me you won't look back and regret this. Regret us."
"I could never regret us."
"Promise me anyway."
"I promise." Your voice is shaking. "But only if you promise me something too."
"Anything."
"Promise me you'll be happy. That you won't let anyone make you feel small again. That you'll remember you're brilliant and talented and worthy of everything good."
"I promise." You kiss him one last time at the overlook, the city glittering behind you, and it's desperate and perfect and goodbye.
The next morning, you're packing for Stanford. Your room is full of boxes, your whole life sorted into keep and leave behind. There's a knock on your door. Your mom. "Can I come in?"
"Yeah."
She sits on your bed, looking at all the boxes. "I've been thinking. About you and that Park boy."
Your stomach drops. "Mom—"
"Let me finish." She takes a breath. "I don't approve. I want to be clear about that. I think he's a distraction. I think he represents everything you're supposed to be moving away from."
"Thanks for the honesty," you say bitterly.
"But." She looks at you, really looks. "I've also watched you this year. You've been happier. More confident. More yourself than I've seen in a long time. And I can't ignore that he's part of that." You don't know what to say. "I'm not saying I approve. I'm not saying I think this will last. But I am saying—" She pauses. "I'm saying I see that he matters to you. And that you matter to him. And that's worth something."
"We broke up," you say quietly. "Yesterday. Decided it was better to end it than try to make long distance work."
Her expression softens into something that might be sympathy. "I'm sorry."
"Are you really?"
"I'm sorry you're hurting. Even if I think it's for the best." She leaves, and you sit among your boxes, holding the keychain Sunghoon gave you for Christmas, crying for everything you're losing.
—
You leave for Stanford orientation on June twentieth. Your parents drive you to the airport, help you check your bags, hug you goodbye. "We're proud of you," your dad says. "So proud."
"Make the most of this opportunity," your mom adds. "Don't waste it." You nod, unable to speak around the lump in your throat.
The flight to California is long. You press your forehead against the window and watch Indiana disappear beneath you. Somewhere down there is Millbrook. Miller's Diner. The quarry. A black Mustang and a boy who taught you to fly. You pull out your phone, scrolling to his contact. He hasn't called or texted since graduation night. Clean break, like he said.
Your finger hovers over his name. One call. One message. Just to hear his voice. You don't do it. You're strong enough to keep the promise you made. Instead, you clutch the Mustang keychain and cry quietly into your complimentary ginger ale while the flight attendant pretends not to notice.
Stanford is beautiful. Your dorm is nice. Your roommate is friendly. Orientation is overwhelming and exciting and everything you hoped for. But at night, alone in your new bed in your new life, you dream about engines and milkshakes and a boy who made you brave enough to claim your future. You just wish that future could have included him.
—
FOUR YEARS LATER
Stanford Law School graduation is held outdoors in perfect California sunshine. You're wearing your JD regalia, cum laude honors cord, everything you worked for. Your parents are in the stands, beaming. Your brother flew in from Boston where he's doing his medical residency. Wonyoung's here too—she's at UCLA, came up for the weekend to celebrate.
The ceremony is long. When they finally call your name, the cheering is loud, and you walk across the stage thinking about all the paths that led you here. Four years of undergraduate. Three years of law school. Summers clerking at firms in San Francisco, making connections, building a future. You have a job lined up at a prestigious firm. You have your whole career ahead of you.
You did everything you planned. Everything you were supposed to do. And you're proud. You are. But sometimes, late at night, you still dream about a diner in Indiana and a boy who taught you that plans aren't everything.
You haven't spoken to Sunghoon since the day you left. Kept your promise to make a clean break. Forced yourself not to check his social media (you blocked it all the first week at Stanford because you knew you'd be too tempted).
Wonyoung updates you occasionally. Sunghoon's still in Millbrook, working at his dad's garage. Took it over last year when his dad had a heart attack. Business is good. He's doing well. She never mentions if he's seeing anyone. You never ask.
After graduation, there's a reception. Food, drinks, celebration. You're talking to a professor about your upcoming job when your phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number. Unknown: Congratulations, Dr. soon-to-be lawyer. I always knew you'd do amazing things.
Your heart stops. You know that phrasing. That voice. You step away from the reception, hands shaking as you reply. You: Sunghoon?
Unknown: Yeah. It's me. Sorry for texting out of the blue. I just—I saw Wonyoung's Instagram. You graduating. I wanted to say I'm proud of you.
You: How did you get my number?
Unknown: Wonyoung. Made her promise not to tell you I asked for it. Didn't want to pressure you.
You: It's been four years.
Unknown: I know. Too long. Not long enough. Both.
Your heart is racing. You look around at your graduation party, at your future unfolding exactly as planned, and you make a decision. You: Are you in California?
Unknown: Flew in this morning. I'm actually in Palo Alto. At a coffee shop near campus. I understand if you don't want to see me. I just thought—hoped—maybe you'd want to grab coffee. Catch up.
This is crazy. You have a reception to get back to. People waiting. A whole celebration planned. You: Where?
He sends you an address. It's ten minutes from where you're standing. "I need to go," you tell Wonyoung, grabbing your purse.
"Go where? We're celebrating you—" She sees your expression. "Oh my god. He's here, isn't he?"
"How did you know?"
"Because you only look like that when it's about him." She grins. "Go. I'll cover for you with your parents."
"You knew he was coming?"
"He asked for your number last week. Told me he wanted to congratulate you. I didn't think he'd actually show up." She pushes you toward the exit. "Go. Find out what four years has done to you both."
The coffee shop is small and crowded with students. You spot him immediately, sitting at a corner table, wearing jeans and a button-down shirt that's so different from the leather jacket and ripped jeans you remember but somehow still completely him. He sees you and stands. Older. Broader. Still beautiful. "Hi," he says.
"Hi." For a moment you just stare at each other, and then he's crossing the distance and pulling you into a hug that feels like coming home. "You're here," you say into his shoulder. "You're really here."
"I'm here." He pulls back to look at you. "You look amazing. Different. More—I don't know. More yourself."
"You look good too. Really good."
You sit, and for a minute it's awkward. Four years is a long time. You're not the same people who said goodbye in Indiana. "So," he starts. "Law school. That's huge."
"Thanks. What about you? Wonyoung said you took over the garage?"
"Yeah. Dad's heart couldn't take the long hours anymore. So now it's Park & Son Auto Repair." He smiles, proud. "We're doing well. Expanded last year. Hired three new mechanics."
"That's amazing."
"Not as amazing as law school."
"Different amazing."
The conversation flows easier after that. You tell him about Stanford, about your classes, about the firm job you're starting in San Francisco in August. He tells you about the garage, about his sister (she's at Purdue studying veterinary science), about life in Millbrook (some things change, most things don't). "I've been following you," he admits after an hour. "Not in a creepy way. But Wonyoung posts about you sometimes. I couldn't help checking."
"I blocked your social media that first week at Stanford."
"I know. I noticed."
"I had to. If I didn't, I would have looked every day. Tortured myself with missing you."
"Did you? Miss me?"
You look at him—really look. At the boy who taught you to be brave. Who believed in you before you believed in yourself. Who let you go because he loved you too much to hold you back. "Every single day," you admit. "For four years. Every day."
His expression does something complicated. "Me too."
"Then why didn't you call? Text? Anything?"
"Because I made you a promise. To let you go. To let you have your future without me pulling you back."
"That was a stupid promise."
"Maybe. Or maybe it was what we both needed." He reaches across the table, taking your hand. "You did it. Everything you set out to do. Would you have done that if I'd been calling every week? Visiting every break? Being a constant reminder of Millbrook?"
"I don't know," you admit.
"I do. You needed to be free to become who you were meant to be. And look at you." His smile is soft, proud. "You're brilliant. You're successful. You're everything I knew you would be."
"I'm also alone." The admission hurts. "I dated. Nothing stuck. Nobody was—"
"Was me?"
"Was you."
He's quiet for a long moment. Then: "I'm still in Millbrook. Still working at a garage. Still the guy who can barely read without colored overlays."
"I don't care about any of that."
"You should. You're about to start your career in San Francisco. You're going to be surrounded by successful people. People who—"
"Are you seriously still doing this? Four years later, you're still telling me I'm too good for you?"
"I'm being realistic."
"You're being scared." You squeeze his hand. "I'm scared too. I don't know how we'd make this work. San Francisco and Millbrook are three thousand miles apart. But—" You pause, heart racing. "But I've spent four years doing the practical thing. The smart thing. The thing everyone expected. And I've been successful and professional and completely miserable."
"You're not—"
"I am. Because I've been trying to fill a hole that's shaped like you." Tears are streaming down your face now. "I love my career. I love what I do. But I don't love doing it alone. I don't love going home every night to an empty apartment. I don't love dating men who check all the boxes except the one that matters."
"What box is that?"
"Making me happy. Making me feel alive. Making me feel like myself." You're full-on crying now. "You did that. Four years ago, in a town I couldn't wait to leave, you made me happier than I've been before or since."
He's crying too. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I don't want practical. I want you."
"I'm in Millbrook. You're starting a job in San Francisco."
"Then we'll figure it out. Phone calls. Visits. I'll fly home every few months. You can come to California. We'll make it work."
"That's what we said four years ago."
"No. Four years ago you decided we couldn't make it work. You didn't even give us a chance." You stand, pulling him up with you. "I'm not asking for perfect. I'm not asking for easy. I'm asking for a chance to try."
He studies your face, searching for certainty. Whatever he sees must convince him because suddenly he's kissing you, right there in the coffee shop, and it's desperate and perfect and tastes like four years of missing him. When you break apart, you're both laughing and crying. "I can't believe you flew three thousand miles to see me graduate," you say.
"I've been wanting to for four years. Today I finally worked up the courage."
"I'm glad you did."
"Me too." He kisses you again, softer. "So what now?"
"Now we try. For real this time. No clean breaks. No letting each other go."
"Long distance is hard."
"So? Lots of things are hard. We do them anyway because they matter." You smile, using his words from four years ago. "You matter. We matter."
"I love you," he says. "Never stopped."
"I love you too. Let's not waste any more time pretending we don't."
—
SIX MONTHS LATER
You're back in Millbrook for Christmas break, sitting in Miller's Diner in your old booth. Sally brings milkshakes without asking—chocolate for Sunghoon, strawberry for you. "Some things never change," she says, grinning.
"Best things don't," Sunghoon replies.
The past six months have been hard. San Francisco and Millbrook are three thousand miles apart. Your work hours are brutal. His garage has been expanding and demanding more time. But you've made it work. FaceTime calls every night. Visits once a month (you fly to Indiana or he flies to California, alternating). Texts throughout the day, sharing the small moments. It's not perfect. It's often frustrating. But it's worth it. "I've been thinking," Sunghoon says, playing with your fingers across the table.
"About?"
"About the future. Our future."
Your heart skips. "Okay."
"The garage is doing well. Really well. Well enough that I could hire a manager. Take a step back from the day-to-day."
"What would you do instead?"
"Move to California. Be with you."
You nearly drop your milkshake. "What?"
"I've been talking to some shops in San Francisco. There's actually a demand for mechanics who specialize in classic car restoration. I could start my own business. Build it up." He pauses. "But only if you want that. I don't want to pressure you. I know your career is important. I know you need space and independence and—"
You kiss him to shut him up. "Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes, I want you to move to California. Yes, I want to build a life with you. Yes to all of it."
His smile is brilliant. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. I'm done with long distance. I want you there when I come home from work. I want weekends together. I want normal."
"Normal is overrated."
"Normal with you isn't."
He pulls a small box from his jacket pocket, and your breath stops. "I was going to wait until Christmas," he says. "Make it romantic. But I can't wait any longer." He opens the box. Inside is a ring—simple, beautiful, with a tiny diamond that catches the diner's lights.
"Four years ago, I let you go because I thought it was the right thing. Turns out, letting you go was the stupidest thing I ever did." He takes your hand. "I don't want to let you go again. Ever. So—will you marry me? Put up with late-night phone calls about carburetor problems? Let me mess up your very organized closet with my disorganized life? Build a future together that's messy and complicated and completely ours?"
You're crying and laughing and nodding all at once. "Yes. Yes, absolutely yes." He slides the ring onto your finger, and it fits perfectly. Like it was always meant to be there.
Sally's watching from behind the counter, grinning. "About damn time," she calls over.
Sunghoon laughs, pulling you around the table to sit in his lap. "We did it backwards. Fell in love, broke up, spent four years apart, and now we're getting engaged."
"Who says there's a right way to do this?"
"Fair point." He kisses you softly. "I love you. Have since that first day in the library when you called me brilliant."
"I love you too. Have since you looked at me like I could save you."
"You did save me. In every way that matters."
You sit in Miller's Diner, in the booth that's been yours for years, with a ring on your finger and a future stretching out ahead of you. It's not the future you planned when you were eighteen and valedictorian and sure you had everything figured out. It's better.
Because plans are just maps, and the best destinations are the ones you find by taking the scenic route. The ones that surprise you. The ones that feel like coming home.
And Sunghoon—dyslexic, street-racing, brilliant Sunghoon—feels exactly like coming home. "What are you thinking?" he asks, reading your expression like he's always been able to.
"That I'm glad I took the assignment. That day in Principal Morrison's office."
"Best assignment you ever got?"
"Best decision I ever made was showing up to tutor you. Second best was getting in this Mustang with you that first Saturday night."
"Third best?"
"Loving you. Choosing you. Over and over, every single time."
His kiss tastes like chocolate milkshake and promise and forever. "Let's get out of here," he says. "I want to take you to the overlook. Show you how Indianapolis looks on a winter night."
"Haven't we been there a thousand times?"
"Yeah, but never as fiancés." He grins. "Every view's better when you know you're keeping it forever."
You leave Miller's Diner hand in hand, and Sally calls out "Congratulations!" as the door swings shut behind you. The Mustang's parked outside, still beautiful, still loud, still the car he built from nothing with patience and skill and determination. Kind of like what you built together. "Ready?" he asks, opening the passenger door for you.
You slide in, the leather seat familiar and perfect. He climbs in the driver's side, starts the engine, and it roars to life. "Ready," you say. And you are. Ready for California. Ready for the future. Ready for whatever comes next, as long as it's with him.
He pulls out of the parking lot, and the Mustang's taillights disappear into the Indiana night, carrying two people who fell in love over milkshakes and literature and the radical act of seeing each other clearly.
Some stories end with goodbye. This one starts with it—and becomes something better.
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-ˋˏ⚘ genre: neighbors to lovers · single dad au · fluff · angst · smut · found family · slow burn
-ˋˏ⚘ summary: You have lived in apartment 3B for two years. You know your neighbors the way you know background characters — familiar, unremarkable, just part of the scenery. Which is why it’s strange that you’ve never properly noticed the man in 3A. Until 6:58 on a Tuesday morning when someone knocks on your door and you open it to find not him, but her. Small. Round-cheeked. Duck pajamas. Absolutely certain of herself. You fall for his daughter first. Jake is just the complication that comes after. But god, what a complication.
-ˋˏ⚘ word count: 21.1k
-ˋˏ⚘ content warnings: explicit sexual content, penetrative sex, oral sex, fingering, multiple orgasms, praise kink, soft dom/sub undertones, strong language, single parent theme, child abandonment (mother leaving), brief parental guilt, an absent parent reappearing, emotional manipulation attempt, jealousy, mention of custody, legal procedure, alcohol, crying, found family theme, a toddler who will ruin your life in the best way
-ˋˏ⚘ song: You Are The Best Thing by Ray LaMontage
-ˋˏ⚘ authors note: i started this fic because i wanted to write a soft single dad jake but the mia took over everything, she was supposed to be a supporting character but how can i make someone that cute not a main. she picked reader first and she always knew and i think that’s the whole story. jake deserved softness. reader deserved to be chosen. mia deserved a mama who showed up. everyone got what they deserved. if you’re reading this — thank you. comments, reblogs, feedback and likes keep me writing and i am so serious about that. enjoy💛
-ˋˏ⚘ my masterlist
You have lived in Apartment 3B of Wattle Grove Building for two years. You know Mrs. Kim in 1A leaves her recycling out on the wrong day every single week without fail. You know the guy in 2C plays guitar badly but enthusiastically every Sunday morning. You know the building super Danny will fix anything you need as long as you leave a coffee outside your door first.
You know your neighbors the way you know background characters in a movie you’ve seen too many times. Familiar. Unremarkable. Just part of the scenery.
Which is why it’s strange that you’ve never properly noticed the man in 3A. You’ve seen him, obviously. In passing. At the mailboxes. Once in the car park when you were both leaving at the same time and did that awkward thing where you both reached for the door simultaneously and then laughed and said sorry at the same time. He’s tall. Dark hair. Has a nice face in the vague way that you register nice faces without really looking at them.
He moved in about eight months ago. Keeps to himself. Quiet. You’ve never heard a peep through the wall you share, which you appreciate deeply after two years of listening to the previous tenant’s aggressive taste in late night television. You know his name is Jake because it’s on the mailbox.
That’s it. That’s the extent of your knowledge of the man in 3A. Until 6:58 on a Tuesday morning when someone knocks on your door.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
You are not a morning person. You are, in fact, the opposite of a morning person. You are someone who sets four alarms and ignores three of them and considers getting out of bed before eight a personal attack. Your first class doesn’t start until ten. You were planning to sleep until at least eight thirty, mainline coffee until nine, and leave with approximately four minutes to spare.
So when someone knocks on your door at 6:58 AM you lie there for a full thirty seconds convincing yourself you imagined it. Then it happens again. Small. Rhythmic. Insistent. knock knock knock
You groan into your pillow. Drag yourself upright. Pull on the hoodie hanging off your desk chair and shuffle to the door, hair catastrophic, eyes barely open, prepared to be deeply unpleasant to whoever is on the other side.
You open the door. There is no one there. You blink. Look left. Look right. The hallway is empty and quiet and— “Hi.”
You look down. There is a child sitting on the floor outside your door. She is approximately three years old, round-cheeked and bright-eyed, wearing a yellow pajama set covered in tiny ducks. Her dark hair is escaping from two lopsided pigtails. She has a serious expression on her face like she has somewhere important to be and is merely pausing here briefly.
She is, without any competition, the most adorable thing you have ever seen in your entire life. You stare at her. She stares back. “Hi,” she says again, very patient, like she’s giving you time to catch up.
“Hi,” you manage. “Um. Who are you?”
She considers this question with great seriousness. “Mia.”
“Okay. Hi Mia.” You look up and down the empty hallway again. “Where did you come from?” She points at the door directly across from yours. 3A. “Are you—” You crouch down to her level. “Did you come out of your apartment by yourself?”
“Mr. Bunny is lost,” she explains, as if this answers everything. And apparently, in her world, it does. She stands up, remarkably steady on her feet for someone so small, and peers past you into your apartment with undisguised curiosity. “Is he in there?”
“Is who— Mr. Bunny? I don’t think so, sweetheart. I haven’t seen any—”
“Can I look?”
“I— well—” She’s already walking past you into your apartment.
You stand in your doorway, blinking slowly, watching a three year old you have never met toddle into your living room and start investigating with the focused energy of a tiny detective. She checks under the coffee table. Behind the couch cushions. She picks up one of your throw pillows, examines it, puts it back. “He’s not here,” she announces, sounding genuinely disappointed.
“I’m sorry.” You’re fully awake now, adrenaline doing what four alarms couldn’t. “Mia, does your dad know where you are?”
She looks at you. Blinks. And then, for the first time, something flickers across her face that isn’t complete confidence. Something small and uncertain. “Daddy’s sleeping,” she says quietly.
Oh no. Oh no.
“Okay,” you say, very carefully, going into full calm adult mode even though internally you are having a minor crisis. “Okay, that’s okay. Let’s go wake daddy up, yeah?”
You take her hand — she gives it to you immediately, tiny fingers wrapping around yours with complete trust, and something in your chest does something weird and unexpected — and you walk her across the hall to 3A.
You knock. Nothing. You knock louder. A crash. Muffled swearing. Footsteps. The door flies open.
Jake Sim, your neighbor from 3A, looks absolutely terrible. He’s in gray sweatpants and no shirt, hair destroyed, eyes wild with the specific panic of a parent who has woken up to find their child missing. There’s a pillow crease down his left cheek. He looks like a man who has just experienced the worst thirty seconds of his life.
He looks down at Mia standing beside you, her hand still in yours, looking up at him with the expression of someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong. The relief that crosses his face is so profound it’s almost painful to witness. “Mia.” His voice comes out wrecked. He drops to his knees right there in the doorway, gathering her up, holding her against his chest. She pats his back tolerantly. “Mia, I— you can’t— how did you—”
“I was looking for Mr. Bunny,” she explains into his shoulder, very reasonable.
“You can’t leave the apartment by yourself, baby, I’ve told you—”
“But Mr. Bunny—”
“I don’t care about Mr. Bunny right now—”
“Daddy.” She pulls back to look at him, deeply offended. “Mr. Bunny cares.”
You press your lips together very hard to keep from smiling. Jake looks up at you over Mia’s head, and he looks so mortified you almost feel sorry for him. Almost. It would be easier to feel sorry for him if he didn’t look — even rumpled and panicked and creased from sleep — really quite unfairly attractive. You file that observation away to examine later, when a child is not present.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I’m so, so sorry, she’s never done this before, I don’t know how she got the door open—”
“She knocked,” you tell him. “Very politely.”
He closes his eyes briefly. “Oh god.”
“I used my reaching stool,” Mia informs him helpfully. “For the handle.”
“We’re getting rid of the reaching stool,” Jake tells her.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Daddy, no—”
“Mia.” He pulls back to look at her properly, and his voice goes soft but serious. “You scared me. Really scared me, okay? You cannot leave without waking me up first. Ever. Do you understand?”
She looks at him. Her lip wobbles, just slightly. “I just wanted Mr. Bunny.”
“I know, baby.” He pulls her back in, pressing a kiss to her hair. “I know. But you have to wake me up. Promise me.”
“Promise,” she mumbles into his neck.
He holds her for another moment, and you feel like you’re witnessing something private. Something that belongs to them. You take a small step back. “I’ll let you—”
“Wait.” Jake stands, Mia on his hip, and looks at you with an expression that’s somehow equal parts exhausted and sincere. “I really am sorry. And thank you. Genuinely, thank you for— I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if she’d gone downstairs instead of just across the hall.”
“She was perfectly safe,” you say. “She was very focused on her investigation.”
“Mr. Bunny is lost,” Mia reminds both of you gravely.
“We’ll find him,” Jake tells her. Then to you: “I’m Jake, by the way. Since apparently we’ve been neighbors for eight months and I’ve never actually introduced myself, which is—”
“Terrible,” you supply.
“Yeah.” He winces. “Yeah, it really is. I’m sorry about that too.”
“Y/N,” you tell him. “3B.”
“I know. I’ve seen your name on the mailbox.” He shifts Mia on his hip. She has turned to look at you with renewed interest, the Mr. Bunny crisis temporarily suspended. “I kept meaning to knock and introduce myself properly but then time just—”
“It does that,” you agree.
He smiles. It’s a tired smile, still coming down from the panic, but it’s genuine. It does something to his face that you also file away for later. Mia is still staring at you. “You have pretty hair,” she announces.
“Mia—” Jake starts.
“Thank you,” you tell her seriously. “Yours is very pretty too.”
She reaches up and touches one of her lopsided pigtails, considering. “Daddy did it,” she says, with the tone of someone being very diplomatic about a disappointing situation.
You look at Jake. He looks back at you. The pigtails are genuinely quite bad. “I’m working on it,” he says.
“We could—” You stop yourself. You don’t even know this man. You’ve spoken to him for approximately four minutes. “Never mind.”
“No, what?”
“I was just going to say I could show you. If you wanted. It’s not— it’s easy once you know the trick.” You gesture vaguely. “But you probably have things to—”
“I would love that,” Jake says immediately. “Genuinely. Every morning is a disaster. She came home from daycare last week and her teacher had written a note that said ‘we love Mia’s creative hairstyles’ and I’m pretty sure that was a polite way of saying—”
“Daddy can’t do hair,” Mia explains to you, very straightforward.
“I cannot do hair,” Jake confirms.
You laugh. Actually laugh, fully awake now, standing in the hallway at seven in the morning in your old hoodie with your own hair catastrophic, and it surprises you a little. How easy it is. How natural. “Come over tomorrow morning,” you find yourself saying. “Before daycare. I’ll show you a couple of things.”
Jake looks at you like you’ve offered him something much more significant than a hair tutorial. “You don’t have to—”
“I know.” You crouch down to Mia’s level. “I hope you find Mr. Bunny.”
She studies you with those serious dark eyes. Then she reaches out and puts her small hand on your cheek, very gentle, the way toddlers sometimes do when they’re deciding something important about you. “You’re nice,” she declares.
“So are you,” you tell her. She nods, satisfied, like this has confirmed something she already suspected.
Then she tucks her face back into Jake’s neck, done with the interaction, and Jake gives you a helpless sort of smile over her head. “Thank you,” he says again. “Really.”
“Anytime.” You stand up and take a step back toward your own door. “And Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe put a chain lock on. Up high. Before tonight.”
He looks at the door. Looks at Mia. Looks back at you with the expression of a man who has just realized how many things there are to think about when you’re doing this alone. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Yeah, good call.”
You don’t go back to sleep. You make coffee and sit on your couch and think about the way Mia put her hand on your cheek like she was taking your measure. The way she gave you her hand without hesitating, tiny fingers trusting yours completely.
The way Jake held her when he found her safe. Like she was the most important thing in the world, which she obviously was, which was obvious in every single line of his body.
You think about his apartment, which you caught a glimpse of through the open door. The small pair of shoes by the entrance. The sticker on the light switch at toddler height. The general chaos of someone who is managing, but only just. You think about the note from the daycare teacher and the terrible pigtails and the way he said I’m working on it without a single drop of self pity.
You finish your coffee. Make another one. You have a feeling that next door is going to become a lot more complicated than background noise and a name on a mailbox.
You’re not sure yet if that’s a good thing. But when you close your eyes you can still feel the ghost of small fingers wrapped around yours and you think— yeah. Yeah, you’re probably already in trouble.
Mr. Bunny turns up two days later. He is in the freezer. Neither Jake nor Mia can explain how he got there.
You laugh about it for five minutes straight when Jake texts you, and then you look at your phone and realize you’ve been texting your neighbor for two days like it’s completely normal and you’ve known him for years. You put your phone down. Pick it up again. Type back: at least he’s preserved.
Jake sends back a string of crying laughing emojis and then: Mia wants me to tell you that Mr. Bunny says thank you for looking for him
You smile so hard your face hurts. You are, you realize, completely and utterly done for. And you haven’t even properly met him yet.
The hair tutorial happens on Wednesday morning. You hear them before you see them — Mia’s voice carrying clearly through the wall at seven fifteen, a stream of cheerful commentary about something, Jake’s lower voice responding, the particular domestic chaos of someone trying to get a toddler ready for daycare on a schedule. Then a knock at your door.
You open it to find Jake holding Mia like a football under one arm, a hairbrush in his free hand, and the expression of a man who has already lost this morning’s battle comprehensively.
Mia is upside down and completely unbothered. “Hi,” she says, from her inverted position.
“Hi,” you say. You step back and open the door wider. “Come in.”
They troop inside, Jake setting Mia down on her feet in your living room where she immediately begins a thorough reinvestigation of the space, picking up where she left off two days ago. She examines your bookshelf. Touches the small succulent on your windowsill very gently with one finger. “Plant,” she observes.
“His name is Gerald,” you tell her.
She looks at you. Looks at Gerald. Looks back at you with the gravity of someone receiving important information. “Hi Gerald,” she says politely. Jake makes a sound that might be him trying not to laugh.
“Okay.” You take the hairbrush from him. “Sit her up on the couch and I’ll show you.”
What follows is twenty minutes that you will think about for the rest of the week for reasons you can’t entirely explain.
Mia sits between your knees on the couch, remarkably patient once she’s settled, holding Gerald the succulent in her lap because she asked and you said yes and Jake gave you a look that suggested he has learned to pick his battles. You work through her hair slowly, showing Jake each step — how to section it, how to hold the hair so it doesn’t pull, how to make the pigtails sit even.
He watches with the focused attention of someone who is genuinely trying to learn this. Not just nodding along but asking questions, asking you to slow down, watching your hands. At one point he leans in close to see what you’re doing and you’re very aware of how near he is and the fact that he smells like clean laundry and something warm underneath.
You focus on Mia’s hair. “The trick,” you tell him, “is that you do both sides before you tie either one off. Otherwise the first one pulls when you do the second.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing wrong,” he says. He sounds genuinely relieved, like you’ve solved something that’s been bothering him for months. Which, apparently, you have. “I couldn’t work out why they always went lopsided.”
“They were very lopsided,” Mia agrees pleasantly.
“Thanks, Mia.”
“You’re welcome, Daddy.”
You finish, tying off the second pigtail with the elastic, and smooth a hand over her hair. Perfect and even and neat. She reaches up and touches them carefully. “Pretty?” she asks.
“Very pretty,” you confirm.
She twists to look up at you, satisfied. Then she holds Gerald out. “You can have him back.”
“Thank you for taking care of him.”
“He was scared,” she explains seriously. “He doesn’t know me yet.” She places him very carefully back on the windowsill, patting the pot once. “It’s okay Gerald. I’m nice.”
Jake is watching his daughter with this expression — quiet and soft and a little undone at the edges — and when he catches you looking at him he clears his throat and looks away. Picks up the hairbrush from the cushion beside him. “Right,” he says. “We should get going. Daycare at eight.”
“Nooooo,” Mia says, without any real conviction. She’s already moving toward the door with the pragmatic acceptance of someone who knows the schedule.
“Thank you,” Jake says to you. He means it. You can tell he means it in that way where the words are bigger than they sound. “Seriously. This was—”
“It’s just pigtails.”
“It’s not just—” He stops. Starts again. “She talks about you. Since Tuesday. You’re the pretty lady from across the hall.”
Your face warms. “That’s very generous of her.”
“She’s got good taste.” He says it simply, matter of fact, and then looks slightly like he didn’t mean to say it quite like that. “I mean— she’s a good judge of character. Generally.”
“Y/N,” Mia calls from the doorway where she is putting her shoes on the wrong feet with great confidence.
“Yeah?”
She looks up at you. “Will you be here tomorrow?”
Something squeezes in your chest. “Yeah, I’ll be here.”
She nods, satisfied, like this is settled. Like you have made a commitment and she is holding you to it. Then she holds her foot up at Jake. “Daddy. Shoes.”
Jake crouches down to fix them, and you lean against your doorframe and watch, and you think about what Liv said to you once about knowing when something is going to change your life. How you can feel it sometimes. The specific weight of a moment that’s about to matter.
You feel it now, watching Jake tie his daughter’s shoes in your doorway at seven forty in the morning while she holds your door handle for balance and hums something tuneless to herself. You feel it, and you file it away with everything else, and you tell yourself it’s too early for any of this and you need coffee.
You leave cookies outside 3A that afternoon. You don’t examine why. You made a batch because you were stress baking about an assignment and you made too many and they were just sitting there and Jake mentioned once — in the mailbox, months ago, one of those nothing conversations you’d forgotten until now — that Mia liked anything with chocolate.
You leave them outside the door in a container with a post it note that says for Mia (and you, if you want) and then you go back inside and finish your assignment and don’t think about it.
At nine fifteen that night your phone buzzes: jake 3a: she ate four before I could stop her and is now absolutely feral and won’t sleep. I’m blaming you
You grin at your phone. you: that’s fair
jake 3a: they were really good though like genuinely really good. Did you make them from scratch?
you: yes
jake 3a: of course you did
jake 3a: I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means, that came out weird. I just mean they were better than anything I could make. I’m a terrible baker.
you: how terrible?
jake 3a: I made Mia a birthday cake in August and it came out flat and she cried
you: oh no
jake 3a: not because of the cake. She thought it was funny. She cried laughing. It was actually one of the best moments of my life which probably tells you everything about my standards right now
You’re smiling at your phone like an idiot. you: I’ll make the cake next time. You send it before you’ve fully decided to, and then stare at it. It’s October. You’ve just committed to being in this man’s life until at least next August.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. jake 3a: you really don’t have to
you: I want to. she told Gerald not to be scared because she was nice. I feel like she deserves a good birthday cake.
jake 3a: yeah she really does
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
The drawing appears under your door on Thursday morning. You almost step on it when you come out of your bedroom, a folded piece of paper on your doormat. You pick it up and unfold it and find a crayon drawing — several figures of varying heights and proportions, all labeled in Jake’s handwriting because Mia clearly directed and he transcribed.
Mia. Daddy. Gerald. Mr Bunny. And then, on the end, slightly larger than the others, with yellow crayon hair: Y/N. She’s drawn you into her family portrait.
You stand in your kitchen holding a crayon drawing with yellow-haired you standing next to a rectangle that is apparently Gerald and you feel something crack open in your chest so softly and so completely that you have to sit down.
You take a photo of it. You put the original on your fridge. You text Jake a photo of it on the fridge and he doesn’t respond for ten minutes and when he does it just says: jake 3a: she worked on it for an hour last night
jake 3a: kept starting over because she wanted to get your hair right
You stare at that message for a long time. you: tell her I love it
jake 3a: she’s going to lose her mind. also she asked if you want to come to the park with us Saturday
Three dots. Then: jake 3a: I want that too, for what it’s worth. If you’re free.
You look at the drawing on your fridge. Yellow-haired you, standing in a row with Mia and Daddy and Gerald and Mr. Bunny like you’ve always been there. you: I’m free Saturday
Saturday at the park is easy in a way that surprises you. You’d half expected it to be awkward — the three of you, still essentially strangers, trying to fill silence in an open space. But Mia eliminates the possibility of silence entirely. She has opinions about the swings (good), the slide (excellent, requires multiple repetitions), and the ducks by the small pond at the park’s edge (deeply suspicious, do not approach).
“They’re just ducks,” Jake tells her.
“They’re watching,” she says.
“They’re not watching.”
“Daddy.” She gives him a very patient look. “They are watching.”
Jake looks at you. You shrug. “They do look pretty focused,” you offer.
He points at you. “Don’t encourage her.”
Mia takes your hand and pulls you toward the swings, away from the ducks and away from Jake’s protests, and you go because she’s three and determined and her hand is in yours and you’ve decided that’s reason enough for basically anything at this point.
You push her on the swings while Jake sits on the bench nearby, and you watch him watching the two of you. He has his elbows on his knees and his face is open in a way you’re starting to learn is rare for him — in a crowd or with strangers he goes carefully neutral, pleasant but contained. But here, watching Mia go higher and higher and shriek with delight, he looks unguarded. Younger, somehow. Like something in him relaxes when it’s just the three of you. “Higher!” Mia demands.
“You’re already very high,” you tell her.
“Higher.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Please.”
“Nice try.”
She cackles. Pure delighted toddler sound, head thrown back. And you find yourself laughing too, pushing her at this very reasonable height, and when you look over at Jake he’s smiling at you with an expression you don’t quite have a name for yet. You look away first.
After the swings, Mia finds a stick, which becomes the most important object in the world for the next twenty minutes. She examines rocks. She makes Jake carry her on his shoulders. She falls asleep on the walk home with her cheek on his head and one fist clutching his jacket, completely unconscious, utterly trusting.
Jake walks carefully, holding her legs, talking to you in a low voice so he doesn’t wake her. “She doesn’t do this with many people,” he says.
“Fall asleep?”
“Trust people.” He adjusts his grip on her. “She’s friendly, obviously, she’ll talk to anyone. But she doesn’t— she doesn’t hold hands with people she doesn’t know. She doesn’t draw people.” He pauses. “She drew you in four days.”
You don’t know what to say to that. So you say, “she’s special.”
“Yeah.” His voice is quiet. “She really is.”
You walk in silence for a moment, the easy kind. “How long has it been?” you ask. “Just the two of you.”
He doesn’t tense the way you half expect him to. Just exhales, slow and steady. “Since she was four months old. Her mom left.” He says it flat, without bitterness, which somehow makes it worse. Like he’s had a long time to practice saying it that way. “Just— left. Packed a bag while I was at work. By the time I got home it was just us.”
“Jake—”
“It’s fine now.” He glances at you sideways. “It wasn’t, for a long time. But it’s fine now. It’s good, actually. It’s really good.” He looks up at Mia’s sleeping face. “She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I didn’t know it was possible to love someone this much.”
You look at him. At the way he holds her. At the careful tenderness of it. “She knows,” you say softly. He looks at you. “That she’s loved like that. You can tell.” You hold his gaze. “She knows.”
Something moves through his expression. Quick and unguarded and gone before you can name it. “Thanks,” he says quietly.
You walk the rest of the way home in comfortable silence, Mia asleep above you, the afternoon sun going golden through the trees lining the street. It is, you think, a very good Saturday.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
It becomes a routine without either of you deciding it should. Wednesday mornings, Jake knocks with the hairbrush. You do Mia’s hair while she holds Gerald and narrates her thoughts about the day ahead. Jake makes coffee in your kitchen like he knows where everything is, which after three weeks he does.
Saturdays are the park, or the farmers market two streets over, or just the three of you on one of your balconies eating whatever Jake has cooked because it turns out that while he cannot bake to save his life he is an genuinely excellent cook and he seems to enjoy having someone to cook for.
Evenings sometimes, when Mia’s in bed and Jake knocks quietly and you sit on his couch and watch something and talk about nothing in particular until one of you falls asleep.
It is domestic and soft and easy. It is also, you are increasingly aware, becoming something that would hurt to lose.
Mia calls you her Y/N now. Not just Y/N. Her Y/N, possessive and certain, the way she says her daddy and her Mr. Bunny and her Gerald. You are hers in her taxonomy of the world and the certainty of it does something to your chest every single time.
She tells the woman at the bakery you buy her the jam scroll she likes every Saturday. She tells a child at the park. She tells Mrs. Kim from 1A who coos and looks between you and Jake with an expression that makes Jake find something fascinating to look at on the middle distance.
You’re folding laundry in your apartment on a Thursday evening, three weeks in, when Jake knocks. You open the door. He’s holding two containers of leftover pasta, still warm. He holds one out. “Made too much,” he says.
You take it. Step back to let him in. This is how it goes now. “Mia asleep?” you ask.
“Out cold. She had daycare and then apparently spent an hour reorganizing her stuffed animals by color.” He sits on your couch. “It took everything she had.”
You sit beside him, open the pasta. It’s good — it’s always good. “Did the reorganization meet her standards?”
“She made me come and approve it before bed.” He pauses. “Mr. Bunny is in the orange section even though he’s gray.”
“He has warm undertones,” you say seriously.
Jake looks at you. Starts laughing. Not the polite laugh of someone being friendly but the real one, the one that takes over his whole face, and you’ve been cataloguing that laugh for weeks now, the way it comes out surprised sometimes like he forgot he was allowed to do it.
You’re laughing too, both of you over toddler stuffed animal color theory at eight PM with pasta containers in your laps, and when the laughter settles it leaves something warm and quiet in its place.
Jake is looking at you. Not the quick sideways glances you’ve been trading for weeks. Really looking, steady and open, and you feel it the way you feel a change in weather. The pressure of it. The way the air shifts. “Y/N,” he says.
“Yeah?”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks down at his pasta container, turning it in his hands. “Nothing. Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
He looks at you again and this time he doesn’t look away. “I really like spending time with you.”
You hold his gaze. “I really like spending time with you too.”
“I haven’t—” He exhales. “I haven’t wanted to spend time with someone like this in a long time. Maybe ever. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
The honesty of it lands softly. No performance, no deflection. Just him, telling you the truth. “I don’t either,” you say. “But I don’t think I want to stop.”
He looks at you for a long moment. Then he leans in, slow and deliberate, giving you every opportunity to pull back. You don’t pull back.
His mouth finds yours, gentle at first, questioning, and then you lean into it and it stops being a question. It’s warm and unhurried and it tastes like the pasta and something underneath that is just him, and when you finally break apart you’re both quiet, foreheads almost touching.
“Okay,” he says softly.
“Okay,” you agree.
He pulls back just slightly. His expression is open and a little nervous and more serious than the moment requires, or maybe exactly as serious as it requires. “I need to say something,” he says.
“Okay.”
“If we—” He pauses, choosing his words. “Whatever this is. Whatever it becomes. Mia comes first. Always. That’s non negotiable for me. I need you to know that going in.”
You look at him. At the set of his jaw, the quiet certainty in his eyes. A man who has built his whole life around a three year old with lopsided pigtails and a stuffed rabbit and absolute confidence in the people she decides are hers. “Jake,” you say.
“Yeah.”
“I know.” You hold his gaze. “I love her. She’s— she put her hand on my face the first morning and I was gone. I was completely gone.” You shake your head a little. “I think I fell for her before I even fell for you.”
Something moves across his face. Deep and quiet and undone.“Yeah?” he says, and his voice is rough at the edges.
“Yeah.” He kisses you again. Softer this time. Like something has been settled, like the last lock has clicked open. His hand comes up to cup your jaw and you lean into it and outside the window the city is doing whatever cities do at eight o’clock on a Thursday and in here it is warm and quiet and it feels, very specifically, like the beginning of something.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
The first time Mia is at the babysitter’s overnight, it’s an accident.
Not the overnight part — that’s planned. Sandy, Mia’s regular babysitter three streets over, has been asking for weeks if she can have Mia for a sleepover because her own grandchildren are visiting and Mia and the youngest, a boy named Theo, have formed the specific intense friendship that only exists between toddlers who have decided they are best friends after forty five minutes together at a playground.
Jake agrees because Mia asks with her whole body, bouncing on her toes, and because Sandy has been his lifeline for two and a half years and he trusts her completely. What’s accidental is what happens after.
He drops Mia off at four on a Friday afternoon. You’re not there — you have a late class — but when you get home at six thirty and knock on 3A because it’s become reflex, Jake opens the door and the apartment is quiet in a way it never is.
You’ve been in this apartment dozens of times now. You know its sounds. The particular creak of the second floorboard in the hall. The way the kitchen tap needs an extra turn to stop dripping. The constant ambient noise of Mia — her commentary, her singing, her negotiations with various stuffed animals about bedtime.
The silence is enormous. “Weird, right?” Jake says, reading your face.
“Really weird.” You step inside. “How long has she been gone?”
“Two hours.” He closes the door. “I’ve cleaned the whole apartment and reorganized the pantry and I don’t know what to do with myself.”
You look at the pantry, which is indeed immaculate. You look at Jake, who is in dark jeans and a simple white t-shirt and looks simultaneously very attractive and genuinely a little lost. “Have you eaten?” you ask.
“No.”
“Cook me something.”
Something in him settles. He moves into the kitchen, and you sit on the counter the way you’ve started doing, and he makes pasta — different from the other night, something with lemon and herbs — and you open the wine you brought from your apartment and it is easy, it is so easy, the way everything with him has become easy without you noticing it happening.
You eat at his kitchen table. You talk about your classes and his current project — branding for a new café opening in the city — and the book you’ve both apparently been meaning to read for months and never have. You talk about Mia, because you always talk about Mia, about the things she’s said recently that have floored you both. “She told me yesterday,” Jake says, “that she wants to be a paleontologist.”
“She’s three.”
“I know. I asked her what a paleontologist was and she said ‘a person who finds old bones’ and I have no idea where she learned that word.”
“That’s— that’s genuinely impressive.”
“She then said she also wants to be a cat.” He takes a sip of wine. “So. Range.” You’re laughing, and he’s laughing, and the kitchen is warm and the wine is good and at some point the laughter fades and you’re just looking at each other in the quiet.
It’s been two weeks since the kiss on your couch. Two weeks of nothing changing and everything changing — the same routine, the same easy rhythm, but with this new current running underneath it. His hand finding yours sometimes. The way he says goodbye now, at the door, that takes longer than it used to. The awareness of him that hums in your chest constantly, warm and insistent.
You haven’t had a night without Mia before. You’re both aware of it. “Y/N,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Can I—” He stops. Starts again. His jaw works slightly, that tell you’ve learned. “I’ve been thinking about this. About us. And I want to— I want to do this properly. Take you on an actual date, not just—” He gestures at the table, the apartment, the comfortable domesticity of it. “Not just this. You deserve—”
“Jake.” You set down your glass. “I like this.”
“I know, but—”
“I mean I really like this.” You hold his gaze. “I don’t need a restaurant. I don’t need— I just want you. This. Whatever this is.” He looks at you for a long moment.
Then he pushes back from the table and crosses to you and kisses you like he’s been thinking about it all evening, one hand cupping your jaw, the other finding your waist. You slide off the counter and into him and he makes a low sound against your mouth that does something devastating to your concentration. “Stay tonight,” he says against your lips.
“Yeah,” you breathe. “Okay.”
You end up on his bed.
It happens slowly, the way things happen when there’s no rush, when the whole night stretches ahead and neither of you is going anywhere. He takes his time, unhurried and thorough, like he wants to learn you. Like you’re something worth learning.
He lays you back against his pillows and looks at you for a moment, just looks, and something about being seen like that — careful and wanting and completely focused — makes heat pool low in your stomach before he’s even touched you. “Hi,” he says softly.
“Hi,” you say back.
He leans down and kisses you again, and it’s different from the doorway kisses and the couch kisses. Deeper. More deliberate. His hand slides up your side, pushing your shirt up, warm palm against your skin, and you shiver.“Cold?” he murmurs.
“Opposite.” He smiles against your mouth. Keeps moving, finding the hem of your shirt, and you lift your arms and let him pull it off. He sits back to look at you, and his expression is so openly appreciative, so uncomplicated in its wanting, that you feel heat rise to your face.
“Don’t,” he says quietly.
“Don’t what?”
“Look away.” His thumb traces your collarbone. “I want to look at you.” You keep his gaze. He keeps his.
He gets rid of his own shirt and you run your hands up his chest, his stomach, the way you’ve been wanting to since— longer than you’ll admit. He’s warm and solid and he watches your face as you touch him like your expression is telling him something important.
“What?” you ask.
“Nothing.” He catches your hands, pins them gently above your head, leans down to press his mouth to your jaw. Your neck. The soft skin below your ear. “Just thinking about how long I’ve been wanting this.”
“How long?”
He mouths at your pulse point and you gasp, arching up. “Longer than I should admit,” he murmurs. “Probably since the morning with Mia. You opened the door half asleep with terrible hair and you crouched down and talked to her like she was a real person and I thought—” He lifts his head to look at you. “I thought I was in serious trouble.”
“Your daughter was upside down under your arm,” you manage.
“I know. Terrible timing.” He releases your wrists, hands moving to the button of your jeans. “Is this okay?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
He undresses you slowly, pressing his mouth to each new piece of skin like punctuation. The inside of your wrist. Your hip. The soft skin of your inner thigh that makes you grip the sheets and breathe out his name. He looks up at you from there, chin resting on your thigh, expression somewhere between fond and wrecked. “Jake—”
“I’ve got you,” he says quietly. “Okay? I’ve got you.” And then his mouth is on you and your head falls back and you stop being able to think in complete sentences.
He takes his time the way he does everything — with complete attention, reading every sound you make, every shift of your hips, adjusting until he finds exactly what makes you come apart. He slides one finger inside you and then two, curling them just right while his tongue works your clit in slow, devastating circles, and you fist your hand in his hair and try to remember how to breathe.
“Jake— fuck— I’m—”
He doesn’t speed up. Doesn’t change what he’s doing. Just keeps that perfect steady rhythm like he has all the time in the world, like getting you there is the only thing on his agenda, and you come with your thighs clamped around his head and his name on your lips and it crashes through you in waves that don’t seem to stop.
He works you through every second of it, only easing off when you tug at his hair, oversensitive and shaking.
He moves up your body, pressing a kiss to your stomach, your sternum, your mouth. You can taste yourself on him and somehow that makes heat flare through you all over again. “Hi,” he says again, soft and amused.
“You,” you manage, “are very good at that.”
“Yeah?” He looks pleased.
“Don’t get smug about it.”
“I’m not smug.” He is a little smug. You find you don’t mind. “You okay?”
“More than okay.” You reach up, pull him down to kiss him properly, deep and unhurried. “Your turn.”
You get his jeans off, and his boxers, and you wrap your hand around him and he hisses through his teeth, hips jerking slightly.“Sorry—”
“Don’t apologize,” you tell him. You stroke him slowly, learning the weight of him, and he drops his forehead to yours and just breathes. “Tell me what you like.”
“That,” he says roughly. “Exactly that. Just—” He covers your hand with his, adjusts the pressure slightly. “Yeah. Like that.”
You watch his face — the way his jaw goes tight, the way his eyes flutter. He’s trying to stay composed and not quite managing it and you find that incredibly satisfying. “Y/N.” His voice has gone rough. “I want— can I—”
“Yes,” you say. “Please.”
He reaches into his nightstand drawer. You take the condom from him and roll it on yourself, slowly, which makes him close his eyes and exhale hard through his nose.“You’re going to kill me,” he says.
“You’ll be fine.”
He settles between your thighs and you feel him there, pressing in, and you both go still for a moment. He pushes forward, slow and careful, watching your face, and the stretch of him makes you exhale hard, fingers pressing into his shoulders. He stops halfway, checking. “Good?” he asks.
“So good.” You shift your hips, urging him on. “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop. He seats himself fully and you both breathe through it, foreheads together, and then he starts to move and everything else falls away.
He fucks you slowly at first, deep and thorough, finding the angle that makes you gasp and then staying with it. His hand slides between your bodies, thumb finding your clit, and you make a sound that you’d be embarrassed about in any other context.“There?” he asks.
“There,” you confirm breathlessly.
He keeps going. Steady and focused and impossibly good, hitting that spot inside you on every stroke while his thumb works you in tight circles, and you can already feel it building again, embarrassingly fast. “Jake— fuck— already—”
“Let go,” he says against your temple. “I want to feel you.”
You come clenching around him, and he groans deep in his chest, the rhythm stuttering, and you feel him follow you over with your name on his lips, buried deep, shaking.
Afterward you lie tangled together in the quiet. He traces absent patterns on your arm. You listen to his heartbeat slow. “Hey,” he says eventually.
“Hey.”
“That was—”
“Yeah.” You tilt your head up. “It really was.” He presses a kiss to your hair. You feel him smile against it.
Outside, the city is doing its Friday night thing, indifferent and ongoing. In here the lamp is warm and the sheets are soft and Jake’s heartbeat is steady under your cheek and you think about the drawing on your fridge and the hand on your cheek and Mr. Bunny in the freezer and all the ordinary extraordinary things that have built this without you quite realizing. “Stay,” he says.
“I’m already here.”
“I mean—” He tightens his arm around you. “Stay. Not just tonight.”
You’re quiet for a moment. “You’re going to have to define that.”
“I know.” His thumb moves slow on your arm. “I’m working up to it.”
“Okay.” You settle back against him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Mia comes home at eleven the next morning. You’re still there.
You’re in Jake’s kitchen making coffee, wearing his hoodie and your underwear, when the front door opens and Sandy’s voice floats through — “here we are, my love, home sweet home” — and small feet thunder down the hall.
Mia appears in the kitchen doorway. She takes in the scene. You, in her daddy’s hoodie. The two coffee cups. The general evidence of your presence. Her face does something complicated and then completely simple. “My Y/N,” she says, delighted, and launches herself at your legs.
You crouch down and catch her, and she wraps around you like a koala, warm and sleep-soft and smelling like Sandy’s house, and you hold her and look up at Jake in the doorway and he’s looking at the two of you with that expression again. The one that’s bigger than his face can hold.
“Hi baby,” you say into Mia’s hair. “How was Theo’s?”
“We found a worm,” she says. “His name is Dave.”
“Did you bring Dave home?”
“Sandy said no.” A pause. “I think that was wrong.”
“Dave is probably very happy in Sandy’s garden.”
She considers this. “Okay.” Then, muffled against your shoulder: “Are you staying for breakfast?”
You look at Jake. He holds your gaze, steady and warm. “Yeah,” you say. “I’m staying for breakfast.”
Mia pulls back, satisfied. “Daddy makes good eggs.”
“I know he does.”
“You can sit next to me.”
“I would love that.”
She takes your hand and tows you toward the table with the authority of someone who has decided how this morning is going to go, and Jake moves to the stove, and outside the kitchen window the Saturday morning is doing its soft unhurried thing, and this— this is everything.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
The weeks that follow are the best of your life. You don’t say that out loud. It feels too large, too exposed. But it’s true in the quiet way that the truest things are — not dramatic, not announced, just sitting solidly in your chest every time you’re aware of it.
The three of you fall into a rhythm so natural it’s almost hard to remember the before. Jake knocks on your door with the hairbrush and leaves with coffee. You come to theirs for dinner more nights than not. Mia insists on showing you everything — every drawing, every discovery, every development in the ongoing organization of her stuffed animal collection.
The farmers market becomes yours. Every Saturday, the three of you. Mia on Jake’s shoulders, small hands wrapped in his hair, pointing imperiously at things she wants to examine. You buy her a sunflower from the flower stall in week two and she carries it home with both hands like it’s precious, and after that it becomes the thing — every week, a sunflower for Mia, who has decided they are her favorite and cannot be argued with on this point.
Jake watches you with her constantly. You catch him doing it — that soft unguarded look — and he doesn’t stop when you catch him, just holds your gaze until you look away first, which you always do because the directness of it does something to your chest that you haven’t found words for yet.
Mia tells her daycare teacher about you. You know this because Jake texts you a screenshot of a drawing she brought home — the same configuration as before, Mia Daddy Gerald Mr Bunny Y/N, but this time you and Jake are holding hands.
jake 3a: her teacher asked who the people were, she said ‘that’s my daddy and my Y/N they’re in love’
You stare at the message. you: she’s three
jake 3a: three and apparently very perceptive
you: what did you tell the teacher
jake 3a: I said she wasn’t wrong
You put your phone face down on the desk and press both hands over your face and sit there for a full minute. Then you pick it up. you: jake
jake 3a: yeah?
you: are you in love with me
A pause. Longer than usual. Your heart does something complicated in the silence. jake 3a: I’ve been trying to find the right moment to say it properly not over text but yes, very much yes. I have been for a while
jake 3a: is that okay?
You read it three times. you: yes, it’s very okay. also I love you too
jake 3a: yeah?
you: yeah
jake 3a: okay, good. I’m going to say it properly tonight with Mia asleep so she doesn’t narrate it
you: she would absolutely narrate it
jake 3a: she would make it about herself somehow
you: she would bring Mr Bunny as a witness
jake 3a: he’d be very moved
You’re smiling so hard your face hurts, alone in your apartment at two in the afternoon, and you think about the morning you opened your door and found a small person sitting on your doormat in duck pajamas looking for her rabbit.
You think about tiny fingers in yours on the way back across the hall. You think about you’re nice delivered with complete certainty by someone who had known you for four minutes.
That night, after Mia is asleep, Jake says it properly. Standing in the kitchen, cup of tea going cold on the counter, both of you knowing it’s coming and neither of you in any rush because there’s no need to rush anymore.
“I love you,” he says. Simple and direct. “I love you and I love that she loves you and I don’t want to do any of this without you.”
“I love you too,” you say. “Both of you. The whole— all of it. Everything.”
He kisses you there in the kitchen and it tastes like coming home, which is a thing you didn’t know kitchens could taste like until now.
Later, in his bed, you press your face into his shoulder and listen to the particular quiet of the apartment at night — the creak of the building, the distant city, the soft sound of Mia breathing through the baby monitor on the nightstand. “Hey,” Jake says quietly. “You know what Mia asked me today?”
“What?”
“She asked if you were going to live with us.”
Your heart turns over. “What did you tell her?”
“I said I hoped so.” He tilts his head to look down at you. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah,” you say softly. “That’s okay.” He pulls you closer. You close your eyes. Outside, a siren somewhere. The building settling. Mia’s breathing through the monitor, slow and even and completely safe.
In here, you think. Everything is in here. You never see it coming. That’s the thing about a knock at the door when you’re happy. You don’t brace for it. You don’t clock the risk. You’re just— there. In the warm. Thinking about nothing that isn’t good.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
It’s a Sunday. Mia is at Sandy’s. Not overnight this time — just the afternoon, a regular arrangement while Jake works on a deadline.
Except Jake finished his deadline by noon and texted you and you came over and the afternoon became the best kind of afternoon, the kind that starts with coffee and talking and turns into something else entirely when Mia isn’t home, when there’s nowhere to be and no particular reason to leave the bedroom.
You’re in his bed. Late afternoon light coming gold through the curtains. His hand on your back tracing lazy patterns on your spine. You’re boneless and warm and half thinking about nothing and half thinking about whether Mia will want to show you the worm situation at Sandy’s when Jake picks her up.
“Sandy said she asked to bring Dave home three more times,” Jake says, like he’s reading your mind.
“Persistent.”
“She gets it from somewhere.” His hand moves up to the back of your neck, squeezing gently. “You hungry?” “Not yet.”
“Okay.” He presses a kiss to your shoulder. “We’ve got a couple of hours before I pick her up.” You hum. He pulls you closer. The afternoon light shifts.
Then someone knocks at the door. Jake’s hand stills on your back. “Expecting anyone?” you ask.
“No.” He frowns slightly. “Sandy would call.” He sits up, reaching for his t-shirt. “Probably Danny about the tap.”
You stretch out across the warm space he’s left, drowsy and content, listening to his footsteps down the hall. The sound of the door opening. Silence.
Not the brief silence of oh hi Danny it’s fine. A longer silence. A loaded one.
Then a voice you don’t recognize — a woman’s voice, careful and slightly uncertain — saying his name. “Jake.”
You go very still.
Jake says nothing for a long moment. When he speaks his voice is completely flat in a way you’ve never heard from him before. Like all the warmth has been removed surgically. “What are you doing here?”
“I just— I wanted to—” The woman’s voice. “Can I come in?”
“No. How did you find me?”
“Your mum. She didn’t— she thought I knew the address, I think. I don’t think she realized—”
“Why are you here.” Not a question. A demand.
A pause. “I want to see her,” the woman says. “I want to see Mia.”
The name lands in the apartment like something dropped. You sit up slowly, pulling the sheet around yourself, and the drowsy warmth of the afternoon has gone completely. In its place something cold and alert.
“You need to leave,” Jake says.
“I know I don’t have the right to—”
“You left,” Jake says, and his voice is still flat, but underneath the flatness there is something enormous being held very carefully in check. “She was four months old and you left. You’ve been gone for three years. You don’t get to knock on my door and say you want to see her like it’s a reasonable thing to say.”
“I know.” The woman’s voice cracks slightly. “I know that. I just— Jake, please, I just want—”
“To see her? Or to see me?” Silence. “Yeah,” Jake says quietly. “That’s what I thought.”
You get up. Quietly. You find your clothes in the soft afternoon mess of the room, pull them on, and you stand in the hallway outside his bedroom door and you look at the front door.
She’s standing in the doorway. Tall, dark-haired, pretty in a way that might have been beautiful before whatever she’s been carrying got into her face. She’s looking at Jake with an expression that mixes guilt and want in proportions you don’t have to be a genius to read.
She sees you. Her eyes move over you — your rumpled clothes, Jake’s apartment behind you, the obvious geography of the afternoon — and something hardens in her expression that you recognize. The specific hardening of someone who wanted to find a door open and has found it closed.
Jake turns. He sees you in the hallway. Something moves through his face — protective, apologetic, something else underneath that you don’t have time to read. “Y/N,” he says. “Hi.” You keep your voice steady. “I’ll— I can go.”
“You don’t have to—”
“It’s okay.” You look at him clearly, trying to say with your eyes what you can’t say in front of her: I’m fine. I’m not going far. Handle this. “I’ll be across the hall.”
He holds your gaze. His jaw is set, his eyes tight at the corners, but he gives you the smallest nod.
You pick up your keys from the bowl by the door — yours, in the bowl by Jake’s door, which happened so gradually you can’t remember it beginning — and you step past the woman in the doorway without looking at her.
You go into 3B. You close the door. You sit on your couch and you listen to the muffled sound of voices through the wall, and you hold yourself very carefully together, and you wait.
You sit on your couch for forty minutes. You know because you watch the clock. Not obsessively — you’re not counting seconds — but every time your eyes drift to it another chunk of time has passed and the voices through the wall have not stopped.
You make tea you don’t drink. You open your laptop and close it again. You pick up your phone three times and put it down without texting anyone because what would you even say.
My boyfriend’s ex showed up. The one who left when their daughter was four months old. She’s been there forty minutes and I’m sitting in my apartment trying not to think about the way she looked at him.
You put your phone face down on the cushion beside you.
The thing is — and you know this, you do — you trust Jake. That’s not the part that’s making your chest tight. You’ve watched him for months now. You know who he is. You know the way he holds his daughter and the way he laughs and the way he looks at you when he thinks you’re not watching. You know he means what he says.
The part that’s making your chest tight is her face when she saw you. Not guilt. Not embarrassment at the intrusion. Something proprietary. Something that said what are you doing in my space even though she is the one who left. Even though she forfeited any claim to this apartment and this life and this man the day she packed a bag while her four month old daughter slept.
You’re familiar with that expression. You’ve worn it yourself, briefly, watching other women talk to Jake at the market or at the park. You know what it means. She wants him back. Mia is the reason she knocked. But she wants Jake back.
You’re still sitting with that when your phone buzzes. jake 3a: she’s gone, can you come back?
You’re across the hall before you’ve fully decided to move. He opens the door before you knock. He looks terrible. Not falling apart — Jake doesn’t fall apart, you’ve figured that out, he goes very still and very controlled when things get bad, which is almost worse — but there are lines around his eyes that weren’t there this morning and his jaw is set in that way that means he’s been holding something in for a while.
He steps back to let you in. Closes the door. You turn to face him and he looks at you for a moment like he’s checking that you’re real, that you’re still here, that the afternoon hasn’t completely dismantled itself. “You okay?” you ask.
“I should be asking you that.”
“I’m fine. I was across the hall.” You hold his gaze. “Are you okay?”
He exhales. Long and slow. Runs a hand through his hair. “She wants to see Mia. She says she’s been in therapy. That she’s been— working through things. That she made a mistake and she knows that and she just wants—” He stops. His jaw works. “She was here for forty minutes and Mia’s name came up maybe three times.”
Your stomach tightens. “What did the rest of it cover?” He looks at you with an expression that answers the question without words. “Jake—”
“I told her no,” he says. “To all of it. I told her— Mia doesn’t know her. She’s three years old, she has no memory of her, and showing up out of nowhere and announcing herself as her mother would be— I’m not doing that to her. I’m not letting someone walk in and blow up her world because they’ve decided they’re ready now.”
“That’s right,” you say quietly.
“Is it?” He looks genuinely uncertain, and that more than anything tells you how rattled he is. Jake is not an uncertain man. He’s careful, he’s considered, but when he’s decided something he holds it steady. Watching him doubt himself is unfamiliar and uncomfortable. “Because part of me thinks— she’s her mother. Biologically. Does Mia have a right to know her? At some point? And am I—”
“Jake.” You cross to him. Put your hand on his chest, flat over his heart, and look up at him. “You are the most present, devoted, thoughtful parent I have ever seen. You have been both of them for three years. Whatever you decide about this, it comes from that. Not from fear, not from jealousy. From knowing your daughter.” He looks down at you. His hand comes up to cover yours. “She’s not here because of Mia,” you say gently. “You know that.”
“Yeah.” His voice is rough. “Yeah, I know that.”
“So you handle the Mia question in your own time, with proper advice, on your terms. Not because she showed up at your door on a Sunday afternoon.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then: “When did you get so—”
“Wise?”
“I was going to say steady.”
“Same thing.” You press your palm flatter against his chest. “You’re okay. Mia’s okay. This is just— a thing that happened on a Sunday. It doesn’t have to be more than that right now.”
He looks at you for a long moment. Something in his face shifts — the held-in thing loosening slightly, the lines around his eyes easing. “I really love you,” he says quietly.
“I know.” You reach up, press your hand briefly to his jaw. “I love you too. Go get your daughter.”
He comes back with Mia at five thirty. You’re in his kitchen making dinner — you’d found pasta and vegetables and half a block of good parmesan and it seemed like the right thing to do, to be here, to have something warm happening when they got home.
Mia comes through the door at full speed, as always, and finds you at the stove and absolutely loses her mind with delight. “My Y/N is here!”
“Hi, my Mia.” She barrels into your legs and you crouch down and catch her, and over her head you watch Jake close the front door and lean against it for just a second, eyes closed. Like he’s taking a breath. Like he’s counting the things still here and finding them all present.
Then he opens his eyes and sees you watching him and something in his face goes soft. “Dave update,” Mia says urgently against your neck.
“Tell me everything.”
“Sandy said he moved.” Her voice is full of significance. “She doesn’t know where he went.”
“Dave is living his life.”
“That’s what Sandy said.” She pulls back to look at you. “I think he went to find his family.”
“That’s a very hopeful interpretation.”
“Worms have families,” she tells you solemnly. “Probably.”
“Definitely,” you agree.
Jake has moved into the kitchen. He comes up behind you — Mia still in your arms — and presses a kiss to the side of your head. Quick and quiet. Gratitude and love in a single gesture. “Smells good,” he says.
“Twenty minutes.”
“Can I help?”
“You can set the table.”
“I want to help,” Mia announces.
“You can put the napkins out,” you tell her, and she accepts this responsibility with great seriousness, and Jake sets her down and gets the napkins and she carries them to the table one at a time with both hands like they’re fragile, and Jake catches your eye across the kitchen and mouths thank you and you shake your head slightly because there’s nothing to thank you for.
You’re exactly where you want to be.
Later, after dinner, after Mia’s bath, after two bedtime stories and one negotiation about the structural integrity of a fort she wants to construct in the living room (tomorrow, baby, it’s bedtime), after small arms around your neck and a kiss pressed very seriously to your cheek and night my Y/N into the dark—
You and Jake sit on his couch in the quiet. He has his legs stretched out on the coffee table. You’re tucked into his side, his arm around you. The lamp is the only light. The apartment has the particular peace of a small child asleep in the next room. “She’s going to come back,” Jake says quietly.
“Probably.”
“I’m going to talk to a lawyer. Get clear on where things stand legally before she does.” His thumb moves on your arm. “She signed over custody voluntarily. I don’t think she has grounds for anything. But I want to know for certain.”
“That’s smart.”
“I don’t want Mia to know about this until I do. I don’t want her picking up on anything.”
“She won’t hear it from me.”
He turns his head to press a kiss to your hair. “I know.” You sit in the quiet for a moment. “She looked at you,” he says. “The way she looked at you when she saw you there.” His arm tightens slightly. “I need you to know that whatever she came here wanting, it was never going to— she left, Y/N. She made her choice. There’s nothing there.”
“I know that too.”
“I just—” He exhales. “I don’t want you to have any doubt. About this. About us.”
You lift your head to look at him. His face in the lamplight, tired and earnest and completely, simply honest. “I don’t,” you tell him. “Not even a little.”
He holds your gaze. “Good,” he says quietly. He kisses you softly, and you let yourself melt into it, and outside the window the night is doing its ordinary thing, indifferent and ongoing.
When you break apart you settle back against his shoulder. “Stay,” he says.
“Obviously,” you say. He pulls you closer.
In the next room, Mia sleeps, completely safe, completely loved, completely unaware that someone knocked on the door today and was turned away.
She’ll know, eventually. Jake will tell her, carefully, at the right time, in the right way. That’s the kind of father he is. But tonight she just sleeps. And you and Jake stay on the couch until you both drift off, warm and quiet and whole.
The lawyer’s name is Ms. Park and she is very thorough.
Jake comes back from the meeting on a Wednesday looking lighter than he has all week. He finds you in his kitchen — where you are most afternoons now, it’s become accepted fact — and he leans in the doorway and says:
“She has no legal standing. She relinquished custody voluntarily and completely. If she wants any kind of access she would have to apply through the courts and demonstrate sustained rehabilitation and it would be a long process with no guarantee.”
You set down the mug you’re washing. “Okay.”
“She came here once and I turned her away and she hasn’t come back.” He exhales. “I don’t think she’s going to pursue it. I think she came here for me and when that didn’t work—”
“She has no reason to stay.” You cross the kitchen to him. Put your hands on his chest. “How do you feel?”
He thinks about it genuinely, the way he does. “Relieved,” he says. “And— sad, a little. That it’s this way. That Mia doesn’t have—” He stops.
“She has you,” you say. “She has Sandy and Mrs. Kim and the daycare teachers who love her and Theo the worm friend and—” You meet his eyes. “She has me. For as long as you’ll both have me.”
Something moves through his face. “Forever, then,” he says simply.
Your heart turns over. “Yeah,” you say softly. “Forever works.”
He kisses you there in the kitchen and it tastes like relief and sunlight and something settled and permanent. From the doorway comes a small voice. “Are you kissing again?”
You break apart to find Mia standing in the hallway in her socks, Mr. Bunny under her arm, regarding you both with the patient exhaustion of someone who has seen this many times and has opinions. “Sorry,” Jake says, not sounding sorry at all.
“It’s fine,” Mia says, generous. “You can kiss. But after can we do the fort?”
“We can do the fort,” you confirm. She nods, satisfied. Turns and toddles back down the hall.
Jake looks at you. You look at Jake.“The fort,” he says. You nod in agreement and follow him and your daughter down the hall.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
Three months later, Mia stops calling you my Y/N. She starts calling you mama.
It happens on a Tuesday. Not a special Tuesday. Not a significant one. Just an ordinary Tuesday in February where the sky is doing that flat grey thing it does in late summer when the heat hasn’t broken yet and everything feels slightly sticky and slow.
You’re doing her hair. The Wednesday morning routine has migrated — it’s every morning now, most mornings, because somewhere between October and February the question of which apartment are you sleeping in stopped being a real question. You’re here. You live here, functionally, in every way that matters except the technical one. Your toothbrush is here. A drawer is yours. Gerald the succulent has been relocated to the kitchen windowsill where he gets better light and Mia waters him every second day with great ceremony.
Jake is in the kitchen. Coffee is happening. Mia is between your knees on the couch, holding Mr. Bunny, and you’re doing two neat braids because she has decided braids are her preference this week and you’ve been practicing. “Tighter,” she instructs.
“If I go tighter it’ll pull.”
“I want tight braids.”
“You want braids that feel comfortable and also look good.”
She considers this negotiation. “Okay,” she concedes.
You keep going. She hums something to herself, swinging her feet, and you work through the second braid, and it’s quiet in the good way, the way that only exists when everyone in a space is completely comfortable. “Mama,” Mia says.
“Hmm?” You tie off the braid.
“Can I wear the yellow dress today?”
You’re reaching for the second hair tie when it lands.
Mama.
She said it like it was nothing. Like it was the most natural word in the world. Like she’s been saying it her whole life, which — you realize, with your heart doing something enormous and unsteady in your chest — maybe in her head she has been.
“Yeah,” you manage, and your voice comes out almost normal. “Yeah, baby, we can find the yellow dress.”
She scrambles off the couch and heads to her room, completely unbothered, Mr. Bunny trailing from one hand. You sit there. In the kitchen, the coffee maker finishes its cycle.
Jake appears in the doorway with two mugs, takes one look at your face, and stops. “What happened? Are you okay? What—”
“She called me mama,” you say.
The mugs go onto the coffee table. Jake sits beside you and looks at you with an expression that is doing the same enormous unsteady thing yours probably is. “Just now?”
“Just now.” Your voice is not quite steady. “She asked if she could wear the yellow dress and she called me mama and then she just— walked off. Like it was nothing.”
“Y/N—”
“I’m not upset.” You turn to him, urgent, needing him to understand. “I’m not— I’m not upset, Jake, I just—” You press a hand to your chest. “I don’t know what to do with this.”
He looks at you for a long moment. Then he takes your face in both hands, careful and deliberate, and presses his forehead to yours. “I do,” he says quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He pulls back just enough to look at you. “You say yes. That’s what you do. You just— say yes.”
From down the hall: “Found it!” A pause. “Mama, can you do the buttons?”
You close your eyes. “Okay,” you breathe. Yeah.” You open your eyes. Look at him. “Yeah. Okay.”
He kisses you, quick and soft, and then you get up and go down the hall to do the buttons on a yellow dress, and Jake stands in the living room doorway watching and the expression on his face is the most complete thing you’ve ever seen on a human being.
That night, after Mia is asleep, Jake asks you to move in. Not impulsively. Not as a reaction to the morning. You can tell he’s been thinking about it for a while — there’s a particular quality to his stillness when he’s been working up to something, and you’ve learned it the way you’ve learned all of him, gradually and permanently.
You’re on the couch. Late. The lamp on, the city quiet outside. His hand in yours. “Move in,” he says. You look at him. “Properly,” he says. “Not the drawer and the toothbrush. All of it. Gerald and everything.”
“Gerald’s already here.”
“I know.” The corner of his mouth moves. “Consider it a trial run.”
You look at your joined hands. At the apartment that has been yours in every meaningful sense for months. At the hallway where Mia is sleeping with Mr. Bunny and her color-organized stuffed animals and absolute certainty that you will be here in the morning. “Yeah,” you say.
“Yeah?”
“Obviously yeah, Jake.” You lean over and kiss him. “Obviously.”
He pulls you in and holds you there, and you feel him exhale slowly against your hair. “She’s going to lose her mind,” he says.
“She’s going to tell Gerald first.”
“She’s going to tell Gerald, then Mrs. Kim, then Sandy, then everyone at daycare.”
“In that order.”
“In that exact order.”
You’re both laughing, quiet so you don’t wake her, and it settles into something warm and certain. “Hey,” Jake says. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” You press your face into his shoulder. “Both of you. The whole thing.”
“The whole thing loves you back,” he says simply.
You tell Mia in the morning. Jake does it, at breakfast, with the careful measured approach of a man who has learned that toddlers receive important news better when they’re eating something. “Hey Mia. You know how Y/N stays here a lot?”
Mia looks up from her toast. Looks at you. Looks back at Jake. “Yes.”
“How would you feel if she stayed here all the time? Like, lived here. With us.”
Mia blinks. Puts down her toast. Looks at you with enormous serious eyes. “Like forever?” she asks.
“Like forever,” Jake confirms.
She stares at you for a long moment with the focused intensity of someone making a very important assessment.
Then she gets down from her chair, crosses to you, climbs into your lap uninvited and completely certain of her welcome, and wraps both arms around your neck. “Okay,” she says into your shoulder. “You can live here.”
“Thank you,” you manage, arms tight around her.
“Gerald will be happy,” she adds.
“He really will.”
She pulls back. Looks at your face. Puts her small hand on your cheek exactly the way she did on the very first morning, in the hallway, four months ago when she was looking for her rabbit. “Don’t cry,” she says kindly. “It’s good news.”
“I know.” You laugh, wet at the edges. “Happy tears.”
“Oh.” She considers this. “Okay.” Then, satisfied, she climbs back down, retrieves her toast, and resumes breakfast.
Jake is looking at you over her head with an expression that could power something. “Told you,” he mouths. You shake your head, still smiling, still blinking hard.
The whole thing loves you back. Yeah. Yeah it really does.
The move takes a weekend. It’s not a big move — your apartment was small and you’ve been migrating things gradually for months without meaning to — but there’s something significant about doing it officially. Carrying boxes across the hall. Hanging your clothes properly in the wardrobe. Arranging your books on the shelves beside Jake’s.
Mia supervises. She is a very involved supervisor, offering opinions on where everything should go and occasionally redirecting items she feels would be better placed in her room. You negotiate firmly on the throw blanket. You surrender the small lamp without a fight because she’s put it next to Mr. Bunny and it does look good there, objectively.
By Sunday evening the apartment is a comfortable chaos of rearrangement and you’re all sitting on the living room floor eating pizza from the box because no one has the energy to locate the table under the moving debris.
Mia is in your lap. Jake is beside you, shoulder to shoulder, pizza slice in hand, looking around the apartment that has shifted and expanded and settled into something new. “Looks different,” he says.
“Good different?”
He looks at you. “Yeah. Really good different.”
Mia tilts her head back to look up at you from your lap. “Can we build the fort now?”
“We live in a fort,” you tell her, gesturing at the surrounding box landscape.
Her eyes go wide. She looks around. Looks back at you. “We live in a fort,” she breathes.
“We live in a fort,” Jake confirms solemnly. She is overcome.
You and Jake look at each other over her head, laughing, and it is — this moment exactly, pizza and boxes and a delighted three year old and the lamp in the wrong place and Gerald on the windowsill — it is everything. Absolutely everything.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
A year later
The morning of the wedding, Mia wakes up at five forty-three AM. You know this because she comes and stands beside the bed and breathes on your face until you open your eyes. “It’s today,” she whispers.
“It is,” you confirm.
“I’m the flower girl.”
“You are.”
She absorbs this with great seriousness. Then: “I need to practice.”
“Mia, it’s not even six—”
“I need to practice.”
Jake makes a sound beside you that is him absolutely not laughing. You elbow him. “Okay,” you say. “But quietly. So we don’t wake the neighbors.”
She nods, solemn and focused, and turns and walks very slowly back down the hallway, scattering invisible petals with great ceremony, narrating under her breath — and then I walk here, and then here, and then I find mama—
You lie there in the early morning grey and stare at the ceiling and think about the word mama the way you have thought about it every day for the past year and a half. The way it still does something enormous to your chest. The way you don’t think it will ever stop.
Jake rolls toward you. Presses his face into your neck. “Morning,” he murmurs.
“Your daughter is practicing flower girl technique in the hallway.”
“She’s been planning this since we told her.” His arm comes around you. “She asked Sandy if she could practice at her house. She practiced at daycare. She made Theo be the groom so she could practice walking toward someone.”
“She’s extremely prepared.”
“She’s extremely her.” He presses a kiss to your jaw. “How are you feeling?”
“Good.” You turn to face him. His face in the early light, sleep-soft and certain and completely, permanently yours. “Really good. You?”
“Best day of my life,” he says simply. “After the day she was born. And the day you moved in. And the day you said yes when I asked.” He pauses. “Top five, at minimum.”
“That’s very good company.”
“You’re very good company.” He kisses you properly, slow and warm, and from the hallway comes the sound of small feet completing another practice lap.
“…and then I find mama, and she’s the prettiest—” You pull back from Jake, blinking hard. He looks at you. Reaches up and brushes his thumb under your eye, gentle.
“She’s not wrong,” he says.
“It’s five forty-five in the morning, I look terrible—”
“You look like the person I’m marrying today.” He holds your gaze. “Which means you look perfect.” You press your face into his shoulder and hold on for a moment.
From the hallway: “Okay I’m ready. Can we have breakfast now?”
Sandy comes at nine to take Mia for hair and getting dressed — a situation Mia has been anticipating with the focused excitement of someone who has been told she gets curls and a flower in her hair and has not stopped thinking about it since.
She submits to the process with remarkable patience, sitting very still while Sandy works, only turning her head twice to update you on developments. “It’s getting curlier,” she reports.
“I can see that.”
“Do I look like a princess?”
“You look exactly like a princess.” She nods, satisfied, and returns to stillness.
When it’s done she stands in front of the mirror in her small white dress — simple, with a yellow sash, because she requested yellow and you would move mountains before you’d say no to that — and looks at herself for a long, serious moment.“I look nice,” she concludes.
“You look incredible,” Sandy says.
“Yeah.” She turns to look at you. Her eyes go wide. “Mama. You look so pretty.”
You’re in your dress — simple, exactly what you wanted, nothing complicated — and your hair is done and you’re holding your bouquet and you’re trying very hard not to cry and failing slightly.“So do you,” you tell her.
She crosses to you. Reaches up and takes your hand, the way she did in a hallway a long time ago, completely certain of her welcome.“Don’t be nervous,” she tells you.
“I’m not nervous.”
“Good.” She squeezes your fingers. “Daddy loves you the most.”
“He loves you the most.”
She considers this with genuine fairness. “He loves us the same,” she decides. “Equal. Like a tie.”
“That’s exactly right.”
She nods. Pats your hand once, settling the matter. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go get married.”
The venue is small and warm and full of people who love you.
Mrs. Kim is in the third row in her best jacket, already dabbing her eyes. Sandy is beside her. Jake’s parents flew in from Brisbane — his mother cried when she met you and his father shook your hand for a very long time and said thank you for making them happy and you’d had to excuse yourself to the bathroom for five minutes after that.
Your own family. Your friends. The people who have been the walls of your life. And at the end of the aisle, Jake.
In a dark suit, hands clasped in front of him, hair the way you like it. He’s talking quietly to the celebrant and then someone touches his arm and he looks up and sees Mia in the doorway.
His face does what it always does when he sees her. That open, completely unguarded thing. She waves at him. He waves back.
Then he sees you behind her and his face does something else entirely.
The music starts. Mia goes first. She has been told, approximately as many times as you can tell a four and a half year old anything, that flower girls walk slowly. Measured. Elegant. She lasts four steps.
Then she spots Jake at the end of the aisle and she goes — there is no other word for it — feral with excitement, sunflowers clutched in both fists, petals going in every direction except down, grinning so hard her whole face is the grin, half walking half skipping half something entirely her own.
“DADDY I FOUND HER” she announces at full volume to the entire assembled gathering. “I FOUND HER SHE’S HERE”
The room erupts. Not polite wedding laughter. Real laughter, the kind that comes from somewhere genuine, rippling through every row. Mrs. Kim is crying laughing. Sandy has her hand over her mouth. Jake’s mother is gripping his father’s arm.
Jake is crouching down to catch Mia as she reaches him, scooping her up, pressing a kiss to her chaotic curls, the flower in her hair somehow surviving the sprint. “Good job,” you hear him tell her.
“I practiced,” she says, very serious.
“I know you did, baby.” He sets her down. She takes her position with great dignity, as though the sprint did not happen, as though she has been standing here elegantly the entire time.
And then Jake looks up at you. You walk toward him. The room goes soft around the edges — not blurred, just quiet, the way things go when you’re paying attention to the only thing that matters. The faces on either side are warm and familiar and you see them without seeing them because you’re looking at Jake.
Jake, who opened his door on a panicked Tuesday morning and showed you his worst fear and his whole heart in the same thirty seconds.
Jake, who makes coffee before you ask and remembers every small thing and says what he means with a simplicity that still sometimes catches you off guard.
Jake, who watched you fall in love with his daughter before you fell in love with him and let it happen without trying to manage or protect or preempt it, because he trusted you, because he looked at you and knew.
You reach him. He takes your hand and holds it like he’s been holding it his whole life. “Hi,” he says quietly.
“Hi,” you say back.
Beside him, Mia has taken your other hand. She holds it with both of hers, feet planted, present and accounted for, witnessing this with the gravity it deserves.
The celebrant begins. The vows are Jake’s own words. You knew this. You wrote yours too, separately, privately, the way you’d agreed. But hearing them — in his voice, in this room, looking at his face — is different from knowing.
He talks about the morning Mia escaped into the hallway and how he stood in your doorway afterward watching you crouch down to his daughter’s level and felt something shift that he couldn’t name yet and didn’t try to.
He talks about Wednesday mornings with the hairbrush. About leftover pasta and late night texting and the drawing on the fridge.
He talks about the way you love Mia — not as a condition of loving him, not as an extension of it, but first, entirely and separately first, because that’s who you are.
She picked you, he says, before I had a chance to. And she has never once been wrong about anything important. Beside you, Mia straightens slightly at this. You feel her grip on your hand tighten.
I’m not a man who believed in easy, Jake says. I thought love was supposed to be something you work and worry at. And then you moved in across the hall and you were just — easy. Everything with you has just been easy. Not without difficulty. Not without fear. But easy the way breathing is easy. The way I can’t imagine not doing it. His voice has gone rough at the edges.
I love you. I loved you in October and I loved you in February and I love you today and I’m going to love you when Mia is grown and gone and it’s just us and I’m going to love you in every ordinary Tuesday that comes after this one because that’s where you live. In the ordinary Tuesdays. And I want every single one of them.
The room is very quiet. You are absolutely crying. You decided before today that you weren’t going to cry until after the vows at the earliest and you have failed completely. “Don’t cry,” Mia whispers, helpful. “It’s good news.”
Laughter moves through the room like a wave. Jake laughs too, wiping his eyes, and you laugh through yours, and it breaks the solemnity just enough, the way the best moments always do — serious and true and then suddenly full of light.
Your vows. You talk about duck pajamas and a stuffed rabbit and a small hand in yours in a hallway. You talk about a crayon drawing on a fridge and a child who put you in her family portrait before you knew you belonged there.
You talk about a man who carried his daughter on his shoulders through a farmers market and came home to make dinner and knocked on your door with leftover pasta and showed you what it looked like when someone decided that loving people well was the most important thing they could do.
You taught me that, you say. Both of you. You showed me what it looks like when love is a decision someone makes every single day without drama and without conditions. Mia does it for everyone she meets. You do it quietly and completely and I want to spend the rest of my life doing it back. You look at Jake.
I love you. I love our ordinary Tuesdays. I love Wednesday mornings and Saturday markets and bedtime stories and all the Gerald updates and every single version of this life we’ve built in an apartment across the hall from where I used to live alone. I love your daughter.
You look down at Mia. She is watching you with her whole face. Completely still, completely focused, taking this in with the seriousness it deserves.
She is the best thing, you say. She is the absolute best thing, and I promise her, today, in front of everyone who loves us, that I am here. I am not going anywhere. She is mine and I am hers and that is permanent and unconditional and nothing will ever change it.
Mia’s lip wobbles. Just slightly. You watch her decide, with great effort, not to cry, because she is a flower girl and flower girls are professionals and she has a reputation to maintain. She squeezes your hand instead. Very hard. You squeeze back.
I now pronounce you married.
Jake kisses you, and the room rises, and somewhere in the noise you hear Mia announce to no one in particular and everyone simultaneously:
“THAT’S MY MAMA NOW. THAT’S OFFICIALLY MY MAMA.”
And then, apparently satisfied that this has been adequately communicated, she inserts herself between the two of you and takes both your hands and holds on.
Jake looks at you over her head. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
The reception is everything. Mrs. Kim dances with Mia for forty-five minutes straight and neither of them stops. Sandy cries every time someone gives a speech. Jake’s father gives a toast that makes the whole room laugh and then immediately cry. Your own people hold you and tell you they knew, they always knew, from the moment you started talking about the little girl next door like she’d hung the moon.
Jake dances with Mia first — tradition, he’d decided, she gets the first dance — and you stand at the edge of the floor and watch her stand on his feet, both of them swaying to something slow, her head against his chest, his hand spanning her whole back.
You take a photo. You will look at that photo for the rest of your life.
Then he passes her off to his mother and comes to find you, hand extended, and you take it and let him pull you out onto the floor. “Hi wife,” he says, like he’s trying the word out.
“Hi husband.”
He smiles. Pulls you closer. “How’s it feel?”
“Same,” you say honestly. “Exactly the same. Just— more settled.”
“Yeah.” His hand moves on your back. “Like it’s been true for a while and now the paperwork caught up.”
“Exactly like that.”
You dance. The room moves around you, warm and full of people you love, and Mia is somewhere in it, probably telling someone about Dave the worm or Gerald or the structural integrity of forts, and it is — all of it, every piece — everything. All of it everything.
She falls asleep at nine fifteen. Mid-sentence, apparently — Jake’s mother told you later she was explaining the color organization system for the stuffed animals and then she simply stopped explaining and was asleep, curled in the chair with her flower crown half off and her shoes long since abandoned and the last of her sunflowers still in her hand.
Jake carries her out to the car at the end of the night, limp and certain and completely trusting the way only sleeping children are, and you tuck the seatbelt around her and push the flower crown gently back from her face. She doesn’t wake up.
She won’t remember being carried, won’t remember the drive home, won’t remember being tucked in. But in the morning she’ll wake up and come and stand at the side of your bed and breathe on your face until you open your eyes, and you’ll ask her how she slept and she’ll say good and you’ll ask if she had fun at the wedding and she’ll say yes I was the flower girl with the proprietary satisfaction of someone who performed their role excellently and knows it. And she’ll be right. She was, without any competition, the best part.
Later. Much later. His penthouse — your penthouse, it still catches you sometimes — quiet and dark except for the city light through the windows. Mia asleep down the hall. The flower crown on the kitchen counter. Your bouquet in a glass of water because you couldn’t throw it, it was too pretty.
Jake’s jacket over the chair. Your heels by the door. You and Jake on the couch the way you’ve been a hundred times before, his arm around you, your head on his shoulder, the easy comfortable weight of each other. “Hey,” he says quietly.
“Hey.”
“Mia told Theo’s mum today that she picked you.”
You lift your head. “What?”
“At the reception. Apparently she walked up to Theo’s mum completely unprompted and said—” He’s smiling. “She said I picked her first. Before Daddy even knew.”
You stare at him. “She’s four and a half,” you say.
“I know. She’s extremely perceptive,” Jake says. “Always has been.”
You think about a Tuesday morning and duck pajamas and the end of a hallway. The hand on your cheek. You’re nice. The absolute certainty of it. The way she gave you her fingers without hesitating like she already knew. “She did pick me first,” you say softly.
“Yeah.” Jake presses a kiss to your hair. “She really did.”
The city does its quiet nighttime thing outside the windows. Down the hall, Mia sleeps. You and Jake stay where you are, warm and settled, in the ordinary extraordinary life you built one Tuesday at a time.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
Three weeks later, on an ordinary Wednesday morning, Mia sits between your knees on the couch.
You’re doing her braids. Jake is in the kitchen. Coffee is happening. Gerald is on the windowsill. Mr. Bunny is in the orange section of the stuffed animal shelf. Everything exactly where it should be. “Mama,” Mia says.
“Hmm?”
“When I’m big can I be a flower girl again?”
“When you’re big you can be whatever you want.”
She considers this carefully. “I want to be a flower girl and a paleontologist and a cat.”
“All three?”
“On different days.”
“That seems manageable.” She nods, satisfied. Swings her feet.
From the kitchen, Jake: “Braids today?”
“Braids,” Mia confirms, with the authority of someone whose hair decisions are final. You finish the first one. Start the second. The morning does its ordinary thing around you.
Mia tilts her head back to look up at you, upside down, grinning. “I love you, mama.”
You smooth a hand over her hair. “I love you too, baby,” you say. “So much.” She rights herself. Goes back to swinging her feet.
Outside the window the morning is doing what mornings do, indifferent and ongoing and full of ordinary things.
In here it is warm. In here everyone is exactly where they are supposed to be. This is just the beginning. And it is everything.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
Hi lovelies! If you made it all the way to the end I hope you enjoyed. I’ve had a few people ask for a drabble or two based off this. if you want to see this click this and comment below your suggestions and what you want to see.
The rehearsal room always felt warmer when he was there.
Not because the heater worked better, or because the lights were softer—but because Yeosang existed in a way that made everything quieter. Even when the studio was full, even when laughter bounced off the walls and staff moved in and out with clipboards and caffeine, he had this strange ability to soften the edges of a space.
You noticed it the first time you met him properly.
He stood slightly behind the others then—shoulders relaxed, hands tucked loosely in front of him, gaze observant but not intrusive. Not shy exactly. Just… careful. Like he was constantly measuring how much of himself the world could safely hold.
And you were the opposite.
You walked in like you belonged everywhere you went.
“Hi,” you’d said, already halfway into the room, already shaking hands, already talking before anyone could second-guess you.
Someone later called you “fearless.”
Yeosang called you “bright.”
And somewhere between those two words, something quietly unbalanced began to form.
It started small.
A disagreement during production meetings.
Nothing dramatic—just the kind of industry friction that builds when ideas collide and no one wants to be the first to push too hard.
The director wanted a change in the choreography for a collaborative stage. Something that looked “cleaner,” “safer,” more marketable. You disagreed immediately.
“It loses the point,” you said, leaning forward in your chair. “The whole concept is supposed to feel raw. Controlled chaos. If you smooth it out, it becomes… nothing.”
A few people shifted uncomfortably.
Yeosang didn’t speak.
He rarely did in meetings like this unless directly addressed. But you noticed his eyes on you—focused, thoughtful, like he was absorbing the shape of your certainty.
The director sighed. “It’s not about art, it’s about broadcast standards.”
“That’s always what it becomes,” you replied. “And then everything starts looking the same.”
Silence.
A few staff members looked at each other.
Still, no one backed you up.
You didn’t seem bothered. You just sat back, folded your arms, and held your ground like it was the easiest thing in the world.
The meeting moved on without resolution.
Afterward, in the hallway, Yeosang caught up to you.
“You weren’t wrong,” he said quietly.
You glanced at him, surprised. “That’s rare. You usually stay neutral.”
A faint pause.
“I think…” he hesitated, like he was testing the weight of his own voice, “I think I agree with you. I just don’t always know how to say it.”
That made you slow down your steps.
“You don’t have to be loud to have a point,” you told him. “But sometimes you do have to speak anyway.”
He nodded once. Not defensive. Not offended. Just… listening.
You didn’t realize then that he was already storing your words somewhere important.
Like he did with everything you said.
The first time you saw him falter, it didn’t even look like failure.
It looked like hesitation.
You were in the hallway outside a filming set when a junior coordinator snapped at him—nothing extreme, just impatient frustration spilling over.
“You missed your cue again. We’re losing time because of you.”
Yeosang lowered his gaze immediately. “I’m sorry. I thought—”
“You thought wrong.”
It wasn’t fair. You knew that instantly.
His mistake wasn’t even fully his—it was a miscommunication, a timing issue, something that could’ve been solved in seconds without the tone.
But he just… accepted it.
Shoulders slightly drawn in.
Apology ready before defense.
You watched him nod again, quiet and contained, like shrinking himself was the safest option.
Something in your chest tightened.
You stepped forward before you could overthink it.
“Actually,” you said, voice steady but sharp enough to cut through the moment, “he didn’t miss the cue. The timing was changed last minute and no one told him.”
The coordinator blinked. “That’s not—”
“It is,” you interrupted calmly. “Check the rehearsal notes.”
A pause.
Someone did.
And of course—you were right.
The coordinator exhaled, frustrated but forced to pivot. “Fine. Let’s reset.”
They walked off.
The hallway emptied slightly.
Yeosang still hadn’t moved.
When you turned to him, he looked… caught somewhere between embarrassment and something softer.
“Thank you,” he said finally.
You shrugged. “You didn’t need to take that.”
A faint pause.
“I didn’t know how not to,” he admitted.
That line stayed with you longer than you expected.
After that, it became a pattern.
Not dramatic. Not obvious.
Just moments.
A comment dismissed too quickly.
A suggestion overlooked.
A tone that shouldn’t have been directed at him but was anyway.
And you—without even fully deciding to—kept stepping in.
Not because he asked.
Because he never did.
Because every time he hesitated, you remembered what it looked like when someone forgot they were allowed to take up space.
Yeosang started standing a little closer to you in group settings after that.
Not in a dependent way.
More like… anchoring.
Like your presence gave him a reference point.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, something changed in him.
Not louder.
Just steadier.
“You always do that,” he said one evening, when the studio was nearly empty.
You looked up from your notes. “Do what?”
“Speak first,” he replied.
You leaned back in your chair. “Someone has to.”
A small pause.
“That’s not what I mean,” he said softly.
You waited.
He sat across from you, hands resting loosely on his knees. His gaze was on the floor for a moment before lifting.
“I mean… you never seem afraid.”
That made you laugh once, short and honest.
“Oh, I’m afraid,” you said. “I just don’t let it drive.”
He seemed to process that.
As if it was a concept he hadn’t fully considered before.
“You make it look easy,” he said.
“It’s not,” you replied immediately. “I just don’t like the alternative.”
“I wish I could do that. Borrow some of that courage.”
Something about the way he said it—small, almost private—made you look at him more carefully.
Yeosang wasn’t weak. You never thought that.
He was… restrained. Cautious. Deeply self-aware in a way that sometimes turned inward too sharply.
“Why can’t you?” you asked.
He hesitated.
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to.”
The words landed heavier than expected.
You frowned slightly. “Allowed by who?”
“…myself, I guess.”
That answer made something in you soften.
“You don’t have to borrow it,” you told him after a moment. “You can build it.”
He looked at you then.
Really looked.
Like he was trying to understand how someone could sound so certain about something so internal.
“From where?” he asked.
You tilted your head.
“From every time you didn’t speak but wished you had.”
That went quiet between you.
It came to a head on a rainy afternoon.
Everything in the building felt slightly damp—the kind of weather that makes voices softer and tempers shorter.
You were leaving a meeting when you heard it.
Not loud. Not chaotic.
Just wrong.
A producer talking about him like he wasn’t there.
“He’s fine, but he’s not exactly assertive. We might need someone stronger for the next segment.”
A pause, then a laugh. “He’s kind of… delicate, you know?”
You stopped walking.
Yeosang was standing nearby.
He heard it too.
You saw it in the way his fingers curled slightly at his sides.
Not anger.
Containment.
Like he was swallowing something before it could become visible.
For a moment, he said nothing.
And then—
He nodded.
Just nodded.
Like agreeing with them was easier than disagreeing with reality.
Something in you snapped quieter than expected.
You stepped forward.
“That’s not true,” you said.
The producer turned. “Excuse me?”
You kept your voice calm. Controlled.
“He’s not delicate,” you said. “He’s careful. There’s a difference.”
The producer raised an eyebrow. “And what would you know?”
Yeosang looked at you then.
And for the first time, you saw something unfamiliar in his expression.
Not hesitation.
Expectation.
Like part of him was waiting for you to do what you always did.
Step in.
Fix it.
Speak for him.
You inhaled.
And then you stopped.
Not because you didn’t want to defend him.
But because something inside you shifted—just slightly.
This wasn’t yours alone to carry.
You turned your head slightly toward him instead.
“Do you want to respond?” you asked quietly.
The question landed in the space between you and him like a door opening.
He blinked.
Once.
Then again.
The producer scoffed lightly. “He doesn’t need to—”
“Yes,” you said firmly, without looking away from Yeosang.
“Do you?” you repeated, softer this time.
The hallway felt smaller suddenly.
Yeosang’s throat moved as he swallowed.
You could see it—everything he’d ever swallowed instead of speaking.
Every time he let silence decide for him.
Every time he let someone else define him because it was easier than correcting them.
His gaze flickered to the producer.
Then back to you.
You didn’t speak again.
You didn’t rescue him.
You just stayed there.
And something in him finally shifted.
Present. Unmoving. Believing.
“I’m not delicate,” he said.
His voice wasn’t loud.
But it didn’t shake.
The producer blinked, caught off guard.
Yeosang continued, slower but clearer now. “I just don’t speak unless I need to. That’s not the same thing.”
Silence.
The producer cleared their throat. “Right. Sure. Let’s move on.”
They walked away.
The hallway emptied again.
But Yeosang didn’t move.
Neither did you.
For a long moment, neither of you spoke.
Then he exhaled, almost like he’d been holding his breath for years.
“I couldn’t have said that,” he admitted.
You looked at him.
“Yes, you could have.”
“I didn’t believe you would stay if I did,” he said quietly.
That hit harder than anything else that day.
You stepped closer—not invading, just closing the distance slightly.
“Why wouldn’t I?” you asked.
He looked at you then, really looked.
And something unspoken flickered behind his eyes.
Because staying means I matter. Because if I matter, I can lose it.
But he didn’t say that.
Instead, he said something smaller.
“Because I’ve always been easier to overlook.”
Your voice softened. “Not to me.”
That did it.
Something cracked open.
After that day, Yeosang changed—but not in the way people usually expect.
He didn’t suddenly become loud.
He didn’t become confrontational.
He just… stopped defaulting to silence.
Sometimes he asked questions instead of accepting answers.
Sometimes he corrected things before they settled into place.
Sometimes he even disagreed.
And every time he did, he looked briefly—instinctively—toward you.
Not for permission.
But for grounding.
Like checking whether the world still made sense.
And you always met his gaze the same way:
Like it did.
The confession didn’t come in a dramatic moment.
No spotlight.
No grand speech.
Just the studio again, late at night, when everyone else had gone home and the city outside had turned into blurred lights against glass.
You were packing up your things when Yeosang spoke.
“I think I’ve been borrowing something from you.”
You paused. “Courage?”
A faint, almost shy smile. “Maybe.”
You turned toward him fully now.
He stepped closer, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly tense in a way that wasn’t fear anymore. It was anticipation.
“I used to think you were just… naturally like this,” he said. “But I think you’ve been giving it away.”
A soft exhale left you. “It’s not something you give. It’s something you choose.”
He nodded slowly.
“I’ve been choosing not to.”
“I don’t want to do that anymore.”
You watched him carefully.
This wasn’t the same Yeosang from months ago.
Something steadier stood where hesitation used to live.
“What do you want to do instead?” you asked.
His gaze lifted.
And this time, it didn’t drop.
“I want to stay when things are uncomfortable,” he said. “I want to speak even if I’m not perfect at it.”
Then, softer:
“And I think I want to stop pretending I don’t feel things I do.”
Your breath caught slightly at that.
The room felt warmer again—but differently now.
Not because he softened it.
Because he filled it.
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” he admitted.
No hesitation now.
Just truth.
You didn’t interrupt.
“I used to think it was just admiration,” he continued. “But it’s not.”
A step closer.
“I think I’ve been borrowing your courage… because I wanted to be someone who could stand next to you without shrinking.”
Your throat tightened slightly.
“And now?” you asked.
He exhaled.
“Now I think I don’t want to stand next to you like that.”
“I want to stand with you.”
You looked at him for a long moment.
“You already are.”
Something in his expression broke open—relief, maybe. Or recognition.
He smiled faintly.
“I still don’t always know how to say things properly,” he admitted.
You stepped closer then, just enough that the space between you stopped feeling like distance.
“You just did,” you said.
His voice dropped slightly.
“Can I keep trying anyway?”
Your answer came without hesitation.
“Yes.”
And for the first time, Yeosang didn’t look like someone borrowing courage.
He looked like someone who had finally decided it was his.
Your daughter had been talking about this concert for three straight months.
Not casually mentioning it. Not bringing it up once in a while.
Obsessed.
Every morning while you packed your makeup kit for work, she’d ask, “Today’s the Stray Kids concert?” even when the answer was obviously no. Every evening after preschool she’d proudly show you another drawing of the members—usually consisting of giant smiles, mismatched hair colors, and an alarming number of sparkles.
And somehow, despite being five years old, she had developed an especially fierce attachment to Changbin.
“Because he looks strong,” she had explained once very seriously while eating dinosaur-shaped nuggets. “But his eyes are nice.”
Honestly, fair enough.
So when the first Seoul concert finally arrived and your babysitter canceled at the last minute, your panic lasted all of seven minutes before your manager laughed over the phone and said, “Just bring her. The boys adore kids.”
You should have known that was going to become a problem.
Because now your daughter was backstage wearing enormous noise-canceling headphones, a tiny STAFF sticker stuck crookedly to her sweater, and clutching a handmade friendship bracelet like it was a state secret.
“Mama,” she whispered dramatically, tugging your sleeve as stage staff rushed around behind you. “Do not let it break.”
“I won’t.”
“It took me four whole cartoons to make.”
“That’s basically child labor.”
She ignored you entirely.
The backstage corridors buzzed with pre-show chaos—stylists darting past with curling irons, managers shouting timing updates, monitors blasting the live audience screaming from inside the venue. You were trying to finish touching up foundation palettes at the makeup station while keeping one eye on your daughter, who sat swinging her feet beneath the counter.
Then the dressing room door burst open.
“Yah, who stole my hoodie—”
Jisung stopped mid-sentence the second he spotted her.
“Oh my god.”
Your daughter froze like a deer caught in headlights.
Jisung pointed at her with complete betrayal in his voice. “Why is there a tiny person here?”
“She’s with me,” you said without looking up from your brushes.
“Hi,” your daughter whispered.
Jisung immediately melted.
“Oh no,” he said softly, clutching his chest. “She said hi politely. I’m done.”
Within thirty seconds, the rest of the members had somehow materialized.
You didn’t even see them enter.
One moment the room was calm, and the next your daughter was surrounded by eight fully grown idols crouched around her like curious cats.
Bang Chan waved enthusiastically. “You came!”
“She’s been counting down for months,” you told him.
“I knew I felt pressure.”
Felix gasped when he noticed the bracelet in her hands. “Wait, what’s that?”
Your daughter immediately straightened with pride.
“I made it.”
“For who?” Felix asked.
She looked directly at Changbin.
The room exploded.
Changbin blinked, stunned. “Me?”
“She said you’re her favorite,” you admitted, trying not to laugh.
“OH, I’M HER FAVORITE?” Changbin yelled, instantly insufferable.
“Sit down,” Minho said flatly. “You’re getting emotional already.”
“I’m NOT emotional.”
“You’re literally tearing up.”
“I HAVE EYEBALLS.”
Your daughter carefully climbed off the chair and waddled over to Changbin, holding the bracelet up with both hands like an offering to royalty.
It was… objectively terrible.
Different-sized beads. Backwards letters. One suspiciously sticky pink heart charm.
It was perfect.
Changbin accepted it like someone had handed him the moon.
“You made this for me?”
She nodded hard enough to nearly lose her headphones.
“It says Binnie,” she informed him proudly.
“It does,” he agreed immediately, despite the bracelet very clearly reading BIINNEE.
He slid it onto his wrist without hesitation.
“Oh, he’s never taking that off,” Seungmin muttered.
Seungmin wasn’t wrong.
Changbin stared at the bracelet with genuine devastation in his eyes.
“I’m framing this.”
“You can’t frame a bracelet,” Hyunjin said.
“Watch me.”
Your daughter giggled so hard she snorted.
That was it.
That was the final blow.
The members collectively adopted her on the spot.
The concert itself was chaos in the best possible way.
Your daughter watched the opening stage from backstage with huge eyes, tiny hands gripping the edge of your sleeve every time fireworks burst across the stage.
Every few minutes she’d yell, “THAT’S MY FAVORITE SONG!” even though she apparently believed every song was her favorite song.
The members kept sprinting backstage between sets covered in sweat and adrenaline, somehow still finding time to check on her.
Felix brought juice boxes.
Chan found snacks.
Hyunjin gave her a tiny doodle on a sticky note that she immediately declared museum-worthy.
And Changbin?
Changbin was completely gone.
Emotionally destroyed.
Every time he passed backstage he’d stop to show her he was still wearing the bracelet.
“Still got it,” he’d whisper seriously.
She’d beam at him like he personally invented happiness.
You were reapplying glitter near the end of the show when you noticed the venue had finally started catching up to your daughter.
Her blinking slowed.
Her head drooped forward.
“You okay, baby?”
“I’m not sleepy,” she mumbled instantly, which answered the question.
Changbin had just come offstage during a transition break, breathing heavily as he collapsed onto the couch beside you.
Then your daughter climbed directly into his lap like this was a completely normal thing to do.
You opened your mouth to apologize.
Changbin shook his head immediately.
“She’s fine.”
Your daughter clutched the front of his hoodie sleepily.
“You did good,” she informed him with enormous effort.
Changbin looked like he’d just been handed a Nobel Prize.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Then—because the universe apparently enjoyed ruining grown men emotionally—your daughter rested her head on his shoulder.
And fell asleep.
Instantly.
The room went silent.
Not metaphorically silent.
Actually silent.
Even the staff nearby lowered their voices automatically.
Changbin froze in pure panic.
“Oh my god,” he mouthed.
“She trusted you,” Felix whispered dramatically, already tearing up for no reason.
“I can’t MOVE,” Changbin hissed back.
“No one move,” Chan ordered quietly.
Hyunjin tiptoed across the room like they were handling explosives.
Seungmin physically stopped a manager from wheeling a noisy equipment cart through the hallway.
Minho pulled a blanket from somewhere suspiciously fast and draped it over your daughter carefully while muttering, “Don’t wake the baby.”
“The baby?” you whispered, amused.
“She’s everyone’s baby now.”
“That’s concerning.”
Changbin remained completely motionless.
You had genuinely never seen him this careful before.
Usually he was loud, energetic, bouncing off walls backstage.
Now he sat stiff as a statue while your daughter slept peacefully against him, tiny fist curled into his hoodie.
His bracelet hand rested protectively near her back.
The members circled around them speaking in ridiculous whispers.
“She’s drooling on you,” Jisung n informed him.
“I DON’T CARE.”
“You whispered aggressively,” Seungmin said.
“Sorry.”
Chan crouched beside the couch with his phone already out.
“Oh, absolutely not,” Changbin whispered.
“I need one picture.”
“No flash!”
“I know how cameras work!”
Felix leaned over dramatically. “This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You say that every week,” Hyunjin replied.
“And I mean it every week.”
You crossed your arms, watching the entire scene with helpless fondness.
For people constantly surrounded by noise, cameras, pressure, and nonstop schedules, they all adapted to your sleeping daughter without a second thought.
Every door closed softer.
Every laugh became muffled.
Even the staff unconsciously started walking quieter around the couch.
At one point, a stage cue sounded loudly from the monitor and Changbin physically flinched like he was ready to fight the speaker system itself.
“She didn’t wake up,” you reassured him.
“Oh thank god.”
Your daughter shifted slightly in her sleep, pressing closer against him.
Changbin looked moments away from emotional collapse.
“Why is she so tiny?” he whispered helplessly.
“That tends to happen when people are five.”
“I would literally fight someone for her.”
“You’ve known her for four hours.”
“And?”
Honestly, there wasn’t really a counterargument to that.
During the rest of the show, changbin handed her carefully over to you.
And somehow she didn't wake up.
By the time the concert officially ended, your daughter was still asleep.
The members had changed out of stage outfits and showered, yet somehow nobody wanted to disturb her.
Changbin, especially. As soon as he was done, he'd taken her back into his arm softly
“You know you can put her down, right?” you teased softly.
He looked horrified.
“What if she wakes up?”
“That is generally what happens after sleeping.”
“But she looks comfortable.”
“She’s using your shoulder as a pillow.”
“And I’m honored.”
Chan snorted from across the room.
“You’re never recovering from this.”
“I don’t WANT to recover.”
Your daughter stirred slightly, eyelashes fluttering.
Every single person in the room stopped talking.
Her eyes opened slowly.
For a second she looked confused.
Then she realized where she was.
“Binnie?”
Changbin’s expression melted instantly. “Yeah?”
“You’re squishy.”
The room collapsed into muffled laughter.
Changbin looked deeply offended and unbelievably emotional at the same time.
“I work out six days a week.”
“You’re still squishy.”
“That’s fair,” Felix said.
Your daughter yawned hugely before noticing the bracelet still on his wrist.
“You kept it.”
“Of course I kept it.”
“You can have another one next time.”
Next time.
The members visibly latched onto those two words immediately.
“There’s gonna be a next time?” Jeongin asked hopefully.
She nodded sleepily.
“If Mama says yes.”
Eight pairs of eyes turned toward you so fast it was honestly alarming.
You laughed. “I think that can be arranged.”
The cheering was immediate.
Your daughter smiled lazily before reaching out toward Changbin again.
“Carry me?”
He looked like he’d just achieved enlightenment.
“Absolutely.”
And as he carefully lifted her into his arms while the rest of the members fussed around them, you realized your daughter was probably going to remember tonight forever.
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At six-thirty on a Sunday when normal people were trying to sleep in.
You had learned his habits against your will.
He liked vocal runs in the shower.
Ballads while cooking.
R&B when cleaning.
And apparently, emotional power notes while reorganizing furniture.
Your ceiling and walls were thin enough that you felt like you lived inside his lungs.
Tonight was especially bad.
You sat cross-legged on your couch with your laptop open, trying to finish a presentation due tomorrow morning, while muffled singing drifted through the wall.
“—baby giiiirl—”
You froze.
Then came another run.
Longer.
Louder.
More offensive to your sanity.
Your eye twitched.
You checked the time.
1:47 AM.
Unbelievable.
You shoved your laptop aside, marched to your front door, and yanked it open with enough force to qualify as violence.
The hallway was quiet except for the voice spilling from 7B.
Honestly?
Annoyingly good.
Which made it worse.
You stomped over and pounded on his door.
The singing stopped instantly.
A few seconds later, the door swung open.
And your entire prepared speech evaporated.
Because your nightmare neighbor was unfairly attractive.
Soft black hair falling into sleepy eyes. Gray sweatpants. Black hoodie half-zipped. Bare feet.
He blinked at you with mild confusion.
“Oh,” he said. “You’re the cute angry neighbor.”
Your jaw dropped.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve seen you in the elevator.” He leaned against the doorway casually. “You glare beautifully.”
You stared.
This man had the audacity to flirt while committing noise crimes.
“You’re singing at almost two in the morning.”
He looked genuinely surprised.
“…Was I loud?”
“Yes.”
“Really loud?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
“Huh?” you repeated incredulously. “That’s your response?”
He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry?”
“You should be.”
A grin tugged at his mouth then, sudden and dangerous.
