Miss mischief

series taglist: @pageraf , @nota10butadefinite8 , @komigyu , @txtworlddom , @bluepains , @tubatuxx , @meikstv , @mouldyvoldysworld , @hueningsgirl , @chysss , @frying0fish , @4shoshottie , @jjundiary , @urmomsfavlesb , @goblindick1 <3

taglist: @pageraf , @nota10butadefinite8 , @komigyu , @txtworlddom , @bluepains , @tubatuxx , @meikstv , @mouldyvoldysworld , @hueningsgirl , @chysss , @frying0fish , @4shoshottie , @jjundiary <3

wawi's notes: annyeong, loveliest people TT i am so sorry for the delay !! but here's what u guys has been waiting for :p !! two more parts before the truth will come out !! HEHEHEHE I LOVE U ALL, thank u for your love and support for the bros >< mwaps !!

taglist: @pageraf , @nota10butadefinite8 , @komigyu , @txtworlddom , @bluepains , @tubatuxx , @meikstv , @mouldyvoldysworld , @hueningsgirl , @chysss , @frying0fish , @4shoshottie , @jjundiary <3

taglist: @pageraf , @nota10butadefinite8 , @komigyu , @txtworlddom , @bluepains , @tubatuxx , @meikstv , @mouldyvoldysworld , @hueningsgirl <3

taglist: @pageraf , @nota10butadefinite8 , @komigyu , @txtworlddom , @bluepains , @tubatuxx , @meikstv , @mouldyvoldysworld <3

taglist: @pageraf , @nota10butadefinite8 , @komigyu , @txtworlddom , @bluepains , @tubatuxx

taglist: @pageraf , @nota10butadefinite8 , @komigyu , @txtworlddom , @bluepains

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

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

It still didn’t add up.

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

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

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

“Is the baby mine?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” 

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

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

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

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

You just stared at him for a second. Then something inside you quietly folded in on itself. 

Sure. 

Why did you expect anything else?

You’d told yourself you didn’t need to know the father. You’d cried over the impossibility of it before it was even real, before there was anything to be impossible about. You’d accepted that you’d raise this child alone, because that was just how it was going to be. Strangers didn’t become families. One extraordinary night didn’t rewrite an ordinary life

You'd come to terms with it. Or at least you thought you did. But here he stood now, and he saw the doubt in his face, and that studied acceptance began to crack. Not because he actually rejected you, but because your heart already decided what his hesitation meant.

"Right," you said, speaking in a more flattering tone than you meant to, and you were already grabbing the armour you had developed over the previous month. "There is nothing for you to figure out. I told you that I had nothing to ask of you.”

He scowled.

"What?"

"I said there's nothing for you to figure out."

You could no longer bring yourself to look at him. Rather, you occupied yourself with smoothing out imperceptible wrinkles on the paper that was spread out on your lap.

"I wasn't looking for you." You took a swallow. "I wasn't trying to find you."

The words had a false flavour. Everything was different. Saying it out loud hurt more than you expected. You hated that some part of you had already filed Jungwon under the same heading, hated how quickly and completely your body had braced for the same ending, as though you had never once been given a reason to expect anything else from anyone.

Jungwon was watching you. He'd seen patients recoil before. The woman who had stopped crying because she had made up her mind it was no good. The overly polite husband after receiving a terminal diagnosis. The parents who resorted to talking about parking validation because to face reality would destroy them. Some people didn't fall apart loudly. Sometimes they were unbearably controlled. That's what you were doing.

“You think I’m trying to go?"

The sentence slipped out before he'd fully decided to say it. Your fingers paused. For the first time since you'd looked away, you met his eyes.

The words hit home visibly. You saw something flicker behind his eyes, not defensiveness, something more like recognition, as though he knew precisely which wound he'd just stepped on without meaning to. You didn't expect that from him. This wasn't something he had asked for. Even if he wanted nothing to do with you or the baby, you told yourself that made sense. 

The bar surfaced again, whether you wanted it to or not. That ring around your glass. The way you’d kept twisting it on your finger instead of just taking it off, because taking it off would have made it final in a way you weren’t ready for. You remembered what you’d said that night, loose enough with drink to be honest, past caring who might overhear.

"I think he stopped choosing me long before he ever said it out loud.”

You looked away first this time, blinking hard at the poster on the wall, the one you'd deliberately avoided studying earlier. Your throat had gone tight enough that breathing normally took actual effort. You pressed your lips together, willing yourself to hold it. 

That did not work.

One single tear escaped before you could stop it. Hot and humiliating, sliding down your cheek at the worst possible moment, in front of the worst possible person. You wiped it away quickly, angry at your body for betraying you in this way.

“I have to go,” you said, your voice cracking halfway through the sentence. You slid off the exam table too quickly, the paper crinkling loudly in the small room, and reached for the door before you could change your mind, before you could let yourself fall apart any further in front of him.

You didn’t get far. His fingers wrapped loosely around your wrist, warm, hesitant, like he wasn’t sure he had any right to hold on but couldn’t quite make himself let go either. Just enough to stop you. You went cold.

“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Please. Don’t walk out like this.”

“I—” Your voice gave out completely, and the tears came without permission.

His hand hovered between the chart, the exam table, and finally settled against his own chest.

"You don't have to say anything," you continued, quieter now, the bitterness folding into something more tired than sharp. "I wasn't going to ask you for anything. I didn't come here looking for you." 

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Whatever he'd been about to say didn't survive that.

"I'll get someone else to take my file," you said, before he could. "You don't have to be involved in any of it. Really. It'll be easier that way. For both of us."

"That's not what I want," he said quietly.

"You don't know what you want yet," you said, not unkindly, just certain. "That's okay. You don't have to. I stopped expecting anyone to figure that out on my timeline a long time ago."

You picked up your bag from the chair, not looking at him now, because looking at him made it harder to keep the walls up, and the walls were the only thing keeping you standing.

"I can manage this myself," you said, quieter. "I've been managing everything myself. This isn't any different."

He didn't say anything as you walked past him, though you felt his eyes on you the whole way to the door, uncertain and unresolved in a way that you told yourself, firmly, was not your problem to fix.

The hallway outside the exam room felt longer than it had on the way in.

You kept your eyes forward, one foot in front of the other, the way you'd taught yourself to walk out of rooms that had just quietly ended something. It would've been easier if he'd been cruel about it. If he'd looked at you the way you'd braced yourself for. 

But he hadn't been cruel. He'd looked lost. Standing there in his white coat with a stethoscope around his neck and no idea what to do with his own hands. And somehow that was worse. Because lost meant he hadn't decided yet. Lost meant there was still a version of this where he tried, and failed, and you had to watch it happen up close instead of guessing at it from a distance. 

You couldn't do that again. You didn't have it in you to hope for something and then watch it quietly dissolve a second time in the same year. So you'd decided for him before he could make it for himself. It felt almost merciful, in a strange, aching way. If you didn't let yourself need him, there was nothing left for him to take away. 

You didn't need him. You'd meant that.

But walking away from a room where someone had, for one brief second, looked like he might actually want to stay. That took more out of you than you let yourself admit. Because some small, foolish part of you, had wanted to be wrong about him. Just once, for someone to prove your worst assumptions weren't the safest bet.

You got in your car, hands steady on the wheel the way they'd been steady the night everything else fell apart, and you didn't cry until you were three streets away, safely out of sight of anyone who might feel obligated to ask if you were alright. 

.

.

.

Jungwon didn't move for a long moment after the door clicked shut.

The room felt too quiet without you in it. He was still holding a pen he didn't remember picking up, and when he looked down at his own hand, it took a second longer than it should have for the object to register as familiar.

A baby.

The word sat in his chest like something he'd swallowed wrong, lodged and unmoving. He'd delivered dozens of them. He knew what the next nine months would look like on a chart. He did not know what it meant that one of them might have his name attached to it.

He sat down heavily on the stool you'd left empty, the vinyl still faintly warm, and stared at the door like it might open again and make the last ten minutes make sense. It didn't.

He realised, that he didn't even know your first name. Not really, he'd seen it on the chart, glanced at it in that first frozen second before recognition hit, but it hadn't stuck, buried under everything else crashing through him at once. He didn't know where you lived. What you did for a living, though, something about you had felt like you spent your days around people who needed patience. He remembered that much from the bar, vaguely, the way you remember the shape of a feeling more than the words that caused it. He didn't know if you had family nearby. Friends. Anyone who'd sit with you through this the way he clearly wasn't being let anywhere near it.

He didn't know a single real thing about the woman who had just told him, flatly, that she was carrying his child and didn't expect anything from him because of it. That last part kept snagging on something in his chest, sharp and unpleasant, like a wire he kept running his thumb over without meaning to.

He didn't know what that meant, not exactly, but he knew enough to recognize the shape of it. The practiced ease of someone who'd said some version of that sentence before, to someone else, about something else. You hadn't sounded angry when you said it. That was the part that unsettled him most. Angry, he could have argued with. Anger gave him something to push against. But you'd sounded certain, the way people sound when they've simply stopped being surprised by disappointment, when they've built their whole footing around expecting less so the ground never has anywhere lower left to drop.

A knock at the door pulled him upright before he could sit with it any longer. Nurse Park leaned her head in, brow raised at the empty room, the abandoned chart, him sitting there like he'd forgotten how exam rooms worked.

"Dr. Yang? Your two o'clock is—"

"I need you to reassign a patient," he said, before she could finish. His voice came out steadier than he felt, which surprised him almost as much as everything else today had. "Transfer her file to Dr. Kim. Today, if you can."

Nurse Park's brow rose further, curiosity plain on her face, but she didn't ask. That was one mercy, at least. "Sure. Everything okay?"

"Fine," he said, too quickly. "Just a conflict of interest."

She left it at that, ducking back out, and he was alone again with the abandoned chart and the too quiet room and the sound of his own pulse suddenly very loud in his ears.

He didn't go find you. He told himself it was because you'd asked him not to, because chasing you down the hallway would have looked exactly like the kind of scene neither of you needed in a hospital full of patients. He told himself a lot of things in the next several minutes, none of which made the unease in his chest sit any easier.

He didn't know you. You'd made that painfully, deliberately clear, like it was a wall you needed built between the two of you before either of you said something you couldn't walk back. But you were going to have his child. And he was going to spend the rest of the day, and probably several after it, turning over the unbearable fact that a woman whose last name he'd only just learned had already decided, quietly and completely, that he wasn't someone worth hoping for.

He picked the pen back up. Set it back down.

Somewhere down the hall, his next patient was waiting, and he had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to walk in there and be anyone's calm, steady doctor when his own life had just come apart at a seam he hadn't known was there.

.

.

.

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Three days.

That was all it had been since you walked out of that exam room, and already your body seemed determined to make you regret every ounce of composure you'd held onto in front of him. It was as if some cruel switch had been flipped the moment you'd said the word yes out loud, made it real to someone other than yourself. Like your body had been waiting for a witness.

You woke Wednesday morning already nauseous, the ceiling swimming faintly overhead before you'd even tried to sit up. You'd read that morning sickness typically started later, that this was early even by the worst case scenario timelines, but apparently your pregnancy hadn't read the same pamphlets you had.

By the time you managed to get upright, the room tilted sharply enough that you had to grip the headboard and breathe through it, slow and deliberate, before attempting the short, treacherous walk to the bathroom.

You didn't make it in time to feel dignified about it. Afterward, you sat on the bathroom floor with your back against the cold tub, forehead damp, waiting for your stomach to stop staging its rebellion. This was becoming routine faster than you wanted to admit. Not once, but twice already this week you'd called your department to push back your morning lecture, voice pitched carefully steady, blaming a stomach bug going around campus. You'd never missed lectures before. Not once. It unsettled you more than you let yourself dwell on.

The apartment was silent except for the tap still running in the sink. No one to hand you water. No one to notice you'd barely eaten since yesterday, that the crackers on your nightstand had gone untouched because even the smell of them turned your stomach some hours. You'd gotten good at being invisible to everyone, including yourself.

You didn't know if this was normal. You didn't know if you should be worried, if this level of sick warranted a call to whoever your new doctor was going to be, or if this was simply what your body intended to do to you for the better part of the coming months. You had no one to ask. No one who'd sit on the edge of your bed and tell you this part was supposed to be hard, that it would pass, that you weren't failing at this before it had even really begun.

You  pulled yourself back onto your feet using the edge of the sink, rinsed your mouth, and studied your reflection for a moment. Pale, hollow around the eyes, nothing like the woman who used to stand in front of a lecture hall like she had her whole life figured out.

"You're fine," you told her, quietly, the way you'd told yourself countless small lies over the past month that had somehow, collectively, kept you upright. "You've done harder than this alone."

You believed it most days. Today, curled back into bed twenty minutes later with a bucket close enough to reach without standing, the blanket pulled up to your chin against a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, you weren't entirely sure you believed it at all.

But there was no one there to notice the difference. So you closed your eyes, and let the silence hold you instead, and waited, the way you always did, for the worst of it to pass on its own.

You should have called in sick. You knew that the moment you stepped out of the car, the parking lot tilting faintly at the edges in a way that had nothing to do with the morning sun.

But you'd already missed two lectures this week, and a third would mean questions you didn't have answers for, sympathetic looks from your department head that you didn't think you could survive without your composure cracking down the middle. So you'd taken two crackers and a sip of ginger tea you couldn't taste, told yourself you'd manage, and gone in anyway.

You almost did.

The lecture hall was half full, forty some students scattered across the tiered seats, laptops open, the low hum of a Thursday morning. You'd made it through the attendance. Through the first ten minutes on developmental milestones in early childhood, your voice steady even as your stomach had begun its slow, familiar climb somewhere around slide four.

You kept going. 

"—and by eighteen months, most children can typically identify two to three body parts when asked, which becomes important later when we discuss—"

The room tilted.

The front row of desks sliding sideways in your vision like the whole hall had been picked up and set back down at a slight angle. You gripped the edge of the podium, hard, waiting for it to right itself the way it usually did if you just breathed through it, counted to ten, kept your face neutral.

It didn't right itself. Cold sweat prickled along your hairline. Your vision narrowed at the edges, the way it did right before things went dark, a sensation you recognized now with a distant, clinical horror even as your body refused to respond to anything you told it to do. You heard your own voice trail off mid sentence. You saw, as if from very far away, several students look up from their laptops.

"Professor?"

You tried to say I'm fine. Give me a second. The words didn't make it out. The podium seemed to tilt away from your hand, or your hand slid off it, you couldn't tell which, and the last clear thought you had was a strange, absurd flicker of worry that you were about to fall in front of forty students and there'd be no graceful way to explain any of this afterward.

Then the floor came up to meet you, and everything went white, then gray, then nothing at all.

You came back to fluorescent light and unfamiliar voices, the particular antiseptic smell that your body had apparently decided to associate with catastrophe now. Someone's hand was wrapped around your wrist, fingers pressed lightly, counting.

"Ma'am? Can you hear me?"

You blinked, the ceiling swimming into slow focus, a stranger's face hovering above you, kind and unfamiliar. Not him. You didn't know why some small, useless part of you had braced for it to be him.

"You fainted," the nurse said gently, once she saw your eyes track her properly. "You're in the ER. One of your students called it in. You went down pretty hard in the middle of a lecture."

Fainted. In front of your entire class. You closed your eyes again, mortification arriving even before you'd fully processed the rest of it, a hot wave of embarrassment layering itself over the nausea that hadn't actually gone anywhere.

"I'm fine," you said, or tried to. Your voice came out cracked, thinner than you meant it to. "I just need to go home. I have another class at—"

"You're not teaching anything today," the nurse said, not unkindly, but with the particular firmness of someone who dealt with stubborn patients for a living. "You're pregnant and dehydrated and you haven't been keeping food down. We're keeping you a few hours at least, getting fluids into you."

There was someone whose opinion mattered now, whether you liked it or not, and he worked three floors up in this exact building. 

A resident you didn't recognize came by twenty minutes later to check your IV line, young, unfamiliar, entirely uninterested in anything beyond your vitals and your chart. You almost laughed at the relief that gave you. 

By the time they discharged you late that afternoon, an IV bruise blooming faintly on the inside of your elbow, a stack of printed pamphlets about hyperemesis gravidarum tucked under your arm.  You called a cab instead of your own car, since you didn't trust your hands on a wheel yet, and sat in the back seat with your forehead against the cool window, watching the hospital shrink behind you. 

You told yourself that was fine. You told yourself that a lot, lately. It didn't make the ride home feel any less quiet.

The cab dropped you off just as the sky was starting to dim, and by the time you'd climbed the two flights of stairs to your apartment. The elevator was broken again, of course it was. Your legs were shaking badly enough that you had to stop twice, palm flat against the wall, waiting for the stairwell to stop tilting.

You made it inside. You didn't make it much further than that. The pamphlets slid out of your grip and scattered across the entryway floor as your knees gave out, not dramatically, just a slow, graceless folding, your back sliding down the front door until you were sitting on the cold tile with your knees drawn up and your whole body trembling like something had come loose inside it.

The nausea came back within the hour, worse than it had been that morning, worse than it had been at all this week. It didn't announce itself gently. It arrived in one violent lurch that had you crawling toward the bathroom, not trusting your legs to carry you upright.

You didn't make it to the toilet in time. You barely made it to the bathroom at all, retching over the edge of the tub instead, your whole body seizing with the force of it long after there was anything left to bring up, dry, wrenching heaves that left your ribs aching and your throat raw and scraped, tears streaming down your face less from sadness than from the sheer physical violence of it.

You stayed like that for a long time, forehead pressed against the cool porcelain, saliva and bile stringing from your lips, your hands braced shaking against the tub's edge. Your stomach cramped hard, a deep muscular ache that radiated up into your ribs and down into your pelvis, and for one sharp, terrified second you pressed a hand low against your abdomen, holding your breath, waiting to feel something wrong.

Nothing. No blood. No new pain beyond the exhaustion of your body trying to turn itself inside out. You allowed yourself a single shuddering breath of relief before the next wave hit and you were retching again, nothing left to give it, just your body insisting anyway.

By the time it finally, mercifully passed, you were slumped sideways against the bathtub, cheek against cold tile, drenched in a cold sweat that had soaked through your shirt. Your pulse fluttered too fast and too thin at your wrist when you pressed two fingers there, checking, the way you'd learned to over the past week. Your mouth tasted of bile and copper. Your lips had gone dry and cracked at the corners.

You should call someone. The thought arrived distantly, muted, the way thoughts did when your body had spent everything it had. You'd just been hospitalized for exactly this, hours ago, and here you were on your bathroom floor doing it again, alone, with no one so much as aware it was happening.

Your hand found your phone in your pocket, more out of habit than intention. The screen lit the dim bathroom, too bright, and you had to squint against it. You didn't call anyone. You didn't have the strength to hold the phone to your ear, let alone explain, let alone hear the worry in someone's voice and have to manage that too, on top of everything else.

You set the phone down on the tile beside you instead, and simply lay there, curled loosely on your side, waiting for enough strength to return to your limbs that you could drag yourself the six feet to your own bed.

It took nearly twenty minutes. You slept in your clothes that night, on top of the covers instead of under them, too exhausted to manage even that small effort, a glass of water you couldn't bring yourself to drink from sitting untouched on the nightstand, condensation sliding slowly down its side in the dark, and no one in the world aware that you'd spent your evening on a bathroom floor, alone, quietly and privately falling apart.

.

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Karina almost didn't come by that morning.

She'd meant to call first, the way she usually did, but you hadn't answered your last two texts, and something about the silence. Three days of it now, uncharacteristic even for you at your most withdrawn, had sat wrong in her chest all week. She'd told herself she was being paranoid. She came anyway.

She still had the spare key, back when you'd both lived two buildings apart and traded keys the way close friends did. She let herself in calling your name, expecting to find you buried in lesson planning, embarrassed to have worried.

She found you on the bedroom floor instead, half collapsed beside the bed like you'd tried to stand and simply hadn't made it, your skin gray pale, lips cracked, one hand still curled weakly against the carpet like you'd been reaching for something.

"Oh my god— hey. Hey!" Karina dropped to her knees beside you, hands shaking as she checked for breath, for pulse, for anything. You stirred faintly at her voice, eyes fluttering half open, unfocused. "Stay with me, okay? I'm calling an ambulance."

"I'm fine," you managed, barely a whisper, the words slurring together. "Just need—"

"You are not fine." Her voice cracked, fear bleeding through the command in it as she fumbled her phone out of her pocket, thumb shaking too hard to hit the numbers cleanly the first time. "You look like you're about to die on your bedroom floor, so don't you dare tell me you're fine."

She got the address out between breaths she didn't remember taking, one hand still gripping yours the entire time, too tight, like letting go might mean losing you to whatever this was.

She rode in the ambulance with you, refusing to be left behind when a paramedic suggested she follow in her own car. She sat in the hospital waiting room for forty five minutes that felt like four hours, knee bouncing, phone clutched uselessly in her lap because she didn't know who else to call, didn't know if there was anyone else to call, and that realization alone made something in her chest ache almost as much as the fear did.

When a nurse finally came to update her, Karina was on her feet before the woman had finished her sentence.

"Family?" the nurse asked, glancing at her chart.

"Might as well be," Karina said, voice tight. "She doesn't have anyone else listed, does she."

The nurse's hesitation was answer enough.

"She's stable," the nurse said instead, gently. "Severe dehydration, malnutrition. She's been dealing with hyperemesis, it looks like, and it seems like she's been managing it alone for weeks. We're keeping her a few days to get her properly stabilized."

Karina pressed a hand over her mouth, equal parts relief and fury rising in her chest. Relief that you were breathing, steady, alive, and fury that you'd let it get this bad without telling a single soul, without telling her, after everything the two of you had been through together.

She sat by your bed for the rest of that afternoon, watching the slow rise and fall of your chest, IV fluid dripping steadily into the back of your hand, and made a silent, furious promise that the moment you were lucid enough to argue with her, she was going to give you an earful about doing this alone.

You stirred sometime near evening, eyes fluttering open slowly, disoriented, focusing first on the ceiling and then, gradually, on her.

"Karina?" Your voice came out cracked, confused.

"Yeah." She leaned forward, gripping your hand, blinking back tears she refused to let fall in front of you. "Yeah, it's me. You scared the absolute hell out of me."

You blinked at her, at the IV in your hand, at the hospital room slowly coming into focus around you, and something in your face crumpled, the exhausted collapse of someone who'd been holding a wall up for too long and had finally, involuntarily, let it fall.

"I didn't want to bother anyone," you whispered.

"You're pregnant and you were dying on your bedroom floor," Karina said, voice thick, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "I don't care how much you didn't want to bother me. You're stuck with me now. No more doing this by yourself."

You didn't have the strength to argue. For once, some small, exhausted part of you was almost grateful you didn't have to.

.

.

.

.

Jungwon told himself it would fade. That was the whole premise he'd been operating on for two and a half weeks now. That time would do what time was supposed to do, sand the edges off something sharp until it became just another fact of his life instead of the thing that occupied every quiet moment he wasn't actively filling with something else.

It hadn't worked. He caught himself doing it again during a lull between patients, staring at a blank spot on the wall of the break room, coffee going cold in his hand, his mind somewhere else entirely. 

He'd requested her file be transferred to Dr. Kim, exactly as he'd promised. He hadn't looked at it since. He told himself that was the responsible thing to do. He told himself that every time his hand hovered a half second too long over the patient database before he made himself close it, unopened.

He didn't know if she'd made it to her next appointment, if the nausea she'd looked faintly gray with even standing in that exam room had gotten better or worse, if she was eating, sleeping, managing any of it the way she'd insisted, with such brittle certainty, that she would.

He hated that he thought about it as much as he did. Hated it, and couldn't stop. 

“You've been doing it for weeks." Sunoo took a sip, watching him over the rim of the cup. "Still thinking about the peach dream? Told you it meant something."

"It's nothing," Jungwon said, too quickly, and made himself take a sip of his own coffee just to have something to do with his mouth besides say anything further. "Just tired. Long week."

"It's been a long week for three weeks running, then." Sunoo didn't look convinced, but he let it sit for a moment, watching him with the kind of patience that usually meant he was waiting for a crack to widen on its own rather than trying to force one. "You'd tell me if something was actually going on, right?"

"There's nothing going on." The lie came easier than Jungwon expected it to, flat and practiced, though it sat wrong in his chest the second it left his mouth. "I'm fine."

Sunoo studied him a beat longer, clearly unconvinced, but he shrugged eventually and let it go, the way he usually did when Jungwon's tone made it clear a door had been shut. "Alright. Suit yourself."

The conversation moved on to something else and he was grateful for it, grateful that Sunoo hadn't pushed harder, because he didn't know what he would have said if he had. There wasn't a version of the truth he could hand over that didn't sound absurd out loud. 

He didn't know how to explain that he'd meant to let it go, and instead had spent nearly three weeks failing to stop thinking about a woman whose last name he'd had to read off a chart to remember, whose entire life outside of that one night and that one appointment remained a complete blank to him.

He didn't know how to explain, least of all to himself, why some part of him refused to accept that blank as permanent. He finished his coffee in silence, and when his pager went off a few minutes later, he was almost relieved for the excuse to leave the thought behind, if only for the length of his next shift.

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The consult request landed in his queue a little after four. It was one of a dozen routine notifications that came through on any given shift. He almost skimmed past it. He didn't work in obstetrics anymore, not since he'd handed his own patient list over to Dr. Kim weeks ago. He'd made an effort to stop looking at those cases.

But this one came through internal medicine, not OB. It was flagged as severe dehydration and malnutrition, possible hyperemesis. They wanted a second opinion on fluid management before admitting the patient properly.

He opened the summary out of habit more than curiosity.

Female, thirty two years old. About eleven weeks pregnant. She'd been found unconscious by a friend. Severe dehydration. She'd lost eight percent of her body weight in two weeks. Her heart rate had been dangerously high on admission. There was no record of any follow-up appointment since her first OB visit three weeks earlier.

He frowned at that last part. Three weeks was a long time to go without monitoring, especially with symptoms this severe. Someone had fallen through the cracks. It bothered him, the same way it always did when a patient's file showed the system failing someone who should have been caught sooner.

He looked for the name of the doctor overseeing her care. He found only Dr. Kim listed, with no other notes attached besides an old transfer memo from a few weeks back. He didn't think twice about that memo. He'd written it himself, but his mind was somewhere else, moving through the facts the way he always did, quickly and clinically.

The patient's name was cut off in the quick view screen, an old glitch in the hospital's software that had annoyed him for years. He never thought to be grateful for it before.

He typed up his recommendation. Slow rehydration. Anti nausea medication. Closer monitoring, given the gap in her care. He added a note asking social work to check in, since it looked like she didn't have much support. It was clinical and short, the way he wrote every consult note, and he sent it back through the system without a second thought.

Something caught at the back of his mind for a moment. Eleven weeks. The number surfaced, then sank again before he could think about why it mattered. There was another patient waiting.

He didn't open her full chart. There was no reason to. It wasn't his case anymore, and nothing in the short summary gave him any reason to connect this exhausted, malnourished woman to the one who still, somehow, took up more space in his thoughts than she had any right to.

He moved on to the next consult. But the uneasy feeling stayed with him for the rest of his shift, quiet and shapeless, like a name he almost remembered but couldn't quite reach.

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Jungwon didn't remember falling asleep. He remembered lying in the dark for a long time, staring at his ceiling, exhaustion finally pulling him under sometime past midnight.

And then he was dreaming.

The garden came back to him, the same one from weeks ago, though he knew almost immediately that something about it was wrong.

The trees were still there, heavy branched, familiar in shape. But the leaves had gone brittle at the edges, curling inward like paper too close to a flame. Some had already fallen, scattered thin and brown across ground that should have been soft with grass and instead felt dry and cracked underfoot, like it hadn't seen rain in a long time.

He walked through it the way he had before, searching without knowing exactly what he was searching for. The fruit trees that had once bent low with ripeness now held branches that looked stripped and empty, a few withered pieces of fruit still clinging on that looked more rotten than ripe.

The woman was there again. He still couldn't see her face clearly, the way dreams sometimes blurred the details that should have mattered most, but he recognized her outline, the same as before, standing beneath the same tree where she'd once handed him a peach warm with sunlight.

This time she wasn't holding anything out to him. She was kneeling at the base of the tree instead, one hand pressed against the trunk like she needed it to stay upright. Her shoulders looked thin. Her head was bowed low enough that he couldn't see any of her expression, only the slow, careful way she was breathing, like even that took effort.

"Wait," he said, or tried to. His voice didn't seem to carry the way it should have.

He moved toward her, and the ground beneath his feet seemed to stretch further with every step, the way distances do in dreams, refusing to close no matter how fast he moved. The leaves kept falling around them, one after another, drifting down slow and silent, until the branches above her were bare.

He reached her at last, or thought he did, and knelt down in front of her, and reached out to touch her shoulder. She looked up at him then. He still couldn't make out her face. But he could feel, somehow, in the strange logic dreams operated by, that she was exhausted. Depleted. Something in her had been quietly draining away, day after day, and no one had noticed in time to stop it.

She simply closed her eyes again, her hand still pressed to the trunk of the dying tree, and the last of the leaves let go overhead, falling around both of them like something quietly ending.

He woke with a start, heart pounding, sheets damp beneath him, the ceiling of his own bedroom swimming slowly into focus in the dark.

It took him a long moment to remember where he was. Longer still to shake the feeling that had settled deep in his chest, heavy and wrong, like his body understood something his mind hadn't caught up to yet.

He sat up, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, and told himself it was only a dream. Stress, probably, or guilt finding a strange shape to wear while he slept. But he didn't fall back asleep for a long time after that. He lay in the dark instead, staring at the ceiling, turning the image over and over, the garden gone bare, her kneeling beneath it, exhausted in a way that had felt far too real to belong only to a dream.

He was distracted the whole next day, in a way that didn't sit well with him at all.

It started small. He mixed up the order of two consults, something he never did, and had to double back and apologize to a nurse who'd been waiting on him. He found himself staring too long at a patient's chart during rounds, words on the page not quite registering, his mind circling back again and again to a garden that didn't exist and a woman whose face he couldn't see.

He told himself it was just a dream. He'd told himself that all morning, on repeat, like saying it enough times might finally make it true. It didn't help. The image kept surfacing anyway, uninvited, in the quiet spaces between tasks. The leaves falling. Her shoulders, thin and bowed. The way she hadn't answered him.

And underneath the dream, tangled up with it so tightly he couldn't separate the two anymore, was her. The real her. The woman from the exam room, weeks ago now, sitting there in a paper gown telling him flatly that she didn't need anything from him.

He hadn't seen her since. He didn't know if she was alright. That fact, which he'd been quietly carrying around for weeks, suddenly felt heavier today, pressing somewhere behind his ribs in a way he couldn't explain and didn't like.

He caught himself, twice, opening the hospital directory with every intention of searching her name, only to close it again before he could type more than a letter or two. He had no reason to look. No professional reason, and telling himself there might be a personal one felt like admitting to something he wasn't ready to say out loud, not even to himself.

His chest felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with his own health. It was an uncomfortable, restless feeling, like something was wrong and he didn't have enough information to know what, or where, or how to fix it. He hated not knowing. He'd built his whole career around being someone who found answers, who didn't let uncertainty sit for long before chasing it down. And here he was, useless, sitting with a feeling he couldn't name and no way to act on it.

By the time his shift ended, he'd barely eaten, his coffee long since gone cold and forgotten on his desk. He sat in his car in the hospital parking lot for a while before starting the engine, hands resting on the wheel, staring out at nothing in particular.

"It's just a dream," he said out loud, to the empty car, like hearing it might finally settle something.

It didn't. If anything, saying it out loud only made the discomfort in his chest more obvious, more real, refusing to be reasoned away just because he didn't have a name to put to it, or a face, or any real claim to worrying about her at all.

He drove home in silence, the radio off, the same restless unease sitting with him the whole way, quiet and persistent, like it had no intention of leaving until he did something about it.

He got as far as his apartment door before he stopped fighting it.

He stood there for a moment, keys still in hand, and then, almost against his own better judgment, pulled out his phone instead of going inside. He told himself it was just to check. Just to see that she was fine, that the dream had been nothing, that the tight feeling behind his ribs was simply exhaustion wearing a strange shape. Just this once, and then he'd stop.

He let himself back into his own hallway, sat down heavily on the bottom step of the stairwell instead of climbing them, and opened the hospital's internal system on his phone. His thumb hovered over the search bar longer than it should have. He typed her name.

The system took a second to load, longer than he wanted, his knee bouncing while he waited, and then a list of results filled the screen. Not many. It was an uncommon enough name that there was really only one match that mattered.

He tapped it before he could talk himself out of it. The file loaded slowly, and for a moment his eyes just skimmed without absorbing anything, too much information arriving too fast. Then it started to land, piece by piece, and his stomach dropped further with each line.

Admitted three weeks ago. Severe dehydration and malnutrition. Discharged same day, no documented follow up. Readmitted two days ago. Hyperemesis gravidarum, ketones present, found unconscious by a third party.

Found unconscious. He read it twice, like the words might rearrange themselves into something less alarming the second time. They didn't. He scrolled further, hands not quite steady now, and found the consult note attached to the more recent admission. His own name was on it. His own handwriting, in a sense, typed out clinically weeks ago, recommending fluid management for a patient he hadn't realized was her, flagging her case for social work because something in the chart had told him, even then, that no one was checking in on her.

He'd been right there. He'd read her chart and not known it was her. He'd written notes about her condition and closed the file without a second thought, because the software had cut off her name and he hadn't looked hard enough to notice.

Eleven weeks. The number that had been surfacing in his mind for days finally made sense, horribly, completely, and he felt something in his chest cave in around it.

She'd been sick. Really sick. Alone in an apartment somewhere, collapsing, hospitalized twice, and he hadn't known. He'd been having dreams about dying gardens while she was on a bathroom floor somewhere, or worse, and he'd told himself it was nothing, told himself it wasn't his place to look.

He was on his feet before he'd fully decided to move, keys still in his other hand, phone still lit with her chart, his pulse loud enough in his ears that it drowned out every reasonable argument his own mind tried to raise about boundaries, about what she'd asked for, about whether he had any right at all to show up.

None of it mattered right now. He needed to see her. He needed to know, with his own eyes, that she was alright. He was already moving toward the door before he'd let himself think through what he'd even say when he got there.

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The room had gone dim sometime after the nurses' evening rounds, the overhead lights dimmed low, the machines beside your bed humming their steady, indifferent rhythm into the quiet. Karina had left an hour ago, only after you'd insisted, only after you'd promised you'd call if you needed anything, a promise you both knew you probably wouldn't keep.

You lay there now, IV taped to the back of your hand, the thin blanket pulled up to your chest, and let yourself, finally, stop pretending you were fine.

It came slowly at first. A tightness in your throat you tried to swallow down out of habit. Then your eyes stinging, then blurring, until the ceiling above you dissolved into a soft, watery smear of white. You pressed the back of your free hand against your mouth, an old reflex, quiet, don't let anyone hear.

There was no one to hear. That was the whole problem, wasn't it.

You thought about the last two weeks. About crawling to the bathroom in the dark. About lying on your own bedroom floor, alone, until your body simply gave out and someone else had to find you before it was too late. You thought about how close that had actually been, closer than you'd let yourself admit even to Karina, who'd cried in the waiting room while you were unconscious and hadn't fully stopped being afraid since.

You thought about the tiny, stubborn thing growing inside you that you hadn't even properly begun to plan for, that you were supposed to be strong enough to carry through all of this alone, and some exhausted, honest part of you finally admitted, in the dark, in the quiet, that you didn't know if you could.

"I don't know if I can do this," you whispered, to no one, to the empty room, your voice cracking apart on the last word.

The admission scared you more than anything else had in weeks. You'd built your whole life, especially these last two months, around the belief that you could handle anything alone if you just gritted your teeth hard enough. You'd told Jungwon that, practically to his face. You'd told yourself that every single day since. And here you were, hooked to fluids in a hospital bed for the second time in a month, and the belief was cracking right down the center, and you didn't know how to hold it together anymore.

The tears came harder after that, silent at first, then not silent at all, your shoulders shaking with the effort of trying to keep it quiet even though there was no one there to disturb. You curled onto your side as much as the IV line would allow, one hand drifting to rest low against your stomach, the way it always did now without your permission.

"I'm sorry," you whispered, to the tiny life you couldn't see or feel yet, only imagine. "I'm trying. I promise I'm trying."

It didn't answer, of course. There was only the quiet hum of the machines, and the faint hallway light bleeding in under the door, and the terrible, hollow ache of being so completely alone with something this big.

You cried until you didn't have much left to cry with, until your eyes burned and your chest ached and exhaustion finally started pulling you down toward sleep despite everything. You didn't wipe your face before you let your eyes close. There was no one there to see it anyway.

That was what you told yourself, right up until the moment sleep finally took you under, and you never heard the soft, hesitant knock that came at your door several minutes later, too tentative to wake you, from someone who'd been standing in the hallway for a long moment before he found the nerve to lift his hand at all.

Somewhere between the crying and the exhaustion pulling you under, one thought kept circling back, quiet and unanswerable.

Is it supposed to be this hard?

You didn't know. That was the worst part of it, in a strange way. You'd spent years around children, around the after of pregnancy, the finished product of it, toddlers with sticky hands and easy laughter, and never once had you stopped to ask their mothers what the nine months before had actually cost them. You'd assumed, vaguely, the way people assume things they've never had to live through, that it was hard but survivable, uncomfortable but manageable, something women simply got through with the right amount of patience and ginger tea.

You hadn't expected this. The bathroom floors. The fainting. Two hospital admissions in less than a month, your body seeming to fight the thing growing inside you rather than simply carry it. You wondered, in the dim, half formed way exhaustion allowed for, whether other women went through this too, quietly, alone, and never talked about it because talking about it felt like admitting they weren't handling something that was supposed to come naturally.

You thought of your own mother, briefly, the offhand thing she used to say. Hardest thing I ever did alone. You'd always assumed that meant the raising, the late nights, the years after. You were starting to wonder if she'd meant this part too, the very beginning, the part nobody warned you about because by the time you were far enough along to tell anyone, you were already too deep in it to turn back.

You didn't know if this was normal. You didn't know if other women lay awake at night wondering if their body had simply chosen the wrong person to do this to, someone without the reserves for it, someone already worn thin from everything that came before. You didn't have anyone to ask. Not really. Karina had been wonderful, had sat by your bed for hours, but Karina didn't know what this felt like from the inside, the particular loneliness of a body doing something enormous while the rest of your life went on expecting you to be fine.

You pressed a hand lightly against your stomach again, feeling nothing yet, no movement, no proof beyond the exhaustion and the IV and the doctor's clipped, worried tone from earlier that day. Just an idea of a person, still. A hope, and a fear, tangled together so tightly you couldn't separate them anymore.

Is it supposed to be this hard?

You didn't have an answer. You only had the ache in your chest, and the too-quiet room, and the slow pull of sleep finally dragging your thoughts apart before you could find one.

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Jungwon didn't remember most of the walk from the parking garage. He remembered running at some point, badge bouncing against his chest, breath tearing ragged in his throat by the time he hit the stairwell instead of waiting for the elevator, two steps at a time, his pulse louder in his ears than anything else around him.

He found your room number on the floor directory and moved toward it without slowing, weaving past a cart, muttering an apology to a nurse he nearly collided with. He didn't bother knocking. He pushed the door open, chest still heaving, and froze.

You were still awake.

You'd curled onto your side, one hand pressed against your mouth, shoulders shaking with the effort of crying quietly in a room that had no reason to expect anyone would walk in on it. Your eyes were red, your cheeks wet, the IV line taped awkwardly to the back of your free hand. You looked up at the sound of the door, startled, and every part of you went rigid.

Disbelief bleeding through the exhaustion. You pushed yourself up slightly against the pillows, swiping a hand roughly across your face, some old reflex to hide what he'd just walked in on, even though it was far too late for that. "What are you— how did you—"

He didn't answer right away. He was too busy staring at you, chest still rising and falling too fast, his own shock plain on his face. He hadn't let himself picture this, not really, not the reality of it. How small you looked. How hollowed out. How clearly you'd been crying alone for a while before he arrived.

"I read your chart," he admitted, voice rough, still catching his breath. "I didn't know it was you until an hour ago."

"You shouldn't be here," you said, though it came out weaker than you meant it to, your voice still thick with tears.

"I know." He didn't move toward you yet, like he was afraid of doing the wrong thing, afraid of taking up space you hadn't offered him. "I know I shouldn't. You told me you didn't need me. I heard you. I've been trying to respect that for weeks, and I have no right to walk in here and undo it just because I'm scared."

"Then why did you come?" Your voice broke on the question, quieter than you meant it, more honest than you meant it too.

He took a step closer, slow, like he was asking permission with every inch. "Because I've been dreaming about you for weeks and I didn't even understand what I was dreaming about," he said, voice unsteady now, none of his usual composure left in it. "Because I read a chart today and didn't know it was yours until it was almost too late to know at all. Because the thought of you lying somewhere alone, going through this by yourself, is unbearable to me. I can't explain why. I've tried to talk myself out of caring this much about someone I barely know, and I can't do it. I've tried for weeks."

You stared at him, tears still slipping down your face, unable to find any words to answer that with.

"I'm not asking you to let me fix this," he went on, quieter now, closer, close enough that you could see how badly his hands were shaking at his sides. "I'm not asking you to trust me, or to need me, or to believe I'll be different from whoever taught you to expect nothing. I know I haven't earned any of that yet." His voice cracked, raw and unguarded in a way you'd never heard from him. "I'm just asking you to let me sit here. Just for tonight. Please. I don't want you to be alone in this room anymore."

You pressed the back of your hand against your mouth, a fresh wave of tears rising, not entirely sure anymore if they were from exhaustion or grief or something dangerously close to relief.

"I don't know… I… ," you admitted, voice cracking apart. 

"One night. That's all I'm asking for right now. Just let me stay."

He reached out, slow and hesitant, and rested his hand near yours on the blanket, not quite touching, close enough that you could close the distance if you wanted to. You did. Your fingers curled weakly around his, and for the first time in weeks, neither of you were entirely, completely alone.

You have been waiting for this moment for months, even years. You are finally moving out. It is because of college, but still, it is a new beginning far from home — a brand-new chapter in your own space. A mix of excitement and nervousness settles in your chest, because living alone requires a lot of responsibility, and you are not sure if you are ready to handle it all.

For the past five minutes, you have been staring at the mountain of boxes crammed into the trunk and backseat of your car like a game of Tetris. You are wondering how you are going to carry so many boxes up to the third floor where your apartment is. With a deep breath, you finally grab one of the boxes, and immediately stagger under its weight.

"Maintenance. Sorry for the inconvenience" reads the sign taped to the elevator doors.

Drops of sweat form on your temples, down the back of your neck, and pool on your spine, making your shirt stick to your skin. Of course it would be hot as hell on the day of your move, and of course the elevator wouldn't be working — talk about lucky.

You take another deep breath, hug the box against your chest, and begin climbing the stairs slowly, careful not to lose your balance.

Your arms are trembling and your breathing is almost as heavy as the box by the time you finally reach the first floor, forcing you to set it down for a moment to rest. But just as you pick it up again, mentally preparing for the next flight of stairs, the sound of footsteps coming down from above catches you off guard.

A man is coming down the stairs. He’s tall, wearing a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the prominent veins on his forearms. His jaw is sharp — probably sharper than any knife you’ve ever seen. He looks so put-together that you suddenly feel embarrassed by your sweaty face and disheveled state.

Seeing you, he stops immediately, his eyebrows furrowing with mild concern. "Whoa. Let me help you with that." His voice is low and smooth, the kind of voice that sends a shiver down your spine before you can stop it.

You blush, heat rising from your neck to your cheeks. "Oh, you don’t have to. I can manage—"

"I insist," he replies gently, waiting with his hands hovering, giving you the choice. You let him take the box, and the relief is immediate — your arms practically sing in gratitude. He lifts it as if it weighs nothing, cradling it against his chest with just one arm — the same box you were struggling to carry with both. "I’m Jay, by the way."

You quickly wipe the sweat from your forehead and try to fix your hair because you want to look at least a little presentable for the incredibly good-looking man helping you. "Thank you so much. I’m y/n. I’m moving in today, to apartment 3B."

Jay’s expression softens, and a warm smile spreads across his face. "3B? That’s interesting. I live right next door, in 3A." He nods toward the stairs. "Looks like we’re neighbors." He gestures ahead. "After you."

You both climb the remaining stairs together and your heart still pounding. You can’t tell if it’s from the physical effort earlier or from his company. Because of the nerves, the words start tumbling out before you can stop them.

"I’m starting college this week. I got accepted and everything, and I was so excited when I found this apartment. It’s the first time I’ve ever lived away from home, so I’m really thrilled… but also kind of terrified? Like, what if I get lost on campus? What if my classes are way harder than I expected? I brought way too much stuff, I’m kind of attached to my things, you know?" You let out a breathless laugh. "Sorry, I’m probably talking too much. I get really chatty when I’m nervous."

Jay glances at you as you walk, the box still balanced effortlessly in his arms. He doesn’t look annoyed — in fact, he seems amused, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You’re not talking too much. It’s a big change, but you’re doing great."

You bite your lower lip, watching him as you climb. There is something intriguing about him that sparks your curiosity. "And you? Are you a student too, or…?"

He chuckles softly, shaking his head. "No, I’ve already graduated. I work at a company downtown." He says it casually, offering no further details — which only makes you even more curious.

You reach the landing of the second floor and have to stop to catch your breath, while Jay doesn’t even seem slightly winded — it’s honestly impressive. "My parents helped me pack my bags, but they’re hours away now. It’s exciting, though. New city, new people. I just hope I don’t ruin everything."

"You won’t," Jay says gently. "Everyone feels like that at the beginning. The nervousness is normal. Besides, you seem like you have a good head on your shoulders. You’ll find your rhythm." He sets the box down carefully in front of your door. "Ready for another round?"

The words hit you like a spark. "Ready for another round." And before you can help it, your mind immediately drifts, imagining Jay on top of you, his strong body pressing you into the mattress, that same low voice murmuring the question against your neck while his hands pinned your wrists above your head. Heat flooded your face and settled lower in your belly.

You quickly shake your head, trying to push the thought away, desperately hoping your blush isn't too obvious. "Yes, let's do it."

He carries the rest of the boxes for you, going up and down the stairs multiple times. Meanwhile, you keep rambling nonstop about what you are studying, where you are from, and how you are feeling about this new phase of your life. He listens as if he genuinely cares, and even though you can’t quite place the age difference between you two, you feel surprisingly comfortable with him.

When the last box finally makes it through the door, you stand in the hallway with a grateful smile. "Thank you so much, Jay. Honestly. I don’t know what I would have done without you."

"Glad I could help. Moving is a big step. If you need anything else, I’m right next door." With that, he returns to his own apartment, leaving you surrounded by a sea of boxes that will clearly take hours to unpack.

A few days pass. You unpack — not everything, just the most important things. Your first classes are overwhelming. You get lost twice, accidentally walk into the wrong lecture hall, and sit through an entire lecture on quantum physics before realizing your mistake. But as embarrassing as it was, that mistake ended up leading you to a guy named Jake, who turned out to be incredibly nice and cute.

Now you are standing outside Jay’s door with a plate of cupcakes in your hands, ready to properly thank him for helping you with the move. The thing is, you can’t really bake; you tried making the cupcakes yourself but ended up burning the batch, so you had to go to the bakery on the corner to buy a box of them instead. They look a bit too professional, but since he doesn't know about your complete lack of kitchen skills, you're confident he won't suspect a thing — especially since you took them out of the box and arranged them nicely on a plate just to be extra safe.

You knock on his door, your heart pounding hard in your chest. He opens it a moment later, and his face lights up when he sees you. "Hey, neighbor," he says, leaning against the doorframe. "How are classes going?"

"Good," you reply, pushing the plate forward with a little too much force. "Great, actually. I only got lost twice today, which is an improvement." Your smile widens. "I brought these for you. For helping me with the move. I made them myself."

He looks at the cupcakes, then back at you, this time raising an eyebrow. "You made these?"

"Yes," you say, nodding firmly with your chin held high, trying to look confident. "From scratch. All by myself. I’m pretty good at baking."

He picks up one of the cupcakes and examines it, narrowing his eyes as he brings it closer to his face. You feel your determination starting to crumble.

"Really?" he asks with a smile, clearly testing how long you will keep up the lie. "From scratch?"

You hold his gaze for three whole seconds before you look away in embarrassment. Your shoulders drop and your face turns as red as a tomato. "Okay, fine. I bought them at the bakery on the corner. I took them out of the box so you would think I’m a functional adult who knows how to bake." You laugh at yourself. "I tried making them the other day, Jay. I set off the smoke alarm. I’m a danger to this entire building."

He throws his head back and laughs — not mocking you, but with a genuine, warm laugh that makes you feel less embarrassed about pretending you had baked the cupcakes. "Oh my God, you actually burned them?"

"I once burned noodles. I’m a total disaster in the kitchen."

He steps aside, still smiling, and gestures for you to come in. "Alright, come in. I’ll split one of these ‘homemade’ cupcakes with you. It’s the least I can do for someone who put so much effort into the task."

Your mom’s voice whispers in the back of your mind: "Don’t talk to strangers and definitely don’t go into their apartments, sweetheart." But is he really a stranger? He is your neighbor who carried all your boxes without complaining, and the way he stands there holding the plate of cupcakes with that smile makes you not hesitate at all.

You follow him inside. He leads you to the kitchen, grabs two small plates, and carefully unwraps a vanilla cupcake, splitting it in half before sliding one piece toward you.

"Have a seat," he says, pointing to the stool by the kitchen island.

"So, you mentioned you work downtown? What exactly do you do?" you ask as you sit down.

"I’m a lawyer," he replies, taking a bite of his half and nodding in approval. "Good choice of bakery, by the way."

You laugh, biting into yours. "A lawyer. That makes a lot of sense. You have this… I don’t know how to say it without sounding weird, but you have this organized vibe. Like you’re really good at arguing without even raising your voice."

His smile widens. "People have definitely told me that before that I have a ‘courtroom voice.’ It’s just my normal voice, only lower and slower. People tend to listen when you don’t yell."

"You’ll have to show me someday. If I ever get in legal trouble, I’ll know exactly who to call."

"Please don’t get in legal trouble. But if you do, I’m your guy."

The conversation flows just as easily as it did on moving day, and before you know it, you’re venting about your annoying professor, how massive the campus is, and all the times you’ve already managed to get lost. Between all the talking, the cupcakes completely disappear, leaving the coffee he made to sit cold and barely touched in your mug. There’s just something about him that instantly puts you at ease.

Despite the age gap, he never talks down to you or makes you feel small, which makes talking to him completely effortless. It’s just so comforting to have someone around who listens to you with that much care and attention — especially when he happens to be incredibly good-looking, leaving you totally hooked since the very first day.

As he walks you to the door when you finally get up to leave, he snatches a pen and a post-it note to scribble something down. Before you know it, he’s pressing the paper into your palm, his fingers brushing lightly against yours and sending a sudden warmth to your cheeks as he says, "Here’s my number, in case you ever need anything."

"Thank you," you say, smiling a little too wide.

He nods. "Anytime. Seriously. Don’t be a stranger."

────────

The grocery bags dig painfully into your fingers as you stand in the lobby, staring at the elevator doors that are still under maintenance. You look at them as if a miracle might happen — maybe if you stare for one more second, God will take pity and finally fix it. Nothing happens, of course, which makes you let out a long sigh of frustration. It has been days since you moved in and the elevator is still not working.

Your arms already hurt from carrying way too many bags. You definitely should have made two trips, but stubbornness won.

Reaching the second floor is pure torture; your arms are burning, those plastic handles are digging right into your palms, and the bags keep swinging awkwardly against your legs. Trying to stop and adjust your grip only makes things worse, to the point where you're seriously considering just sitting right there on the stairs and crying.

You finally collapse against the wall at the third-floor landing, letting the bags slide to the floor just to catch your breath. Right then, the door to 3A clicks open and Jay steps out — perfectly dressed for work with that annoyingly handsome lawyer look that instantly makes your stomach do a little flip.

He sees you immediately. For a second, his eyes take in the whole scene — your flushed face, the many overloaded bags, and the way you are leaning against the wall breathing heavily. A light, amused laugh escapes him. It is not mocking, just genuinely entertained, as if he expected nothing less from you.

"Carrying heavy stuff again?" he asks, walking toward you. "You really don’t learn, do you?"

Before you can even open your mouth to protest, he is already reaching for the bags, picking them all up at once as if they weigh absolutely nothing. His strong arms support the weight so effortlessly that his biceps press against the fabric of his dress shirt, making it completely impossible for you not to stare.

He turns and walks toward your door, carrying everything like it is nothing.

At your doorstep, Jay sets all the bags down carefully against the wall and turns to face you. His expression is calm, almost unreadable, but there is something more in it. You understand it the moment he starts speaking in a gently scolding tone. "You really shouldn’t carry so much at once," he says, crossing his arms. "It’s not safe and it’s clearly too heavy for you. Make two or three trips next time. Look at your hands, they’re all red. You were hurting yourself. Why? Because you’re way too stubborn, huh?"

You glance down at your palms, and they are red where the plastic handles dug in. "I was fine," you say, though even you do not believe it. "I almost made it."

"Don’t be stubborn."

"You sound exactly like my dad," you reply, crossing your arms to mimic him. "He’s always telling me I’m too stubborn for my own good."

Jay’s lips curve into a small smile. "Because you really are," he says with so much certainty that you cannot even argue back. "I’m serious. Next time, make multiple trips or just text me. I’d rather help than watch you struggle like that."

There is a protective tone in his voice that makes your cheeks warm with a mix of embarrassment and something else stirring low in your stomach. He is lecturing you like a child, but somehow it sounds kind of hot coming from him.

Then he glances at the grocery bags again. Now that the scolding is over, he seems to actually pay attention to what is inside them. He picks one up and looks inside — it is full of frozen meals, instant noodles, ultra-processed food, and canned goods. "Look, I know you’re in college now, but that doesn’t mean you have to live on processed food. It’s quick, sure, but you need real fresh stuff, not just things that come out of a can. Eating like this long-term isn’t good for you. You could get sick."

You blink, caught off guard by the extra lecture. He is fully in dad-mode now, and there is something strangely attractive about how seriously he takes it, like he is genuinely worried about you. "Okay, okay. I get it… I already told you I’m a disaster in the kitchen, so I just grabbed whatever is easiest so I don’t starve."

Jay’s expression softens a little. "I’m not trying to scold you. I just know how easy it is to fall into bad habits when you’re living on your own for the first time." He pauses and adds in a gentler voice, "If you ever need help in the kitchen, you know where to find me. I’m not exactly a chef, but I know how to make real meals."

Your mind wanders again because you can’t help it — you picture him in your kitchen, standing right behind you while teaching you how to cook, his hands guiding yours, the warmth of his body against your back…

"I’ll try to do better, I swear. Thanks for helping again. I think I owe you something now. How about brownies as a thank you this time?"

Jay shakes his head, chuckling softly. "You don’t owe me anything. Just be more careful next time." He glances at the heavy bags one more time. "Need help carrying these inside?"

You shake your head quickly. "I can handle it from here. I bet you’re busy, you look like you’re heading to work."

He checks the watch on his wrist. "Yeah, I have a meeting soon, but the offer stands anytime." Before turning to leave, he gives you one last firm look. "Take care of yourself."

After he leaves, you drag the bags inside, one half first and then the other, just like Jay suggested.

That night, you are sprawled on the couch, scrolling through your phone, when you open your contacts. You saved Jay’s number, of course, but you have been telling yourself you don’t need to text him. It is an emergency-only number, but then you think about him carrying your groceries, the effortless way he took them from you, and the gentle scolding in his voice. Before you can overthink it, you are already typing a message to him.

────────

It is already past midnight and you have been staring at the same page of your textbook long enough for your vision to blur. Your brain has officially given up — it is impossible to absorb a single word more after hours of studying.

You are about to slam the book shut to take out your stress on it and drag yourself to bed when a soft knock sounds at the door. Your heart jumps slightly because you were not expecting anyone, especially not at this hour.

Another knock.

You get up slowly, stretching your sore muscles, and walk to the door. When you open it, Jay is standing there, looking different tonight without his formal work clothes and lawyer posture. He is wearing a simple white t-shirt, gray sweatpants, and is barefoot. He looks relaxed, holding a bottle of red wine — as if he made the sudden decision to knock on your door and came straight over without even putting shoes on.

"Hey," he says, his low voice making your stomach flip. His eyes scan over you, taking in your tired face, messy hair, and pajamas. Something in his expression softens.

"Hey," you reply softly, matching his tone.

"Hey," he repeats, then laughs when he realizes what he just did.

"Hey," you answer again, this time with a small smile. "You already said that."

"I know." He laughs again, shaking his head. "I just… it’s late."

"Very late."

"I know." He lifts the bottle slightly. "I bought this earlier today but… it’s no fun drinking alone."

You look at the wine, then back at him. The way he is standing there — messy hair, ridiculously handsome, and a little too soft — makes going back to bed suddenly seem like a very stupid choice. "Are you inviting me to drink with you?"

"I’m asking if you want to take a break. From everything."

The way he looks at you with those inviting eyes makes the decision easy, but you decide to tease him first. "I don’t usually drink with strangers."

"We’re not strangers," he says, his voice soft. Your teasing does not seem to faze him.

"We’re not exactly friends either," you reply, tilting your head and studying his reaction.

The corner of his mouth lifts into a small, almost lazy smile. "Then let’s change that."

You pretend to consider it for a moment, even though you were already fully committed the second you saw him at your door. "Mmm, okay. But let’s do it at your apartment. Mine is a mess."

His smile widens, crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Alright, whatever you want."

You grab your keys and follow him, also barefoot, to the door next to yours. His apartment is clean and organized as always, which makes the space feel strangely comforting. In the kitchen, he pours two glasses of wine and hands you one, his fingers brushing against yours for half a second and sending a spark through your body.

"Cheers," he says, raising his glass.

"Cheers," you repeat, gently clinking your glass against his.

You take a sip and let out a small, involuntary hum of appreciation — it is much better than you expected, probably the most expensive wine you have ever tasted. He gestures toward the living room. "Come on, let’s sit," he says, leading the way to the couch. You follow and settle onto his couch, trying to look more relaxed than you actually feel.

"This is nice," you say, taking another sip.

He sits on the other end of the couch — close enough to talk comfortably, but far enough to be polite. "It’s just wine." He takes a sip, watching you over the rim of his glass.

"I mean relaxing… not thinking about classes for the first time."

He nods, understanding. "You think about classes a lot."

"It’s pretty much my entire life right now," you admit with an awkward little laugh, taking another sip.

"I remember going through that too. Everything revolving around exams, assignments, and exhausting responsibilities."

You tilt your head, studying him. "You make it sound like ancient history."

"Sometimes it feels like it." He takes a sip, not breaking eye contact. "I still remember when I was in college. I used to think a bad grade would ruin everything." A dry laugh escapes him as he shakes his head. "There’s so much pressure."

Suddenly you find yourself wanting to know more about him, drawn by the experienced tone in his voice and posture. The wine is already loosening your tongue, so you ask. "How old are you, anyway?"

A small, playful smile appears on his lips. "I’m old enough."

You narrow your eyes, trying to hold back a smile. "That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only one you’re getting." He takes another sip.

"That’s annoying," you say, leaning forward slightly and resting your elbows on your knees.

"Maybe I am annoying." He shrugs, but there is a sparkle in his eyes that tells you he is enjoying this.

"You’re avoiding the question," you accuse, pointing a finger at him.

"I’m protecting my privacy."

"From what? Your neighbor?" You laugh, raising an eyebrow.

"Especially from my neighbor."

You pout, pretending to be hurt. "Fine. Keep your secrets."

"Everyone has secrets," he says, his voice dropping to a lower, more intimate tone.

"I don’t." You are not even sure why you say it. Maybe it is the wine, or the way he is looking at you right now.

"Everyone does." He holds his ground. "You have secrets too."

Your pulse quickens. "I don’t."

"Yes, you do."

You swallow hard. The air between you feels thicker now, charged with something you can’t quite name. You shift slightly on the sofa and notice how easy it would be to reach out and touch him. "So you have a lot of secrets, huh?" you ask, curious.

"Yes. Quite a few."

"Like what?" you press, wanting to see what he will give you.

"If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets anymore." His lips curve into a slow, almost predatory smile.

"Touché." You raise your glass in an ironic toast, making him laugh.

A comfortable but heavy silence settles between you for a moment, thick with tension as you exchange glances and take slow sips. The wine is definitely doing its job — making your words come out slower, your laughter easier, and your body warmer.

"How old are you?" he asks, breaking the silence.

You blink, caught off guard. "Me?"

"Yes, you." He leans forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. "You asked me, so I’m asking you back."

You smile, deciding to play his game. "I’m old enough."

A low, surprised laugh escapes him — rich and genuine. "That’s my line."

"I know." You take another sip to hide your smile.

"You stole my line."

You just shrug. "I borrowed it."

"That’s not how borrowing works."

"Yes, it is."

He laughs again. "You’re impossible."

"Am I? What else?" You raise an eyebrow, challenging him.

"You’re something," he says, his voice dropping again.

"What?" You are not sure what he means by that.

"I don’t know yet." He keeps his eyes fixed on you. "But I’m figuring it out."

You feel your cheeks heat up and take another sip of wine to try to hide your reaction. Jay, however, keeps watching you, and you can tell he noticed.

"You know what I’ve noticed?" By now your voice is a little slurred, so you have to be careful with the words that come out of your mouth.

"What?" His wine glass is almost empty. He sets it on the coffee table and turns all of his attention to you.

You lean back on the couch, turning to face him more directly. Your knee brushes against his thigh, but neither of you pulls away. "You don’t talk much about yourself."

He tilts his head, frowning slightly. "Don’t I?"

"No. You listen, but you don’t share. Like, you’re dodging right now. You give answers, but you don’t really answer."

"Well, I’m trying to protect myself," he says simply.

"Protect yourself from what?" You lean forward, genuinely curious now.

"From getting too attached." The words are honest, and you definitely were not expecting them.

You stare at him, your hand frozen halfway to taking another sip. "From what?"

"To you." His voice is almost a whisper, making your pulse race and your skin flush.

"Why would you get too attached to me?"

He stays silent for a moment, his eyes tracing over you as if he wants to memorize every detail. "Because it’s easy to get attached to you."

"No, it's not," you say, shaking your head as a small, incredulous laugh escapes you.

"It is." His voice is gentle but firm, leaving no room for argument. "You just don’t see it."

You look away, feeling your entire body grow warmer. "You’re dodging again."

"I’m being honest." He leans forward slightly, and you can smell him now — a masculine scent mixed with the light sweetness of the wine.

You set your glass on the coffee table and turn to face him completely, the wine making you bolder. "You’re giving me half-answers. You’re telling me just enough to make me curious, but not enough."

He stays quiet for a moment, thinking. "What do you want to know?"

You hold his gaze. "Something real. Truly honest."

Silence stretches between you, thick with something heavy and suffocating that you can't quite name. Then he whispers, "I think you’re beautiful."

Your breath catches, and for a second you are not sure you heard him correctly. "That’s not—" you begin, but he interrupts you.

"It’s honest."

"You can’t just say that," your voice barely comes out as a whisper.

"I just did." His gaze doesn’t leave yours for even half a second.

"It’s too… direct."

"You asked for it." He says it simply, like it is the most natural thing in the world.

"You’re a tease," you say, not sure if you are complaining or not.

"Wait until you find out what else I am. You want to know me? Then make sure you’re ready."

You do not know what to say or what to do, so you look away, your face burning.

When he finally walks you to your door, you are a little unsteady on your feet. He steadies you with a gentle hand on your waist, and the touch is enough to send shivers through your body. "I’m fine," you murmur, even though you are swaying slightly.

"You’re drunk," he says, smiling at your messy state.

"I’m a little tipsy," you reply, giving him a blurry-eyed look.

"You’re drunk."

"It’s the same thing," you mutter dismissively.

"No, it’s not." He is looking at you with that warm, steady gaze that makes your knees feel weak.

You smile, light and tipsy. "Yes, it is."

At your door, you miss the lock twice. He laughs softly before helping you. "Thank you," you whisper. "For this, for the wine, the company, and everything."

His lips curve into a small, warm smile. "Good night, old enough.:

You smile again — you seem to always be smiling when he is around. "Good night, old man."

You step inside, close the door, and lean against it with your heart racing and your whole body warm from the wine and his words — still smiling like an idiot.

A few minutes later, you are curled up in bed when your phone buzz on the nightstand.

────────

You have been tossing and turning on the mattress for what feels like hours — shifting positions, turning to the other side, but nothing helps. You can’t fall asleep — you mind refuses to stop, racing with thoughts about exams, deadlines, and the weight of all your responsibilities pressing down on your shoulders. You need air, you need to feel like you are not suffocating in that apartment, surrounded by boxes you haven't even had the time to unpack yet. There are several unfinished notes on your desk that constantly remind you that you are not doing enough, no matter how hard you try.

So you go up to the rooftop. The cool night air hits your face and lets you breathe again.

The city is an endless sea of lights — countless tiny glowing points in the darkness that remind you how small you really are. You sit on the old bench near the edge of the roof, pulling your knees up to your chest and wrapping your arms around them like a shield.

Your thoughts slowly begin to calm as the minutes pass, and the knot in your chest loosens just a little.

Then the door creaks open behind you.

You turn quickly, your body instantly on alert and your heart racing. And there he is — Jay. He is wearing sweatpants and a black shirt, something about this casual, almost domestic look makes your heart skip a beat. He sees you immediately and stops. Surprise flashes across his face for a second before it turns into that familiar half-smile.

"Can’t sleep either?" His voice is low, almost intimate in a way that makes you shiver.

You shake your head. "I have too much on my mind right now…"

He nods as if he completely understands — and he really does. Walking toward you, he stops at a respectful distance before sitting on the bench beside you — close enough for you to feel the warmth of his body, but not so close that he invades your personal space. "Mind if I join you?"

"Not at all." You shift over a little even though there is already enough space.

He leans back, looking up at the sky, which is beautiful tonight with a full moon and stars shining brightly. The silence stretches between you. He doesn’t force conversation; he simply sits there observing the sky and the city with you. The silence is not awkward — it is actually comforting, especially when you are with him.

"I can’t sleep," you admit, breaking the silence with words that slip out before you can stop them. "I try, but my brain just won’t stop. Every time I close my eyes, I start thinking about all the things I have to do, all the things I haven’t done, and all the ways I’m probably going to mess everything up."

"What’s on your mind?" His voice is gentle and patient as always, showing that he is ready to listen.

"Everything." You let out a shaky sigh. "College, exams, being away from my family for the first time… It’s a lot. I thought I was ready, that I could handle it. But sometimes it feels like I’m drowning and I don’t know how to swim. Literally."

"I know how that feels," he says after a long moment of silence. His eyes stay fixed on yours, and there is something raw in them — something honest. "I remember feeling exactly like that. Like everything was too much and I was too small to handle it."

"You’re talking about yourself. That’s new," you say softly. "You always ask about me, but you never—"

"You already have enough on your plate," he cuts in gently.

You blink, caught off guard. "What?"

"You’re stressed about college, adjusting to a new city, and far from your family," he keeps his gaze steady on you, his expression sincere. "You don’t need to hear about my problems too."

"That’s not how it works." You shake your head as something warm and confusing blooms in your chest. "We’re supposed to share things. That’s what—" You pause, searching for the right word. "That’s what friends do."

"I don’t want to burden you when you’re already dealing with so much, and I certainly don’t want to make it worse."

You stay quiet for a moment, his words stirring something you cannot quite name — but it feels good. "That’s really… kind," you finally say.

"I try." He shrugs, a small smile playing on his lips.

The silence settles again, and you sit together quietly for a while longer. Then, out of nowhere, he tilts his head and asks, "How’s your succulent doing?"

You laugh at the unexpected question. "You’re asking about my plant?"

"I remember you mentioned it." He turns toward you — fully turning his body — with a small playful smile on his lips. "I bet you gave it a name."

You shake your head, still smiling. "I haven’t named it yet… but it’s still alive, which is honestly impressive."

"You’re supposed to water it," he says in a gently scolding tone.

"I know." You look away, feeling a little guilty about slowly killing a plant.

"But you forget." There is no judgment in his voice, only warm amusement.

"I forget." You laugh — something you always do when you are with him. "I have a lot on my mind, okay?"

"You’re a plant killer." He smiles, making you grin even wider.

"I’m not a plant killer! I’m just… forgetful. It is surviving, which is more than I can say about myself sometimes."

Something in your words changes his expression. It is still gentle, but now there is a hint of concern. "You’re doing better than you think."

You don’t know what to say, so you just look at him, with the words stuck in your throat.

"Does the succulent at least have company?" he asks after a moment, his voice light as always.

You blink, confused by the sudden question. "What?"

"Other plants, maybe some flowers, something to keep it company. Plants get lonely too."

You laugh, shaking your head. "I don’t think it gets lonely. It’s just a plant, after all."

"All living things have feelings. It definitely feels lonely," he says with so much conviction that you almost believe him.

"That’s not scientifically accurate," you reply, not entirely sure if what you are saying is accurate either.

"I never said it was." He shrugs. "I’m a lawyer. I deal with arguments, not facts."

"They’re the same thing."

"Not at all." He shifts closer to you on the bench, making sure you are listening. "Facts are objective. Arguments are subjective. I make a living turning subjective arguments into something that sounds like objective facts."

"That’s… something. And you’re so weird."

"I’m just concerned about your plant’s loneliness." His voice is incredibly serious, showing that he is taking this very seriously.

"You’re worried about my plant," you say, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, just like I worry about you."

You don’t know what to say again — Jay has a way of leaving you speechless. Your cheeks flush and you look away. "I’ve never received flowers before, anyway…" you say softly, the secret slipping from your lips.

Jay is not sure he heard you correctly. "What did you say?"

Even though you hesitate, you repeat it, louder this time. "I’ve never received flowers." You look down at your hands, fidgeting with your fingers. "I had a boyfriend before, but he was an idiot. He never did anything romantic like giving me flowers or taking me for dates."

He stays silent for a long moment, his gaze fixed on you while your heart pounds loudly in your ears. He is thinking about something — you can tell by the way his jaw tightens. "Would you want to go on one? With me."

You stop breathing the moment you hear his words and everything around you seems to freeze. "What?"

"A date. A real date where I pick you up, open doors for you, and take you somewhere nice. It doesn’t have to be romantic if you don’t want it to be. It can just be two people spending time together. Whatever makes you feel comfortable."

Your heart is beating so hard you are sure he can hear it, your mouth is dry, your palms are sweaty, and the words feel stuck in your throat again. Jay is asking you out on a date — a real date. The age gap has been on your mind since the day you met — he is a lawyer and you are still trying to figure out how to live on your own, but every interaction with him feels safe, like he truly sees you.

"Jay, I—" You stop, taking a shaky breath.

"You don’t have to answer right now," he says gently, giving you time to think.

"No, I—" You take another deep breath, and this time the words come out steady. "Yes. Yes, I want that."

His face transforms — a slow, warm smile spreads across his lips and reaches his eyes, making your stomach flip and your heart race just like always.

"Great," he says softly. "I’ll plan something."

A shy laugh escapes you as the reality of it sinks in. "What do you like to do on dates? I’m sure you’ve been on plenty."

He leans forward a little, resting his elbow on his knee. "I want to know what you like. That’s what matters right now, tell me your preferences so I can plan something good for you."

As you think for a moment, you suddenly feel embarrassed by how limited your preferences are. "I’m kind of picky, honestly. I like pasta, I hate anything too spicy, and I don’t like overly sweet desserts. Oh, and I’m not a big fan of seafood unless it’s fried. Is that too much?"

Jay listens attentively, nodding as if he is absorbing every detail. "Not at all. Being picky isn’t a problem, it actually makes it easier to get it right." He pauses, a playful glint appearing in his eyes. "You know, for someone who’s a disaster in the kitchen, you have very specific opinions, princess."

The nickname lands softly between you — affectionate and teasing, with a hint of warmth. Your breath catches, your face flushes instantly, and you lower your head to hide the redness in your cheeks and the smile forming on your lips.

"I… You can’t just say that," you murmur, looking at him through your lashes.

"Why not?" He is smiling even more now, clearly enjoying your reaction. "It suits you. You have high standards and you know exactly what you want, even if you pretend you don’t."

You cover your face with both hands for a second, peeking through your fingers. "You’re going to make me regret saying yes."

"Too late," he murmurs, his voice low and affectionate. "You already said yes."

You lower your hands and meet his gaze, your heart racing in the best possible way. Jay stands up suddenly and offers you his hand. "Come on, it’s getting late and you have class tomorrow. Let’s get you back inside before you freeze."

You take his hand — which is so much bigger than yours — and let him help you up. He doesn’t let go afterward, his fingers stay intertwined with yours as you walk together toward your floor. The elevator is no longer broken, but you both take the stairs anyway, wanting to prolong the moment a little longer.

Stopping at your door, he tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear with his free hand. “I'll text you about the date,” he says softly. "We’ll pick a night that works."

You nod, still feeling a little shy about everything. "Okay… Good night, Jay."

"Good night, princess."

────────

The next day, you are more nervous than you have ever been. Every notification on your phone makes your heart skip a beat, terrified that it is Jay confirming the date. Your stomach is in knots with a mix of panic and hope, even though you want to go on this date, you are still incredibly nervous about it.

Your phone buzzes while you are in the library trying to study. "Friday at seven? I’ll take care of everything. Just be ready for a proper night out."

The words "proper night out" send a shiver through you. He is taking this seriously, treating it as something special, even though he said it didn’t have to be romantic. Still, it means something. Smiling so wide that your cheeks hurt, you text back agreeing.

When Friday finally arrives, the butterflies in your stomach refuse to calm down. In fact, they become even more restless as the time of the date gets closer. Hours before, you start getting ready — taking your time as you choose an outfit that makes you feel confident and beautiful. You spend extra time on your makeup, keeping it natural but enhancing your eyes and lips, making sure everything is perfect.

Exactly at seven, you take the elevator down. Jay had insisted on waiting outside the building instead of knocking on your door. "I want you to have the full experience," he had texted earlier, and the gesture made you smile despite your nerves. The moment you step out onto the sidewalk, you see him leaning against his sleek black car parked at the curb. He looks unfairly handsome in a tailored dark shirt and pants.

For a moment, he simply looks at you — slowly scanning from your face to your dress and back up again as his smile widens. "You look beautiful," he says, taking a step closer. "Really, truly beautiful."

Your cheeks flush quickly and a smile forms on your lips. "Thank you. You look really handsome too."

Before you can say anything else, he reaches inside the car and pulls out a beautiful bouquet of flowers. "I remembered what you said on the rooftop…"

The bouquet is perfect, wrapped so beautifully that it makes your chest tighten. "Jay…" you whisper as you reach out to take the flowers. "They’re beautiful. I don’t even know what to say."

Without thinking, you give him a grateful hug. His arms wrap around you immediately, one hand resting on your lower back while the other gently caresses the nape of your neck. "You don’t have to say anything. Just enjoy tonight. That’s all I want."

When you pull away, still smiling widely, he tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear and asks, "Ready to go, princess?"

You nod, holding the flowers like a lifeline. He opens the car door for you, waiting until you are settled before closing it gently. When he slides into the driver’s seat, he looks at you with a playful smile. "Seatbelt, please. Safety first."

You laugh and buckle up. "Such a gentleman."

"Only for you."

The drive starts peacefully, soft music playing in the background as you talk. He asks about your day and teases you lightly when you admit that you spent half of your class daydreaming about tonight and that it took you forever to choose what to wear.

You can’t stop stealing glances at him — the way his hands rest easily on the steering wheel, those large hands with long fingers, and the way he looks at you at red lights as if making sure you are still real.

After a few minutes, you notice the city lights fading and buildings giving way to trees. "Where are we going?" you ask curiously, realizing he has been driving for a while — much farther than you expected. "This is pretty far from our building. Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?"

Jay laughs, keeping his eyes on the road. "I’m not going to kill you. I’m just taking you to a place I love, and I think you’ll love it too."

The drive takes about thirty minutes, but when you finally arrive, the restaurant leaves you breathless. You immediately understand why he chose it — it is cozy and elegant, with a stunning view of the city. He reserved a intimate corner table with the perfect view.

He pulls out the chair for you, and as soon as you sit down, he leans in slightly to whisper in your ear, "Relax, okay?"

The dinner unfolds perfectly. You order pasta — creamy, exactly the way you like it — and he chooses a steak dish, offering you a bite from his fork with a raised eyebrow that feels far more intimate than it should. You talk a lot, and he listens as always, head tilted and eyes focused only on you.

You tell him about the friendships you are making in college, about the strange noise your AC is making, and absentmindedly mention the doorman. "He’s nice, I think… but sometimes he looks at me like he knows something I don’t."

Jay’s expression shifts with something unreadable for half a second, but he quickly covers it with a soft chuckle. "He’s probably just in a bad mood. Or maybe he sees how much you’re distracting your poor neighbor."

You laugh. "Poor neighbor? You seem to be handling it pretty well."

His foot brushes against yours under the table. "Barely."

In the middle of the conversation, Jay’s phone buzzes on the table. He glances at it, frowns, and silences it, slipping it into his pocket.

But a few minutes later, it buzzed again. Jay sighs. "I need to take this. It’s probably an emergency with a client. I won’t be long. I’m really sorry."

"Go ahead. I’ll be here judging the dessert menu."

He leans in and gives you a quick kiss on your temple before standing up. "I’ll be right back, princess."

The casual display of affection makes your heart race as you watch him walk away. While he is gone, you take a sip of your wine, observe the people around you, and study the dessert menu.

He returns after about five minutes, sliding back into his seat with an apologetic smile. "All sorted. Where were we?"

When the check arrives, Jay pays without hesitation, even though you offered to split it. Outside, the night air is cold, so he drapes his jacket over your shoulders when he notices you shivering. Then he pulls you closer for a moment, wrapping his arms around you. "Thank you for saying yes," he murmurs against your hair.

You look up at him, smiling. "That was the best decision I’ve made in a long time."

The drive back feels shorter than the trip there, unfortunately — you wish this moment could last forever. Jay keeps one hand on the wheel and the other holding yours, his thumb tracing lazy circles that send shivers down your spine. You arrive at the building sooner than you would like, but instead of stopping at the curb, Jay drives into the underground garage.

You unbuckle your seatbelt. "Thank you, Jay. For everything, the flowers, the dinner, the evening… I had a really great time."

He turns to you, that slow smile playing on his lips. "I’m glad, princess."

You reach for the door handle, but his hand moves quickly, wrapping around your wrist and stopping you. Your breath catches at the unexpected contact. "Wait, aren’t you going to thank me properly?"

You blink, confused. "I just did? The hug outside the restaurant and just now."

Jay chuckles, and his gaze shifts into something hungrier. "That was sweet, but I was thinking of something a little more fitting for the end of a perfect night."

Without overthinking it, you lean across the console and give him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Thank you," you whisper again, pulling back to see his reaction.

His smile widens. "Still not enough, princess. Come here."

He cups the back of your neck and pulls you closer. The kiss starts soft, his lips meeting yours hesitantly, and you quickly melt into it, which makes him deepen the kiss while still keeping a slow, deliberate pace. His tongue traces your lower lip, and you part for him with a small sigh.

What begins as one kiss turns into many, you lose count as they grow more intense, hungry, and urgent.

Somehow, you end up climbing over the console. His hands guide your hips until you are straddling his lap in the driver’s seat. The space is tight and the steering wheel presses against your back, but you couldn't care less right now. His hands roam along your sides, sliding up your dress until they rest on your thighs, his thumbs drawing circles that make you whimper against his mouth.

You kiss him again and again, tangling your fingers in his hair and tugging gently, which draws a low groan from him. That only encourages you — hips start moving on their own, pressing against the growing hardness beneath you. The friction makes you gasp, and Jay clearly loves the sight — he squeezes your thighs, encouraging your movements.

"God, you’re incredible," he whispers against your mouth between kisses. "So responsive… so perfect."

Jay pulls back just enough to meet your eyes, breathing hard. "You deserve better than this, princess. Our first time shouldn’t be in a car like a couple of impatient teenagers."

You kiss him again, more intensely, nipping at his lower lip. "I don’t care, I want you right here."

He groans, sliding his hand into your hair to pull you into another hungry kiss. "You’re so eager, princess… and so perfect grinding against me like this."

His mouth moves down to your neck, sucking lightly and drawing more whimpers from you. Your movements become restless, rubbing harder, chasing friction. "Jay…" you whisper between kisses. "I need you, please."

His hands find the hem of your dress, slowly pulling it up inch by inch with clear appreciation until he discards it onto the passenger seat. "Beautiful," he murmurs reverently as he stares at your tits. "So beautiful." He leans down, pressing hot, wet kisses along the soft skin, then his tongue circles one nipple before sucking it deeply into his mouth.

You arch your back, a moan escaping your lips. He gives the same attention to the other tit, licking, sucking, and grazing the sensitive skin with his teeth while his hand massages and caresses the first. “You taste so good,” he praises, his voice muffled. "These perfect tits in my mouth… you’re already trembling. So sensitive for me."

He kisses lower, along your sternum and ribs, then back up — worshipping every inch of you while you keep grinding against him. Your panties are soaked, and the friction against his hardness only turns you on more.

He waits until you’re trembling in his lap before he finally moves. Reaching between you, he lowers his pants and boxers just enough to free himself, and when he does, your eyes widen. He is big — thick and hard. The sight makes your mouth water and heat pool low in your belly.

Jay reaches into the glove compartment, fumbling for a condom. He tears it open and rolls it down his length with surprising skill while you watch, hypnotized and a little intimidated by his size and thickness. "You’re… really big," you say softly.

Jay notices your nervousness and caresses your cheek, trying to soothe you. "We’ll go slow, princess. I’ve got you. My good girl can take it."

He helps you shift your panties to the side, guiding you as you sink down onto him. The stretch is intense but delicious — you take him inch by inch, breathing deeply as he fills you completely, murmuring praises nonstop. "That’s it, princess… so tight, so good for me… so fucking perfect around me."

You bury your face in his neck as you sink all the way down, taking him completely until your ass is pressed firmly against his lap. "Oh God… you’re so, so big," you moan, still adjusting to the intense stretch.

The age difference flashes through your mind — he is older, more experienced, probably used to women who knew exactly what they were doing. You want to be good for him, so once you feel ready, you start moving — bouncing with almost frantic energy, desperate to please him. Your hips move and grind fast, determined.

"Easy, princess," Jay groans, gripping your hips to slow you down. "Slow… just like that. You feel incredible, but there’s no rush. I’m not going anywhere."

You moan, your cheeks burning with a mix of embarrassment and arousal. "I just… you’ve probably been with so many others who were better at this. I want to make it good for you. I want to be the best—"

He cuts you off with a deep kiss, then pulls back to look into your eyes while still guiding your movements into a slower, deeper rhythm. "Hey, none of that. It’s just you right now, and you’re already the best, baby. Look at how perfectly you take me." He thrusts up gently to emphasize his words, drawing a moan from you. "You’re my princess."

You relax into his words and the rhythm he sets, moving your hips in deep, grinding motions instead of frantic bouncing. It feels even better this way — his thickness brushing against every sensitive spot inside you. "Like this?" you ask breathlessly, your voice shy but needy.

"Just like that," he praises, his voice rough. "So good for me. So wet… so tight. You’re perfect, listen to those pretty sounds you make."

You keep whispering to him the whole time — shy confessions and soft, breathless questions. "You feel so good, Jay… I feel so full. Does it feel good for you? Tell me if you’re enjoying it."

He groans, his hands roaming over your back, squeezing your ass, then returning to your tits so he can lick and suck them while you ride him. "I love it. I love everything you do. The way you squeeze me… the way you say my name. You’re ruining me, princess."

The pleasure builds uncontrollably, intense and overwhelming, leaving both of you sweaty and breathless. He slides a hand between you to your clit, circling it with his thumb in time with your movements. You tremble hard, moaning and gasping, telling him how close you are, how good he feels, and how much you have wanted this since the day you moved in.

When you come, your walls pulse tightly around his thickness and your body shakes as you cry out his name. Jay follows right after, holding you firmly against him as he finishes into the condom with a deep groan, murmuring endless praises. "That’s it, come for me… so beautiful giving yourself to me completely… my perfect girl."

You collapse against his chest, both of you breathing hard. He wraps his arms around you tightly, kissing your temple while his hands gently caress your back. "You okay?" he whispers after a while. "Was it too much?"

"It was perfect," you murmur, nuzzling into his neck. "Better than I imagined. Thank you for slowing me down when I got too excited. I probably embarrassed myself, right?"

He shakes his head lightly and laughs, then he gives you one last kiss on your temple and helps you climb back into the passenger seat, watching as you slip your dress back on. "Don’t forget these," he says, reaching for the bouquet.

You take it with a happy smile. "I wouldn’t dare."

He walks around the car to open your door and intertwines his fingers with yours as you walk toward the elevator. Once inside, he pulls you close and kisses you the entire way up to your floor.

"Your place tonight?" you ask against his lips.

Jay’s hand slides to your lower back, pulling you even closer. "Yes, because I’m not done with you yet. I need you in my bed. The thought of you in my sheets, smelling like me when you wake up… it drives me crazy."

The elevator doors open and he pulls you down the hallway toward his door, unlocking it effortlessly. The moment you are both inside, he takes the flowers from your hand, sets them on the counter, and turns to you with hungry eyes. "Come here," he growls, pulling you into a deep, desperate kiss. His hands cup your face first, then slide down your body. "Let me take care of you properly this time."

He leads you to the bedroom and there, he undresses you slowly, admiring and kissing every inch of exposed skin. When you are completely naked, he steps back and looks at you with pure admiration and desire. "Fuck, look at you… so perfect. Every curve, every inch… all mine tonight."

He removes his own clothes and guides you onto the bed, settling between your spread thighs. His warm palms caress them, spreading you open even more. His mouth is on you immediately, licking a broad stripe from your entrance to your clit before circling the sensitive bud with the tip of his tongue, savoring you. "Mmm, already so wet," the vibration of his voice makes you gasp. "You taste so sweet, princess. Like you were made for my mouth."

You let out a shaky moan, your fingers tangling in his hair and pulling him closer. "Jay… that feels incredible. Oh God—"

He slides a finger inside you, curling it against that sweet spot while his mouth continues sucking and licking. The suction around your clit, the rhythm of his finger stroking that perfect spot deep inside — it all turns the pleasure into something deliciously overwhelming. He adds a second finger, then a third, carefully stretching you as he pumps them in and out.

Your hips move against his face as the pleasure intensifies. "Don’t stop… please, Jay, just like that," you moan, your voice breathless and desperate. He eats you out like a starving man — licking, sucking, and thrusting his fingers into you until your thighs shake around his head and you fall apart with a long, loud cry. You clench and pulse around his fingers as the orgasm crashes through you.

Jay doesn’t stop right away, he keeps licking and fingering you through it, prolonging every sensation until you are limp and panting. Only then he drags his mouth up your body, leaving a trail of wet, open-mouthed kisses along your stomach, between your breasts, and up your neck. "You taste like heaven," he murmurs, his voice rough with desire. "I could do this all night, make you come on my tongue until you go stupid."

He grabs a condom from the nightstand and rolls it on quickly over his hard, leaking cock. You reach down, wrapping your hand around his thick, hard length — stroking him slowly, feeling the weight, the pulsing heat, tracing the veins with curiosity. "I want it raw, Jay… I need to feel you, please."

He groans deeply, his hips pushing forward into your fist. "Baby… protection first, remember? I’ll still make you feel good even with the latex between us, I promise." After kissing your forehead, he positions himself at your entrance and pushes in inch by inch, his eyes locked on yours the entire time. You feel a burning stretch as your walls slowly give way to him, every thick pulsing vein dragging against your sensitive insides. When he’s halfway in, you look down between your bodies and see the clear bulge pressing out against your lower belly.

He notices it right after and quickly slides a hand down to press against the bulge, feeling it move under his palm as he sinks deeper. "Fuck, look at that. You see how deep I am? My cock is rearranging your insides, princess. Stretching this tight pussy so you can see it from the outside."

Your hand joins his, pressing against the visible outline, feeling him move inside you from both the inside and the outside. He teases you mercilessly, thrusting slow and deep so the bulge shifts under your combined touch. "You’re taking me so well, like this pussy was made for my cock. So greedy, swallowing every inch."

He sinks the rest of the way in with a guttural groan, bottoming out completely. "Shit… so tight, so hot. You’re already milking me."

His thick cock fills you so completely that every movement presses against sensitive spots that steal the breath from your lungs. His thrusts start controlled and incredibly gentle instead of brutal force. One hand stays intertwined with yours above your head, while the other caresses your cheek, squeezes your breast, and lightly pinches your nipple before soothing it with his thumb. "You look like pure sin wrapped around me… My beautiful princess, creaming all over my cock, taking every inch like a good girl. I’m going to ruin you for anyone else."

You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him closer. "Jay… it feels so good. You’re so deep, I can feel you everywhere." He leans down, capturing your lips in a messy kiss as his hips move faster in a devastating rhythm that pushes you closer and closer to the edge.

You come hard around him, your walls fluttering and clenching tightly as you cry out. He does not stop, thrusting deep and steady, prolonging your orgasm until you are shaking. "Fuck, that’s it, come on my cock, baby."

Jay follows right after, burying himself as deep as possible with a long, broken groan of your name as he cums, pulsing inside you. He stays buried deep for long moments afterwards, holding you close and covering your face, neck, and shoulders with soft kisses until both of your breathing steadies.

Eventually, he pulls out carefully, discards the condom, and returns from the bathroom with a warm, damp cloth. He cleans you both gently, murmuring more praises the entire time. "You were perfect, princess. So responsive, so beautiful when you come for me." He pulls the sheets over both of you and wraps you in his arms.

Your head rests on Jay’s chest while his fingers trace a lazy path along your spine, down to the curve of your waist. Without a word, you shift, turning onto your side. Jay follows naturally, molding his body against yours from behind in a perfect spoon. His chest presses against your back as he slides an arm around your waist, pulling you even closer. You can already feel him half-hard again against the curve of your ass, sending a fresh wave of heat through your body.

He nuzzles into the back of your neck, placing soft kisses there. "You okay?" he murmurs, his voice low and rough in the quiet room.

"More than okay," you whisper back, pressing lightly against him. "I like feeling you close like this."

Jay reaches for another condom from the nightstand. You hear the faint rustle as he puts it on, then his hand returns to your body, tenderly caressing your side and hip. He lifts your top leg slightly, hooking it over his, opening you up for him. The thick head of his cock brushes against your entrance before he pushes in slowly, inch by inch, until he is buried completely inside you.

"So good," he whispers against your neck, sliding a hand up to caress your breast. His fingers massage gently, his thumb circling your nipple until it hardens under his touch.

He starts moving — slow, deep rolls of his hips, thrusting unhurriedly so you can feel every inch of his thick cock dragging against your walls. While he fucks you, his hand on your breast never stops worshipping it — squeezing, rolling your nipple between his fingers, occasionally pinching lightly before soothing it with gentle caresses. And his mouth keeps placing open-mouthed kisses along the back of your neck, back, and shoulder.

You reach behind you, running your fingers through his hair as you move with him. "Jay… deeper like that feels so good."

His thrusts become a little deeper, but still controlled. "You take me so well every single time. Look at how perfectly you fit around me. I could stay inside you forever." His mouth finds the sensitive spot on your neck, sucking hard enough to leave a mark while he continues playing with your breasts — pinching, rolling, and caressing until your nipples are deliciously sore. Only then he slid his hand down to your clit, circling it in time with his thrusts. The combination of sensations is overwhelming and pushes you closer and closer to the edge. "You’re so close… I can feel you squeezing me. Come for me again, princess."

And you do. Your walls contract rhythmically around his thickness as you moan his name, your body trembling in his arms. Jay follows right after you, burying his face in your neck with a deep groan as he comes, filling the condom.

You turn your head slightly to capture his lips in a lazy kiss. "I feel so safe with you," you whisper. "And so wanted."

He stays inside you until the aftershocks fade, then carefully pulls out, discards the condom, and cleans you both once again with gentle care. He pulls the sheets up around you both and draws you back into his arms, spooning you again.

Jay’s hand rests tenderly on your stomach, tracing small circles there. You feel deeply in love and completely at peace as you start to drift off to sleep, safe in his arms.

Sunlight is already filtering through the curtains by the time you slowly wake up the next morning —.only to realize the space beside you is empty, even though the warmth of Jay’s body and the faint scent of his cologne still linger around. You stretch and sit up to look around the room, noticing one of his shirts draped over the back of a chair. Slipping it on, you pad barefoot out of the bedroom toward the kitchen, drawn by the rich aroma of coffee and food already filling the air.

Jay is at the stove, flipping eggs while a plate of toast and cut fruit waits for you on the counter. You walk up to him and wrap your arms around him from behind, pressing your cheek against his back. "Good morning."

He turns off the stove and turns around, settling his hands on your hips. His gaze softens instantly when he sees you wearing his shirt. "Good morning, princess. You look way too good in my clothes."

You laugh softly and tilt your face up, expecting a kiss. He leans in but pauses with a playful look. "Ah, but you haven’t brushed your teeth yet. No good-morning kisses until after breakfast."

You pout and dramatically pull away. "Not even a kiss on the cheek? You’re so cruel."

With a sigh, he gives in — pressing a long kiss to your cheek, then another to your forehead. Before you can say anything, he effortlessly lifts you and sits you on the edge of the kitchen counter, standing between your knees. "There. Now I can look at you properly while I finish this."

As he moves around the kitchen, your eyes wander until they stop on the refrigerator. Something catches your attention — photos are held up by magnets, but one in particular stands out: a Polaroid of Jay smiling with his arm around a woman’s shoulders. You hadn't noticed it on your previous visits to the kitchen — you had been too focused on him. "Who is that?" you ask curiously, nodding toward the fridge. "The woman in the photo with you?"

Jay glances over while sliding a plate toward you. "That’s my sister. We don’t look much alike, I know. We’re actually half-siblings."

You tilt your head, studying the photo for another second. They really do not look very similar, but that is not unusual for half-siblings. "She looks nice," you say lightly, accepting the plate he offers. "Breakfast looks delicious, by the way. You really didn’t have to."

"I wanted to," he replies, stepping between your knees and stealing a quick peck. "After last night, it feels right to take care of you this morning… and maybe every other morning too."

You smile shyly. "Speaking of last night… it was incredible. You made everything feel so good, so right. I keep replaying every part of it in my head."

He reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, his thumb gently caressing your cheek. "You were perfect, baby. I loved every second of it." He leans in and kisses the corner of your mouth. "You’re so beautiful when you let go for me."

"You’re going to make it really hard for me to focus in class today." You take a bite of the toast, savoring it. "Oh, by the way, I’m going out with some new friends from college tonight. They invited me to a party, it’s a chance to get to know each other better outside of class."

Jay nods, resting a hand on your thigh and stroking it lightly. "Sounds fun. Just be careful, okay? Text me when you get there and when you’re heading back."

"I will," you say, stealing another quick kiss from him. "I won’t stay out too late anyway. I have an early class tomorrow."

He picks up a piece of fruit from the plate and brings it to your mouth, brushing his fingers teasingly against your lips. "You deserve to have fun… I’ll be here if you need anything when you get back."

You stumble out of your friend’s car a little after 1 a.m., waving goodbye as you sway on your feet. You make your way toward the building entrance and suddenly remember that you promised to text Jay — which you didn’t. So you call him to let him know you arrived and are heading up. In response, he says he is waiting for you.

When you reach the third floor, Jay’s door is already open and he is waiting for you. "Heyyy," you say cheerfully, immediately wrapping your arms around his waist and pressing your face against his chest. "I’m back. Just like I promised."

Laughing Jay’s arms wrap around you automatically as he looks at you more closely. "You’re pretty drunk, princess. How was the party?"

"So much fun," you ramble, clinging to him tighter as he guides you inside and closes the door. "We danced, there was a shot game, and my new friends are so funny. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt." You tilt your head up, puckering your lips. "Kiss?"

Instead of a proper kiss, he gives you a quick one on your forehead. "You smell like a distillery and your shirt is soaked, what happened?"

You look down at the sticky stain on your shirt and pout. "Someone spilled on me. It’s gross. But I still want kisses, real kisses." You try to pull his face down, standing on your tiptoes. "I missed you all night. I kept thinking about you during the party… about how nice you were last night. We should do that again right now."

Jay gently holds your wrists to stop you. "Not tonight, princess. You’re drunk."

"But I want you," you beg, pressing closer, but he doesn’t give in at all. "You’re so hot, so gentle, and… big. Please?"

He shakes his head and guides you toward the bathroom. "No. Only when you’re sober and can remember everything clearly. Right now, I’m just taking care of you, okay?"

"Let’s get you cleaned up," he says gently once you reach the bathroom. Reaching for the hem of your wet shirt he carefully pulls it off, followed by the rest of your clothes.

"You’re always so gentle with me," you murmur, watching him adjust the shower temperature. "No one has ever been this gentle. I really, really like you, Jay."

He smiles softly and helps you into the shower, joining you still fully dressed so he can take care of you. Jay keeps one hand on your waist to steady you while the other runs soapy over your shoulders and arms.

The alcohol in your system makes your emotions spill out easily before you can stop them. "I think… I think I’m falling for you," you confess, your tongue loose, making your cheeks flush. "Is that crazy? It feels too fast. I know I’m younger and still figuring everything out, but being with you just feels right. You make me feel safe, wanted, and special."

Jay pauses for half a second, processing what he just heard, but then continues washing you carefully — lathering the floral-scented body wash over your skin. "This smells like… girl stuff," you say, a little curious. "Is it yours?"

He looks away for a moment before answering. "It’s my mom’s. She left some things here the last time she came to visit."

"Ah," You rest your forehead against his chest as the water runs over both of you. "I meant it, though. About falling for you. Even if it’s too soon… I can’t help it."

Jay wraps his arms fully around you under the spray of water, holding you close — voice is full of affection when he finally replies. "Hey… look at me, princess." He gently lifts your chin. "What you’re feeling… I feel it too." Softly, he kisses your forehead, then the tip of your nose. "We don’t need to rush or label anything right now. Just know that I’m here and I care about you a lot."

Even in your alcohol-fueled haze, his words calm the part of you that was worried you were moving too fast. "Really? You feel it too?"

"I do." He continues washing you carefully — your arms, your back, your sides — just taking care of you. "Being with you is easy. Natural. So let’s just enjoy it, okay? One day at a time."

Jay finishes rinsing you off and helps you out of the shower. Wrapping you in a towel he dries you gently before dressing you in one of his shirts. By the time he guides you to bed, you are already sleepy. He helps you lie down and you snuggle into the sheets, murmuring one last "I really like you" before falling asleep.

────────

The following days feel almost too good to be real.

You wake up in Jay’s bed, wrapped in his arms and wearing one of his shirts. He always wakes up before you to make breakfast and greet you with a good morning kiss and that smile that still makes your heart flutter. But on some mornings, you pull him back into bed to cuddle before classes and work, and without any argument, he makes time to make you feel loved.

When you get home from class, tired, Jay is already there to greet you cheerfully despite his own exhaustion. He texts you during the day, asking how your classes are going and reminding you to eat. When you are together, he pulls you in for slow, affectionate kisses — the kind that make your legs weak. Some nights you cook together as he tries to teach you how to make proper meals. Other nights he orders takeout and you eat on the couch while you tell him every detail of your day. He still doesn’t share much about himself, always dodging the subject, but you do not push — you don’t want to be invasive.

The sex is frequent — sometimes slow and worshipful, his mouth and hands adoring every inch of you until you are trembling and coming apart. Other times it is faster and more urgent — against the kitchen counter, in the shower, on the couch, in his home office. One night you try baking cookies together, ending up covered in flour and laughing as he kisses the mess off your cheek. Another night you start watching a movie cuddled together, but the movie is forgotten halfway through when clothes come off and he fucks you right there on the couch.

Suddenly everything feels so domestic — he now keeps an extra toothbrush for you, your notebooks are on his coffee table, and some of your clothes are scattered around his apartment. It is undeniable that you are falling deeper and deeper in love.

On a Sunday afternoon, you are studying on his couch while Jay is in his home office, working on a complicated case that demands his full attention. After hours buried in books and notes, concentrating is almost impossible. At this point, your mind keeps wandering to him without permission. When your brain finally gives up, you close the book with a dramatic sigh.

You walk down the hallway and peek into his office. Jay is sitting at his desk with his sleeves rolled up, looking unfairly attractive as he concentrates on reviewing some papers. "Jay?" you call, walking in without waiting for an answer.

He looks up, and the moment his eyes meet yours, the tension in his shoulders softens. "Hey, princess. How are the studies going?"

Boring." You take a few steps closer and don’t ask for permission — you simply climb into his lap, settling on his thighs and wrapping your arms around his neck. You leave a trail of kisses along his jaw, then his cheek and lips. "I missed you. Pay attention to me? Just for a little while?"

One of his hands rests on your waist while the other continues organizing the documents. "I’d love to, baby, but this case is a nightmare. There are documents everywhere. I’m going crazy with these."

You nuzzle into the curve of his neck and kiss him there. "You’ve been in here for hours… you deserve a break." Your hips move subtly against him, restless, the friction sending a spark through both of you. You feel him twitch beneath you, already starting to respond to your movements.

Jay’s grip on your waist tightens. "Princess…" There is a warning tone in his voice, bordering on frustration. But as you grind against him, you can feel him beginning to harden, and that gives you hope — you think he might give in.

"You’re really testing me today." He pulls you into a kiss, fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of your neck. When he pulls away, it is with a frustrated sigh.

"That's the point," you whisper, smiling proudly against his lips as you continue grinding, slower this time, feeling him get even harder.

Jay curses under his breath, gripping your hips more firmly. No matter how hard he tries to hold back, he can’t, the desire is uncontrollable. He reaches between you and unzips his pants. "Fine, but you’re going to behave." He frees his hard, throbbing cock and pulls your panties and shorts to the side. This time there is nothing between you — no latex barrier, just him.

You sink down onto him slowly, and the new sensation hits you immediately — it’s different, hotter, more intimate. Every ridge and vein is raw against your walls, the skin-to-skin contact sends a shiver through your entire body and makes you moan as you settle fully onto him. The stretch feels deeper and more overwhelming than ever.

For a moment, it feels perfect — connected, raw.

But then his hands close firmly on your hips, holding you completely still. "Don’t move," he commands, his voice noticeably deeper and rougher. "Stay just like this. No grinding, no whimpering. I’m serious."

His cock pulses hot and heavy inside you, and you can barely focus on what he said. "Jay… oh my God, you feel—"

"I said don’t move," he interrupts, repeating it more harshly this time. His free hand returns to the stack of papers while the other arm stays wrapped around your waist, keeping you in place.

At first, you try to obey — resting your head on his shoulder and breathing deeply every time his cock twitches inside you, but the longer you sit there, the harder it becomes. You let out a soft moan as your hips twitch involuntarily. "Jay… please, just let me move a little bit."

"I told you not to move. Jesus, you’re really pushing it today." The irritation is clear in every word now, and his grip on your waist tightens even more. "I have a deadline. I can’t afford to get distracted like this."

Again, you try to stay still — you really do, until frustrated tears prick at your eyes — but your body betrays you with small, involuntary movements of your hips. "I’m sorry… I can’t help it. This is driving me crazy. I need you to move, please."

Jay’s jaw is tense and his breathing comes in heavy bursts — clearly fighting the urge to thrust up into you. "You think I don’t want to? You’re so tight and wet around me right now, but I can’t. I have work to do and you’re not letting me focus." His tone grows even harsher. "Stop squirming. Be a good girl for me and just sit there.”

But you do not listen — you roll your hips again, letting out a moan as he rubs against that sensitive spot inside you. "Jesus Christ. I told you I have work and this is fucking important."

"But I missed you and this is torture. Please, please just fu-"

He cuts you off sharply. "You always miss me, always need something. Kisses, hugs, my cock, my fucking attention. You practically live here now, your things are all over my apartment, you sleep in my bed like it’s yours. Isn’t that enough attention? You know what? I need you to get off so I can actually finish this case."

The words hurt, making your chest tighten — tears of frustration turn into something heavier and spill down your cheeks. "I didn’t mean to be annoying… I just wanted to be close to you."

"Yeah, well, wanting to be close to me doesn’t magically make my deadline disappear. I’m already behind because of distractions like this." His hand on your hip tightens even more, holding you completely still, the pressure bordering on uncomfortable. "You have your own apartment right next door. Just give me a few hours alone, for once."

You stare at him in disbelief at what you just heard. Suddenly the intimate position feels humiliating — the way you are still stretched around him while he looks at you like you are nothing but am annoyance. "You want me to leave? Like this… right now"

"I’m telling you to give me some space." With no patience left, he lifts you off him, leaving you empty and trembling. "Go to your place, take a nap, study, whatever. Just let me work."

You stand there with shaky legs, wiping away your tears, feeling small, vulnerable, and unwanted. With a quiet, trembling breath, you whisper, "…Okay."

It's past 9 PM when Jay finally steps out of his office, having finished dealing with that pile of papers. The silence hangs heavy now, normally you would be humming, curled up on the couch waiting for him, or laughing at something silly on your phone. Without you, the space feels too empty. He had been rude — way too rude — and he sees that now. He owes you an apology, so he walks over to your door, but just as he is about to knock, he notices the door is not fully closed — it’s slightly ajar, allowing him to hear low murmurs of voices.

Frowning, he pushes the door open a little more and steps inside, finding a guy standing right at the entrance to your living room, putting on a jacket. The guy turns at the sound of the door, his expression quickly shifting to surprise. "Ah, hi. You must be Jay. She talks about you a lot."

He looks over the other guy’s shoulder toward the couch where you are sitting with your knees pulled up. The guy cleans his throat, sensing the tension between the two of you. "I was just leaving… It was really nice talking to you." He gives you a small wave. "Text me if you need anything else, okay?"

You smile and wave back. "Yeah. Thanks, Jake. Drive safe."

As Jake heads for the door, Jay blocks his path. "Wait. What exactly were you doing here?"

Jake blinks, surprised by the sudden question. "She seemed pretty down when we texted, so I decided to stop by and check if she was okay. Anyway, I’m heading out. Nice to meet you, man."

He steps aside, letting Jake pass. The door closes behind him, leaving just the two of you in the suddenly too-quiet apartment.

You stand up, hugging yourself. "Jay… what are you doing here?"

The regret he felt for being so harsh with you is quickly replaced by jealousy and irritation. "I came because my place was too quiet without you. I started thinking maybe I was too hard on you earlier, but clearly you didn’t waste any time finding company."

You frown, confused by what he means. "He’s just a friend. I told you about him before, we met during my first week on campus when I accidentally walked into the wrong lecture hall. I was upset after you basically kicked me out, so I texted him. We weren’t doing anything, just talking."

Jay lets out a short, bitter laugh and steps closer. "Talking late at night like it’s a casual visit. You mentioned him before, of course, but I didn’t know you two were close enough for house calls."

The hurt from earlier mixes with frustration now. "You were so rude, Jay. You made me feel like I was an annoying pest who can’t function without your attention. I understand you’re stressed with work, but you didn’t have to push me away and kick me out like that. I felt embarrassed."

He closes even more of the distance between you, standing close enough that you can feel the jealousy radiating off him. "You’re the one who can’t sit still for five minutes without demanding something, climbing into my lap while I’m trying to meet a deadline, whimpering and squirming like a spoiled brat because you ‘missed me’."

You take a step back, but the couch hits the back of your legs. "I just wanted to be close to you."

"But the world doesn’t revolve around your need for attention. I love having you around, but today? You made it impossible for me to concentrate, and the second I ask for a few hours to actually get things done, you run straight to this Jake guy?" Jay doesn’t care that nothing happened — the image of another guy in your space, late at night, while you were upset, makes his blood boil.

"I didn’t run to him! I was crying when he got here and he just listened. Unlike you, who basically told me to leave because I’m too much."

Jay’s laugh is harsh this time, completely humorless. "Too much. Yeah, that’s one way of saying you’re a spoiled brat who demands attention every second, and the moment things get difficult, you replace me with whoever is most convenient."

Neither of you speaks for a long moment. You look away, Jay’s jaw clenches, and soon his gaze drifts from your face to the way you are hugging yourself, then lower, lingering on your bare legs. The jealousy is still burning in his chest, mixed with the memory of you sitting on his cock earlier, demanding attention, all needy.

"Come here," he says, nodding toward the couch.

You hesitate, biting your lip, which makes Jay exhale sharply and close the distance. His hand wraps around your wrist, guiding you toward the couch. "We’re not done talking about this."

He sits on the couch and pulls you closer until you are lying across his lap, your stomach pressed against his thighs. Your shirt has ridden up naturally, but he is not satisfied. "This is in the way." His fingers hook into the waistband of your shorts and panties, pulling them down and tossing them aside — leaving your ass completely bare for him.

Jay’s palm rests on one of your cheeks, squeezing the flesh possessively. "You’ve been pushing all day… needing attention, teasing me, and then Jake shows up at your place, and I’m supposed to just swallow that?" His fingers dig harder into the flesh. "You’re mine, and it’s time you learn what happens when you piss me off this much."

His hand makes slow circles over your skin, almost soothing. "How many spanks do you think you deserve for acting like this?"

Your heart races as you try to process his words — head turning slightly to look at him. "What? Are you serious?"

He meets your eyes with a firm, dark expression — one you have never seen from him before. "Very serious. You’ve been spoiled all day, teasing me on purpose. So tell me, how many do you think you deserve?"

You swallow hard, your cheeks burning with embarrassment. "I don’t know… Five? Maybe?"

Jay lets out a mocking laugh. "Five? That’s way too low, baby. You’re going to take twenty, and you’re going to count each one out loud. If you lose count or mess up, we start over. Understood?"

You hesitate but eventually whisper, "Yes… okay."

"Good girl." His hand lifts and the first spank comes without warning — firm and sharp, the sound echoing through the silence. You jolt, a surprised moan escaping you — heat spreads instantly across your bare skin, the sting stronger than you expected.

"One," you gasp.

He immediately rubs the spot in slow, soothing circles, calming the hot skin where he struck.

"Two," you say after the next spank lands on the other cheek.

Jay keeps a steady rhythm — delivering hard spanks followed by almost tender caresses. Then his fingers slide lower, tracing your wet folds, spreading them teasingly, brushing against your entrance, lightly circling your clit before pulling away.

"What a spoiled little brat," he murmurs during one of the pauses, rubbing your reddened cheeks while two fingers tease your slit again. "You’re already getting so wet… You like this, don’t you?"

You moan instead of answering, which earns you another sharp spank. "Five."

He continues, the spanks leaving marks and building heat across your ass. Now his fingers are dip inside you, moving with slow, shallow thrusts, curling just enough to brush that sensitive spot and make you clench around him desperately. But he always pulls back before you can get close to the edge.

"Six… seven… ah!"

By ten, tears prick your eyes, your thighs trembling as the sting turns into a pulsing heat.

Jay pauses longer this time, massaging your sore ass and spreading your cheeks so he can tease your entrance again. "You’re mine. When you need attention that badly, you come to me, even if I’m stressed, even if I tell you to leave." A finger pushes deep inside you, staying there while his thumb brushes your clit.

You lose track amid the overwhelming sensations and he makes you start over, just as he warned. "Back to one." During the restart, two more fingers slide inside you, moving in a torturous rhythm. "You feel how wet you are? This is what happens when you forget who you belong to."

"You’re mine. Your time, your attention, this body. I don’t share it." Spank. Soothe. Tease. "Say it."

"I’m yours," you moan.

"Louder." Another spank.

"I’m yours, Jay!"

When he finally reaches twenty, you are a trembling mess with tears streaming down your face. Jay finally pulls you up and turns you so you are sitting in his lap. His hands stay on your ass, carefully massaging the sore flesh and you press yourself against the hard bulge in his pants, burying your face in his shoulder. "You did so well, my good girl."

Jay lifts your chin, meeting your eyes. For a moment, he just looks at you — really looks at you — taking in your flushed cheeks and tear-streaked face. Then he leans in and kisses you. One hand remains on your sore ass, squeezing gently, while the other slides into your hair. He kisses you like he needs to claim every part of you — hungry, insistent, his tongue tracing your lower lip before sliding inside. You melt into him, moaning against his mouth as you start slowly grinding your hips.

He pulls back just enough to trail his mouth along your jaw, nipping at the sensitive spot below your ear. "Still so needy… even after all that." Then he kisses you again, deeper and hungrier, tongues sliding together with fervor. The hand on your ass slips between your bodies to tease your wet folds with light circles and shallow dips — keeping you right on the edge.

When he pulls away, a thin string of saliva connects you for a second before breaking. "On your knees, princess."

Obediently, you slide off his lap and kneel between his spread thighs. Jay looks down at you, one hand lazily stroking your hair as he frees himself from his pants — his cock springs out, thick, heavy, and already leaking at the tip.

"Open. Tongue out," he says, tapping your lower lip with two fingers. You open your mouth and obediently stick your tongue out. He leans forward and spits directly into your mouth. The warm, viscous saliva lands on your tongue, degrading in a way that makes you shiver. "Swallow that first," he instructs. You swallow while keeping your eyes locked on his. He nods with a satisfied hum. "Now show me how sorry you are for pushing me today."

You start with kisses along his length before dragging your tongue from base to tip. Jay groans, his fingers tightening in your hair, but he doesn't force you — not yet. His thickness stretches your lips as you finally take him into your mouth. He is big enough that you can only take about half before he hits the back of your throat. Your hand wraps around the base, stroking what does not fit in a steady rhythm.

"Fuck… that’s it," he murmurs, tilting his head back for a moment before his gaze returns to you. He doesn't want to miss a single second of this. "Look at me while you suck it."

You do, looking up at him with teary eyes, and the sight makes his cock twitch in your mouth. When you pull back to catch your breath, he slaps his cock against your tongue a few times, leaving strings of saliva connecting you, before guiding you back down. "Yeah, just like that… good girl."

Between bobs, when you pull back to breathe, you say breathlessly, "I’m sorry for distracting you and for Jake being here." Then he guides you down again.

Jay’s hips start moving, pushing a little deeper and testing your limits. Tears continue to prick your eyes from the stretch, but you keep going, hollowing your cheeks and moaning around him.

When he finally gets close, Jay’s grip tightens, his thighs tense, and his breathing becomes ragged. "I’m going to come. Don’t waste it, swallow everything." You nod around him, doubling your efforts and with a deep groan, he comes down your throat — thick, hot pulses that you swallow eagerly, not letting a single drop escape.

He pulls out slowly, a string of saliva and cum connecting your lips to the tip before it breaks. "Open your mouth. Show me."

You open your mouth, sticking your tongue out to prove you swallowed everything. “That’s my good girl.”

He helps you up, pulls you back into his lap, and kisses you, tasting himself on your tongue. Your hips start moving on their own, pressing against the growing hardness beneath you that makes Jay groan into your mouth, one hand sliding down to grab your bare ass and guide your movements.

"Still not satisfied? Such a greedy little thing." Even though he just came, his cock is already stirring again, hardening beneath you as your wet pussy slides along his length.

You gasp against his mouth, your hands gripping his shoulders. "Jay… I need you so bad."

He answers by kissing you again, but soon pulls back to meet your eyes. "Then take what you want."

You don’t hesitate, not even for a second. Rising on shaky knees, you reach down and align the thick head of his cock against your entrance, and slowly you sink down, gasping at the stretch and every inch that fills you. The lack of a barrier makes him feel impossibly thicker than the last time in his office — hotter, more intimate. The spanked skin of your ass burns as you settle fully against his thighs.

"Fuck," Jay hisses, his head falling back against the couch for a moment as his hands grip your hips hard enough to leave bruises, holding you fully impaled on him. "So wet… so fucking tight like this."

You start moving, rolling your hips in a slow, deep rhythm, the angle letting you feel every ridge and vein raw inside you, pulling broken moans from your throat. One of his hands slips under your shirt to caress one tit while the other stays on your ass, squeezing the soft flesh in time with your movements. The mix of pleasure and stinging burn makes everything more intense.

"That’s right," he growls, thrusting up to meet you. "This is what you wanted all day, isn’t it? My attention. My cock." You lean forward, kissing him messily while you bounce, moving your hips faster.

With a low curse, he wraps his arms around you and suddenly flips you, laying you down on the couch cushions, driving him even deeper which pulls a sharp cry from you.

Now he is on top, pinning you beneath him — one of your legs hooked over his shoulder as he starts thrusting into you with deep, powerful strokes — hips snapping forward, burying himself to the hilt each time and the lack of a condom lets you feel every raw inch.

Clinging to his back, your nails dig in as the pleasure borders on overwhelming. Jay’s face hovers above yours, his hair damp with sweat falling into his eyes. Rhythm falters for a second as he looks at you, something darker flashing across his face, the jealousy from earlier — the image of Jake leaving your apartment — has not disappeared. "Are you on the pill?"

You shake your head, breathless, barely able to form words between moans. "No, I’m not."

He thrusts harder, hitting deep against your cervix as if to emphasize the point. "Good," he growls, eyes locked on yours. "Actually, fucking perfect. Maybe I’ll knock you up tonight, put a baby in you so you won’t even think about another guy like Jake. You’ll stay right here with me, we’ll have a beautiful family, me, you, and our kids. No more distractions."

The words should have shocked you, but in the heat of the moment — with him fucking you raw, his body claiming yours completely — they only send a fresh wave of arousal through you. Moaning loudly, your legs tightening around his waist. "Jay… fuck—"

He groans at your reaction, his hips moving harder. "You like that idea, don’t you? My cum deep inside you, getting you pregnant so everyone knows you’re claimed." One of his hands slides down to press lightly against your stomach, as if he can already imagine it.

The couch creaks beneath you both, the sound of skin slapping against skin and the wet noises of him fucking you filling the room. Jay’s earlier irritation fuels every deep thrust, but so does possessiveness — the need to claim you completely after the stressful day. He presses you deeper into the cushions, his hips moving in a way that grinds against your clit with every stroke.

When you finally come, it is intense — your walls contracting tightly around his cock as you scream his name. Jay follows right after, burying himself as deep as possible, and you feel the hot pulses of his cum filling you, thick and warm.

For long minutes, Jay simply holds you — kissing your neck, your jaw, your swollen lips — his cock softening slowly inside you, but as the minutes stretch on, you feel him coming back to life, pulsing against your sensitive walls. "Already?" There is a playful tone in your voice.

"I can’t help it." He moves, pressing one last kiss to your mouth before slowly pulling out. You moan at the loss, feeling his cum start to leak out of you, but his hand quickly reaches down to push it back inside you with two fingers. "Don’t waste it."

He leans back on the couch, stroking himself until he is fully hard again. "Turn around. Hands on the backrest."

You obey, your body trembling as you shift position, kneeling on the cushions, gripping the top of the backrest and arching your back slightly while Jay moves behind you, his gaze fixed on the evidence of the earlier spanking — your cheeks still red with visible handprints — as one of his palms smooths reverently over the heated skin before squeezing firmly.

"Fuck, look at this… Still so red from your lesson." His cock brushes against your entrance before he thrusts deep inside you in one powerful stroke, the new position letting him sink even deeper as the head of his cock presses against spots that make your toes curl drawing a loud moan from you while you grip the backrest tighter as he bottoms out.

Jay starts fucking you with firm, powerful thrusts — deep and deliberate, the couch creaking beneath you both — as every thrust makes your sore ass bounce and the red marks darken even more with the impact, his eyes unable to leave them while his thumbs press into the soft flesh, pulling you back onto his cock repeatedly.

"These marks… they look so good on you." Without warning, he lands a hard, stinging spank on your right cheek, the already sensitive skin making you cry out and clench hard around his cock as Jay groans at the sensation, his hips stuttering for a moment before he resumes his deep rhythm.

He gives your left cheek another spank, making you writhe and moan again as you push back against him desperately despite the burn — or maybe because of it — the mix of pain and pleasure making you even wetter, the previous creampie turning everything obscenely wet and messy.

"That’s it," he praises, smoothing his hands over the fresh marks he just added. "Squirm for me. I love how sensitive you are right here." He gives you one more spank, lighter this time but still enough to make you shudder, and immediately soothes the area with his hands, massaging the sore flesh while he continues thrusting deep and hard from behind.

Jay leans over you, bracing one hand on the back of the couch beside yours while the other reaches down to rub tight circles on your clit. His chest presses against your back, his lips brushing your ear as he speaks between thrusts. "You’re going to take every drop again, princess. I’m going to give you my babies, keep you so full you won’t even think about anyone else."

When you come again — hard, your vision blurring from the overwhelming sensations — Jay follows right behind, burying himself deep with a groan and flooding you with another load of hot cum. He stays inside you for a long time afterward, thrusting slowly through the aftershocks.

Finally, he pulls out carefully and pulls you into his arms, stroking your back in slow, gentle movements. "You’re a mess, princess. Come on, let me take care of you."

He stands up with you in his arms and carries you to the bathroom. Once inside, he turns on the shower, adjusts the temperature, and removes the rest of both your clothes before guiding you under the hot spray with him where the water cascades over you both. Jay takes his body wash, lathers it between his hands, and runs them over your skin — being extra careful around your sensitive ass, massaging the foam in light circles that ease some of the sting.

"Maybe I was a little too rough tonight," he says, his hands moving along your thighs, cleaning away the evidence of the many rounds. "Work stress got to me, and then seeing Jake… I took it out on you more than I should have. You handled it really well, but I’m sorry if it was too much."

You lean back against his chest, letting the water rinse off the soap as you tilt your head to look at him. "It hurt… but it also felt good. In a weird way. I just hated feeling like I was bothering you earlier. I didn’t want to annoy you while you were working. I just… missed you a lot."

After rinsing you, he turns off the shower, wraps you in a towel first, then himself and dries you carefully, paying extra attention to your ass and rubbing some soothing lotion he finds in the cabinet. "There. Better?"

"Much better," you admit, reaching up to touch his face. "Thank you for taking care of me like this."

He leans down and kisses your forehead. "You make it easy to want to take care of you." Pulling you closer, his voice shifting to something even calmer and more sincere. "I don’t know what I’d do without you around. I can’t imagine coming home and not having you here like this. You just… fit. Right here with me."

You hug him tightly, burying your face in his chest. "I feel the same. I always want to be close to you because you make everything feel better."

Smiling against your hair, Jay guides you to the bed and pulls the covers back, lying down beside you to pull you close against his chest. One arm wraps around you securely, his hand rests gently on your ass — not squeezing, just warm and protective over the sensitive skin.

You snuggle even closer, your leg draped over his as exhaustion finally takes over completely. "Stay the night?" you ask sleepily.

"Wouldn’t dream of leaving," His fingers trace lazy circles on your back until your breathing evens out and you fall asleep.

Next morning you stir slowly, feeling the pleasant ache in your muscles and Jay’s heavy arm draped over your waist, his body curled protectively against your back. He feels you waking up and trails lazy kisses along your shoulder before moving up the side of your neck. "Good morning, baby," he murmurs, his voice still rough with sleep as his hand slides to your stomach. "Sleep well?"

You turn in his arms, smiling despite the slight soreness when you move, and reach up to brush the messy hair from his forehead. "Yes… thanks to you."

He leans in and kisses you properly — slow and sweet, the kind of kiss that makes you melt. At this point, he couldn't care less that neither of you had brushed your teeth yet. "You were incredible last night. Let me make it up to you a little more with breakfast."

Jay borrows a pair of your sweatpants that look comically tight on his incredibly nice ass, making you laugh as he models them. In the kitchen, you work side by side like so many mornings before — he cracks eggs for scrambled eggs while you toast bread and slice fruit. Small touches are stolen throughout: a hand on your lower back as he reaches past you, a quick kiss on your temple when you hand him the salt shaker, a playful bump of his hip against yours.

"You’re in a good mood today," you tease, leaning against the counter while he plates the food.

"I can’t help it when I wake up next to you." He sets the plates on the table and pulls you in for another kiss before you both sit down.

After eating, you start getting ready for college and he for the office. Jay kisses you one more time before heading back to his apartment next door to get ready for work. You take a long shower and, once dressed in jeans and a comfortable blouse, you step out into the hallway at the same time he does, looking impeccable in his work clothes.

He quickly pulls you in for a proper goodbye, hands gently cradling your face as he kiss your forehead, lingering there for a long moment. "Have a good day at class. Text me when you’re done." With one last soft kiss on your lips, he pulls away with a smile. "See you later, princess."

College passes in a whirlwind of classes and notes, but your mind keeps drifting back to Jay — the way he holds you, the sweet words, the kisses. He has not sent many messages during the day, which is a little unusual, but you figure he must be busy at work.

When you finally get home in the early evening, you step into the elevator and press the button for the third floor. Just before the doors close, a woman you have never seen in the building before enters, but something about her face seems vaguely familiar.

The woman smiles politely as the elevator starts moving. Curiosity gets the better of you and before you can stop yourself, you ask, "Hi… do you live here? I’ve been in the building for about two months and I don’t think I’ve seen you around."

She nods, laughing lightly. "Yes, I do, but I’ve been away on a work trip. I’m a lawyer and a complicated case kept me out of town longer than expected. I actually got back this morning."

"Wow. That sounds intense… By the way, my name is y/n. Nice to meet you."

The woman’s smile widens. "Nice to meet you too. Jay has already told me about you. He’s mentioned his sweet neighbor a few times."

Your heart flutters with joy — Jay talked about you to the neighbors. It feels special, like proof that you are really becoming a bigger part of his life. "He did? That’s nice to hear."

The elevator dings on the third floor and you both step out together. A small flicker of confusion crosses your mind — she is going the same way — but you don’t think much of it. Maybe she lives farther down the hall.

Then you see Jay standing there and your face lights up immediately. He hadn't texted you all day, and seeing him now makes excitement bubble up inside you. You walk toward him with a radiant smile.

At the same moment, the woman also walks straight up to him. When she reaches him, she wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him — a deep, familiar, affectionate kiss. Jay’s hands settle on her waist automatically as he eagerly kisses her back.

The world stops.

Your feet freeze mid-step and everything inside you turns cold and numb. It takes a moment for your brain to process what you are seeing, but then the pieces fall into place with painful clarity. That was Jay’s wife. The woman in the Polaroid photo he casually said was his "sister." The late-night calls he claimed were from the office. The feminine body wash he said belonged to his mom. The distant restaurant he took you to on your first date, probably so no one nearby would recognize him. The way the doorman sometimes looked at you with that judgmental expression, like he knew something — he did. All the small inconsistencies you had ignored because you were so blinded by how gentle and attentive he seemed.

Every sweet word, every touch, every promise of "you’re mine" had been built on lies. He was married. His heart already belonged to someone else, and you had been nothing but a convenient distraction from the apartment next door — blind, eager, and so in love with the version of him he showed you that you never saw the truth.

Jay’s eyes meet yours over his wife’s shoulder, and for a fraction of a second, something like panic or guilt flashes across his face. The shock turns into pure pain, making you practically run to your door as you fumble for your keys while hot tears blur your vision.

You lean against the door, sliding down to the floor as sobs begin to escape you. Your chest hurts as if someone had ripped a hole in it. All the cute moments — the kisses, the touches, the date, the bouquet — turn ugly and humiliating in your memory.

You cry hard, knees pulled up to your chest, as disappointment turns into shame for having fallen so completely for the man who made you feel special, desired, and loved… and it was all a lie.

The thin walls allow you to hear muffled voices — his wife asking about his day, the normalcy of their conversation only making everything worse. You press your hands over your ears, trying to block out the sound, but the damage is already done. Your heart is shattered.

The man you had grown so attached to — the one who held you so tenderly after sex, who made you breakfast and promised more comfortable days like that — was someone else’s husband, and you had been the other woman without even knowing it.

it’s still early when you slip out of your bedroom, shuffling into the lounge to find jay asleep on your fainting couch. his hair is falling in his face, arms still crossed over his chest. he must’ve stayed up all night, just like he’d said. 

you stop dead in your tracks, tiptoeing back to your room and crawling back under the covers. you shut your eyes and pretend to sleep until you finally slip away into another dream. 

it feels like you’ve only just closed your eyes when a soft knock sounds off your doorframe. you stir, sitting up in surprise at the noise, to find jay leaning into your bedroom. 

“sorry to wake you, but i figured we should hit the studio first thing.”

“right,” you reply quietly, pushing the covers off and climbing out of bed. jay ducks out to give you privacy as you get yourself ready to leave. 

no bells and whistles today. you decide on more simple, comfortable clothes, leaving the glitter and lipstick for another time. you figure you should try to look the least-recognizable as possible, though part of you wonders if there’s even any point. it’s not as though the triad couldn’t find you anyway. they’ve proven that much.

jay’s already waiting by the door when you’re done. he eyes you just a second longer than normal before you both head out. 

it’s a restless morning. you can tell by the way jay’s fingers drum against the steering wheel at every red light. the tension has returned. the sleeping boy from this morning slumped over on your couch with his messy hair and smooth face is gone. in his place is the bodyguard, the protector that moves with precision and urgency when he opens your doors and ushers you into the looming expanse of noxstar studios with his arm around you like a shield. 

jay doesn’t wait to be shown in. he marches you right past richie’s startled-looking assistant and up to the frosted glass with the peeling gold star on the office door and walks right in. 

richie almost jumps at the sudden intrusion. he tries to compose himself quickly, but you can tell the stoic and commanding presence of jay before him sets him on edge. 

he smiles that too-thin smile, arms spread like a grand emperor. “mr. park, what can i do for you?” your nails dig into your fists when he doesn’t even spare you a glance. 

jay sees right through the bravado. of course he does. he’s got the sharpest eye you’ve ever seen, and richie’s glamour was always cheap as it stood. 

“they tapped her phone.”

his words hang heavy in the office for a long moment. nobody speaks, and the silence stretches uncomfortably until it’s broken by the squeak of richie’s assistant who rushes in, sees the scene, and quickly turns and runs out.  

“that’s…unfortunate,” is all richie manages, voice tight. 

“they were in her house,” jay reiterates, voice like a sharpened stone. “they know where she lives.”

“well, she’s not dead yet, is she?”

fury rises in jay’s eyes. you can see it even from where you stand half-hidden behind him. 

his voice is low, measured when he speaks. but the anger is clear, weighing his every word. “it’s not safe.”

richie leans back in his chair, the rickety thing squeaking from the movement. “i understand, but what would you like me to do? we’ve got nowhere to put her. if the triad hasn’t made any moves, we might just have to wait it out.”

“wait until what? until severed appendages start showing up at her door? until someone throws a brick or a firecracker through the window? until there are gunmen at every street corner until she ends up on the news instead of the pictures?”

“let’s not get ugly, mr. park,” richie says, holding a hand up. “it might not come to that. all i’m saying is that if nothing’s happened yet, it might be for a reason. listen, the premier is in a few days and it’s too risky to send her anywhere else even if we had the means.”

“‘the means’,” jay scoffs. “of course.”

you want to say something. you want to tell richie off, to scream at him for being so incompetent and unfeeling and selfish. but they’re both talking about you like you’re not standing in the room beside them. and it’s one of the few times the mean, ugly voice inside you tells you that everything they’d all thought of you was right. you didn’t have a voice. you were an object. nothing more than noxstar property. 

“let’s go,” you say quietly, tugging sharply on jay’s coat sleeve just once. you don’t wait for him to follow as you stride quickly out of the office. you can vaguely hear richie calling out protests, but the blood is rushing in your ears from the vile feeling of resentment buried in your chest. 

jay hurries after you, resuming his place at your side as you storm through the front doors. 

the los angeles sun is blinding, but you don’t care. you don’t look back and you don’t wait for jay as you march all the way to the car. some triad thug could’ve gunned you down right then and you wouldn’t have given even half a damn. 

you climb into the passenger seat without waiting for jay to open your door. you don’t look at him, but you can feel his eyes on you as he starts the car. you keep your gaze straight forward. don’t cry. you can’t cry here. you can’t cry at all. 

neither of you speak on the drive out of the hills. you watch the scenery go by, the same vile cycle of thoughts circling your mind as you try in vain to drown it out and focus on whatever big band jazz is playing lowly on the radio. 

when you get to the boulevard, jay turns left. that’s when you finally look at him. 

“you missed the turn.”

he stares straight ahead, concentrated on the road. “we’re not going back there.”

you frown. “what are you talking about?”

“it’s not safe. the triad’s not going to wait around forever, and neither am i. you’re not going back there.”

you stare at him incredulously. he offers no further explanation, and it’s quiet once more until he finally pulls into an unfamiliar street. you’re past downtown, into the quieter part of the city. still urban, tall looming buildings and brick walls and spindly fire escapes, and still busy, long lines at bodegas and bustling corner markets, but nothing like the thriving center of chaos that is the heart of hollywood. 

“where the hell are we?” you demand, following jay out of the car and into the woody foyer of a tall apartment building. he exchanges a solemn nod with the bellman and leads you up several flights of stairs. 

you’re winded and doubly as irritated by the time you get to god knows what floor, huffing for breath and at your limit. you grab jay’s shoulder as he fishes a set of keys out of his coat pocket and stop him before he can unlock the door. 

“jay, where are we? what are you doing?”

he looks down at you quizzically, like you’re the crazy one. the furrow hasn’t left his brow. “i told you. i wasn’t going to take you back to your place. it’s not safe.”

you watch as he carefully pries you off and moves to unlock the door. “so,” he continues, pushing the heavy oak door open to let you in, “i brought you somewhere the triad doesn’t know exists.”

he flicks on the lights once you step inside. warm light fills the room, illuminating the space and setting you just a little bit more at ease. 

it’s a nice place. modestly spaced, like most los angeles apartments, with lots of dark, shiny wood and sturdy furniture. minimalist, mostly, with more practicalities like books for decor than useless trinkets. except for the large, expensive-looking ornamental rug that covers half the living room. you can’t picture jay ever going to a department store and picking that out. the thought almost makes you laugh. 

“make yourself at home,” jay says quietly, going to hang up his coat. he drops the keys into a glass dish by the door before he makes his way into the kitchen and collapses into a sturdy wooden chair at the table, pinching his nose as if warding off a headache. 

you linger in the entryway a moment longer, slowly wandering the place and taking it all in. 

“so this is where you live?” you ask softly, fingers tracing the embellishments carved into the wood of his end tables. 

“this is it,” he confirms, a sigh escaping him unwillingly when he leans back in his chair. the tension is slowly beginning to seep out of his shoulders. 

you glance to the windows, which are obscured by thick, heavy curtains. “it feels like you.”

“does it now?” he muses, watching you look around. 

you nod, resuming your observations. at the end of the living area there is one door, slightly ajar enough to be able to see into a single bedroom. big bed, clean sheets, minimal decor, same as the rest of the place. 

you turn back to jay. “you don’t have a guest room.”

“nobody in los angeles has a guest room,” he replies, now having stood up and is currently rummaging through the fridge, every now and again tossing out a food item. 

“i’m not taking your bed,” you insist stubbornly, crossing your arms and glaring at his back. 

“you don’t really have a choice.”

“and who said chivalry is dead?” you ask sarcastically, to nobody in particular. 

jay straightens, one hand resting on the top of the fridge as he turns to face you. “it’s not just chivalry, if that’s any consolation. i need to be out here where i can hear in case anything happens.”

you hold his gaze awhile longer, staring him down, but he doesn’t give. 

you huff out, shedding your jacket and going to sit on the couch. “fine.”

a smirk tugs at jay’s lips at your petulant tone when you’re not looking, amused as ever at your stubborn attitude. 

“there’s nothing to eat, so i’ll probably run down to the bodega later to get us something,” jay informs your back, where you’re turned to look out the window. he’s got a decent view, at least. yours back home was just the street below and a brick wall. 

“i thought you were mr. prepared.”

“mr. prepared hasn’t lived here in a few weeks,” he reminds you with a knowing lilt to his voice. “i’ve been a little busy, you know?”

you hum, leaning back into the couch and letting the jazz from the radio you’d just turned on fill the room. 

it’s nearing five o’clock, the sun casting long shadows across jay’s living room, when he gets up to head out. 

you’d been dozing off on his couch, half-asleep, when the jingle of keys rouses you. 

you sit up to see jay’s with one arm through his coat as he glances over at you. “i’ll be back soon.” he must see the nervous expression on your face as he reaches for the door, because his tense expression melts just a bit. 

“if i’m not back in thirty minutes, call the studio. and don’t open the door for anybody, you hear? i’ve got the keys, i’ll let myself back in.”

you nod dutifully, trying to suppress your nerves. jay gives you one last concerned look over before he ducks out, the lock clicking behind him. 

you heave out a sigh, eyes fluttering shut for a moment as the exhaustion of the last few days begins to settle in. 

you try your best to make time, poking around the apartment, but every minute feels like an hour. 

you browse jay’s records. ten minutes pass. you look through the empty fridge. another five. you browse on the television, but the static makes you anxious every time it comes on. 

it’s been twenty minutes. you know because you’ve spent the last five staring at the clock, with nothing better to do. 

then thirty minutes comes, and you’re beginning to get nervous. you look down at the street below and see no sign of jay. you watch for another minute before it occurs to you that you should probably stay away from the window, which only fuels your nerves. 

thirty-five minutes. then forty. you’re pacing the room now, almost dizzy from tracing the patterns on the rug with your eyes as you go around.

why did he have to leave you alone? your thoughts begin to spiral. your stomach is caving in on itself with hunger. you haven’t eaten properly since yesterday. 

“if i’m not back in thirty minutes, call the studio.”

you eye the telephone on the kitchen counter. what good would that do? no one has been able to keep you from danger. at least, no one like jay. where are you? you plead in your mind. come back. 

you’re practically on the verge of tears when the door finally clicks open and jay steps inside with two paper bags full of food. he’s barely locked the door behind him when you’re running, throwing yourself at him before you can think. 

his body tenses for the briefest second, shoulders high and arms still laden with bags, before he relaxes into your touch just a bit. the oddity of the embrace doesn’t hit you until after you begin to pull away, cheeks hot and embarrassed. 

you clear your throat, quickly taking the bags from him to distract him (and yourself) from the momentary lapse in character. your brows pull down into a delicate scowl. 

“you’re late.”

“there was a line,” jay replies, helping you sort out the groceries. “i’m sorry. did you call?”

you shake your head. “didn’t seem like it’d do any good.”

he sighs. “probably not. anything interesting go on?”

aside from you being seconds away from losing it after he was fifteen minutes late? “no, thankfully.”

“hm. good.”

after that, the two of you lapse into silence as you put away the food, each exchanging quick glances while the other isn’t looking. 

jay makes a simple dinner and you spend the rest of the evening sitting around his living room listening to the radio, just trying to catch a breath after the events of the past few days. 

when it’s finally time to sleep, jay leaves out a clean set of silk pajamas, a spare toothbrush, and soap. 

“if you need anything else, tell me. i’ll be right out here, alright?”

you bid him a quiet thank you and goodnight, but when you go to shut the door this time, you leave it ajar just the slightest. 

jay’s bed is comfortable.

you suppose that with a job like his, it’d have to be. it’s like swimming in a sea of silk sheets, an air of calm swallowing the dark room that’s quite characteristic of jay. it soothes your frayed nerves, your lungs finally able to take in a full breath. 

you fall asleep so quickly you’d think the peace would have lasted. but in a way that you’re frustratingly getting used to, you were wrong. 

“NO!”

you wake with a sudden start, gasping out for air into the now suffocating darkness of the room. your eyes are wide, chest heaving, but even as your strain them to no avail you can’t see a thing. 

the door flies open and you think you might have a heart attack, but the dim lamplight bleeding in from the living area illuminates jay’s broad silhouette. 

“what is it? what’s wrong?”

his revolver is in hand, arms rigid around it, pointed at the ground but ready to be raised in an instant. he scans the room quickly, eyes darting this way and that, looking for any sign of wrongdoing. but there’s nothing. just you, sitting in the middle of his bed with haunted eyes and shaking shoulders.  

jay sucks in a breath, one hand coming up to push his hair back and cover his eyes briefly. his quiet sigh is of relief this time. 

“it was just a nightmare,” you whisper, clutching the sheets up to cover yourself. “i’m sorry i woke you.”

jay puts his weapon down, coming around to check the window. “don’t be. these days, it’s better safe than sorry.”

perhaps it’s the vulnerability of the dream, or the soft privacy of the dark bedroom, but the question leaves your lips before you can really rethink it. 

“jay, can i ask you something?”

he looks up, somewhat surprised, fingers still lingering on the window latch where he’d been checking the locks. “shoot.”

“why do you care so much about what happens to me?”

from the look on his face, he was probably thinking that you were more likely to ask him about aliens than that.

he gives you the same response he always had. “it’s my job to care.”

“but i’m sure this is way beyond your responsibilities. i mean, even if my safety is what gets you paid, you could’ve just stuck me in a storage locker off the grid until this mess is over. but you didn’t…you brought me to your home.”

“i brought you somewhere i knew you’d be safe. it’s not a paycheck to me, do you get that? it’s the right thing to do. the human thing to do.”

the human thing. you mull that part over in your mind. you’re not used to being treated like a human. 

like a celebrity? of course. a thing of beauty? well, emphasis on the ‘thing.’ an object, sure. an idol, an actress, a glorified pet. but a human? when was the last time anyone saw you as that?

jay leans back against the windowsill, gaze lingering on you. 

you duck your head. “but why me? i don’t…i don’t deserve that kind of loyalty. i didn’t earn it.”

jay’s voice softens just a bit, but you notice. “you didn’t deserve for that scumbag to come after you either.”

your skin crawls as you relive that night, same as you had in your dream just now. 

“it’s not about ‘deserve’. i just don’t want anything to happen to you. do i need anymore reason than that?” 

yes, you think. “i suppose not…” you whisper back. 

jay gives a slight nod of finality. “well…good. try to get some rest, alright?”

your heart sinks when he straightens to leave. “wait!”

jay looks up. 

maybe you’ll regret it later, but you just can’t stand to face the darkness alone tonight. “will you…will you stay?”

if you thought your last question had floored him…

jay stares another moment, caught off-guard, before he returns to his senses and nods again. 

he moves to drag the armchair closer when he sees you scoot to the side of the bed. if it weren’t so dark, you’d have been able to see him blush. but it’s jay, so he doesn’t say anything. he just climbs in beside you, every move careful not to disturb or frighten you. 

he lies like a stone next to you, afraid to breathe too deep, acutely aware of your figure beside him and his revolver on the nightstand and the bolted windows and locked front door. 

this time, you don’t dream at all. 

another long one oops! sorry about the wait on it too, hopefully the next one will come to me quicker <33 thanks to everyone keeping up with it!!

© mytwinsung ♥︎ do not copy, translate, repost, feed to ai, etc. — comments + reblogs always appreciated!

jay shrugs, loosening his tie and leaning back against the wall. “what for? neither of us knew they’d be there. besides, dinner was my idea.”

you hum your concession, toying with the hem of your nightgown. “i suppose. still, it’s not much to fun to hear them go off on you like that.”

he scoffs, something like a bitter laugh escaping him. “please. i think they’re more concerned about their company projections than your safety. their studio would be down the drain without their leading lady. they couldn’t care less what state you show up in as long as this picture comes out.”

you watch him, the curve of his strong eyebrows where they’re furrowed with low-burning anger he’s probably not even aware of. it brings the faintest trace of a smile to your face. 

jay notices. of course he does. “what?”

“nothing,” you reply, that same smile still tugging at the corners of your lips. “just didn’t know you cared so much.”

he stares, deadpan. “it’s my job to care.”

you shrug, letting the topic drop (but not your smile). 

you and jay are officially on lockdown. 

after the lecture, richie had been by to go over the plan. you two were not to leave the apartment under any circumstances barring another near-death-experience. 

the majority of the footage had already been shot, so there was no need for you to come into the studio any longer, at least for the time being. you were given lines to practice for the next project to keep you busy. you weren’t even allowed to go out for your own food — richie was having his assistant deliver your groceries for the foreseeable future. every tuesday, she’d bring half-squashed bread, decent produce, and whatever gossip she’d overheard at the studio. it was the only way you were staying in the loop. 

so, here you are again, with jay, locked up in your modest los angeles apartment. for good this time. 

you try to find ways to pass the time. it involves a lot of staring out the window and practicing your new lines. a nervous energy clouds the place the first few days, filled with jay’s pacing and your stillness. both of you jump every time the doorbell rings or a car passes by. 

but once the new routine begins to settle, there are some…peaceful moments. a quiet afternoon spent in the living area, you on the couch listen to your favorite billie holiday record and jay on the armchair reading the paper. a game of cards that turns into a heated battle, complete with name-calling and raucous laughter. a half-burnt meal shared with laughter after you’d gotten distracted and left it on the stove too long. they’re the first few things (besides the dinner-that-wasn’t) that feel normal between you and jay. 

like you’re friends. not leading lady and mysterious bodyguard. not two people under fire from the most dangerous mob in the city. like you both have a say in the situation, like you’re choosing each other and not comrades held captive. 

it’s a nice feeling. it lasts a few days, but the illusion shatters well into next week one evening with the incessant pacing of jay’s spotless shoes on your hardwood floors. 

it’s his energy that bothers you more than the noise. restlessness is coming off him in waves, and not the simple kind that comes from being locked up too long. this is different…he’s thinking about something. it gives you a bad feeling. 

“you’re going to put a hole in my floor if you keep going in circles like that,” you finally say, putting your book down when you can’t take it anymore. 

jay stops at your voice and looks up like he hadn’t realized he’d been doing it. “sorry…”

but he doesn’t sound sorry. he sounds preoccupied. 

“what’s got your tie in a twist?” you demand, unsettled. 

for once, jay’s not looking at you. his dark eyes are laser-focused on the phone sitting plainly on the table beside you. you follow his gaze, but nothing seems amiss. everything is exactly as you’ve left it the past few days. 

“what?” you ask again.

“how did they know we’d be there?”

you squint at him irritatedly. “what are you talking about?”

“at the chaconne. i’d been inside five minutes when that thug came out shooting at you. there’s no way it was coincidence, he had to have known exactly when we’d arrive.”

dread creeps up your spine as the weight of his words seeps in. “…but how did they know we’d be there?”

your feet drop to the floor, shoulders bunching up as your body curls into itself. the apartment seems too small suddenly, like you’re not safe even in the confines of your own home. 

“jay,” you say again, more forcefully. “how did they know we’d be there?”

you follow his line of sight once more to the telephone. his eyebrows are creased, a frightening scowl set deep into his face. 

you recoil in the slightest when he marches over to the phone, deftly popping the porcelain skeleton and prying the rotary wheel off. his scowl deepens, that same low-burning fury in his eyes when his fingers yank a pale wire from the mess of circuitry inside. he holds up the displaced cable for you to see before he throws it to the ground and crushes it under his heel. 

“they tapped your phone,” he mutters through gritted teeth. he’s pacing again, steps quicker, path tighter. your stomach drops when the realization hits. 

they’ve been in your house. it’s like all the blood in your body goes cold. your neck is rigid with tension when you look up at jay. 

“b-but you said…”

jay picks up the phone, exposed wires and all, and punches in the number to your studio into the uncovered rotary. you can see the manic look in his eye, the panic that sets in when the line rings and rings without answer. he dials frantically another few times to no avail. you flinch when he slams the phone down, a frustrated growl escaping him as he runs a hand through his hair. 

he inhales quietly through his nose, steeling himself quickly before he turns to you and asks in a measured voice. “studio’s not picking up. do you have richie’s personal number?”

your heart falters for a second time when you realize that you don’t. 

“i-i…he…” it wasn’t rare to do business afterhours, not in your career. not when pictures had to be done on a strict schedule, starlet wellbeing be damned. you’d spent countless nights up until ungodly hours on the phone with richie and all your other executives hounding you on the line, calling you this way and that and projecting schedules for the next days and telling you to meet them here or there for a late shoot or a drink with a client. but it was never your doing. 

“he always called me,” you whisper helplessly, more to yourself than jay at this point. never once had you ever had more access to richie than he did to you. you had always been the star of the show, the luminary face of noxstar…hadn’t you? you were the reason they rose to fame, the reason they’re able to stay that way. you were the one calling the shots. or at least, that was what you had thought up until now. 

you were wrong. they own you. 

jay must see the horrified look on your face, the weight of all these realizations. his scowl lessens, and in your worry you miss the way his eyes almost soften when he kneels to meet your gaze, which at the moment, is intently fixed on the floor. his hands are warm and solid on your knees. 

“hey,” he says, his voice gentle but firm, same as his touch. you meet his eyes, the constricting feeling in your chest easing for just a moment. “i’m going to fix this.”

“they know where i live,” you whisper back helplessly, body trembling and fists clenched on the velvet sofa. 

jay stands with a final squeeze of your knee, smoothing his hair down and moving with brisk efficiency as he makes his way to the door and grabs his coat. 

you get to your feet immediately, a surge of panic returning when you see him reach for the door. “what are you doing?!”

“i’m going to the studio. there’s got to be someone around i can find, get me to someone that help. i’ll fix this.”

you rush over to stop him before he opens it, nails digging into his arm with how hard you’re holding on to him. “don’t go!”

he looks down at you, surprised. his free arm loosens around the doorknob, shoulders dropping slightly as some of the tension leaves his body. 

“don’t leave me here,” you whisper, mortified when your eyes begin to glass over with tears. “please.”

that does it. jay releases the doorknob, letting you pull him back from the entryway. you both stay there for a moment, too afraid to break the fragile silence, to disrupt the tension, to make everything that just happened real. 

your arm stays clutched around his, breathing shallowly, and his free hand comes to rest on your shoulder until it evens out. you should be off-put by his proximity, by the tingling feeling under your skin where he’s touching you. but you’re not. it’s the only thing that feels…safe, right now. 

you’re not sure how long you stay like that, frozen like a statue, petrified, until jay gently squeezes your shoulder as if to wake you from a trance. “you’re alright, starlight.” the rhyme almost makes you want to laugh, if you didn’t feel so awful. it rings in your ear like a children’s nursery tale. it’s charming the way he says it. like it really will be okay.

you let go of him with shaky arms once you can finally get a full breath in. your legs tremble when you back up a pace, arms wrapped around yourself as you look to jay as if to say what next?

he takes the jacket he’d been holding when he had meant to leave, draping it gently over your shoulders. your cheeks flush with embarrassment, but you let him because it feels comfortable and safe, like him. 

“you should rest.” the words are familiar on his lips, but this time you let the warmth behind it wash over you. it’s sincere this time, and not exasperated like usual. 

“how can i sleep knowing some triad scumbag was in here, tampering with my things?” you whisper, not missing the way his arms linger around you as he holds onto the lapels of the jacket. “what if they get in again?”

the crease returns to jay’s brow for a brief moment, a shadow passing quickly over his face before he composes himself. “they won’t. if we don’t make any calls it’ll take them a while to figure out i got the tap out. they’re playing a long game, but they’re not going to win. i’ll make sure of it.”

his words give you some assurance, but your stomach still turns uneasily. you glance to the window, but it’s pure darkness except for the faint lights in the distance you catch through the drapes. 

jay nudges your chin with a feather-light touch, just enough to get you to look back at him. “i’ll stay up all night if i have to. no one’s getting in. we’ll go to the studio first thing tomorrow and talk to somebody about this. i’ll fix it. alright, starlight?”

the faintest trace of a smile ghosts your lips at the nickname, at the rhyme from before. alright, starlight. 

you sleep with the bedroom door open that night, counting jay’s footsteps as he paces your living area until a fitful sleep finds you. 

© mytwinsung ♥︎ do not copy, translate, repost, feed to ai, etc. — comments + reblogs always appreciated!

he never left your side. he opened every door, he checked inside before letting you in, he always stepped out first. you’d never even seen him sleep. he always stayed up later than you, and woke up earlier. always on his guard, always your safety first. 

it was strange to have someone look after you like that, especially after you’d gotten so used to the solitude, the isolation it took to make it in your field. no friends, no lover, nothing but you and your iron-grip controlling company against the brutal tide of the hollywood film industry. 

it was cold, but it was familiar. this? this was different. and you hadn’t quite decided what to make of it just yet…

it’s been eerily quiet. you and your team at noxstar had been monitoring the papers headlines for any moves by the triad. every time you left the house you looked both ways. you hadn’t even risked going anywhere except the studio, and still, nothing. part of you was relieved, but the other is just waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

so for now? this was it. the routine goes like this: you wake up sometime before dawn to the smell of coffee (jay’s doing, of course), make yourself presentable before you unlock your bedroom door and step out, jay offers you toast (in your own home, can you even imagine?) which of course you always decline. then he drives you to the studio as the sun rises over hollywood, where you spend anywhere between twelve and sixteen hours being maneuvered and manipulated like a puppet. however, in the midst of the chaos of egomaniacal leads, crowing directors, and your frantic styling team comes some of your best work. for all the slander and rumors about being so high maintenance, you were the leading lady of noxstar productions for a reason. after all, they were only famous because of you. 

while you’re at the studio, jay gives you space. he hangs around, close enough that if you needed him he could be at your side in five seconds, but far back enough to let you work in peace. when you look back at him between takes, though, his eyes never leave you. he always watches you with that same intensity, those same dark eyes. you’re no stranger to being watched, of course you aren’t, but this…this is different. 

after your grueling days at the studio, jay drives you home. he always stops at the bodega for a sandwich, and always brings you a grilled cheese that you never eat. at least, not until you’re safely locked in your bedroom, which is exactly what you do practically the second you come home every night. the half-cold grilled cheese gives you just enough energy to wash up, bolt your window, draw your curtains, study your lines for a few minutes, and fall into exhausted sleep. you dream about mafiosos gunning you down, running through the streets in bloodied silk dresses, and then wake up and do it all over again. 

it’s sunday. you’re irritated this morning. 

it’s been just over one week of this terrible whirlwind of a schedule and the one morning a week you get to sleep in had been interrupted by another one of those horrible dreams. 

you don’t bother to pretty yourself up this time when you venture out of your bedroom. jay is sitting at the kitchen table, large hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee. there’s a newspaper in front of him, but he’s not reading it — he’s watching you. 

he stands when you approach, but you beat him to the coffee pot and serve yourself before he can do it for you. 

jay doesn’t say anything about your messy hair tucked hastily into a silk scarf. he doesn’t say anything about your lack of makeup, about the dark circles under your eyes. he just slides a plate of toast across the counter to you without a word like he does every morning. 

you barely spare it a glance, pushing it back towards him with a flick of your hand. he watches you, like always, but this time his gaze falls to the sliver of skin that’s exposed on your arm when your satin robe rides up. at the vaguely-hand-shaped deep purple marks decorating your wrist, faded some but still apparent. 

you tug your sleeve down, skin prickling under his watchful eyes, but his gaze remains steady even after you’ve covered it up. 

“that should’ve healed by now.”

jay hardly speaks, but when he does, the deep cadence gives you goosebumps. his words hang heavy in the silence of your kitchen. 

you don’t answer him, taking a slow, deliberate sip of your coffee. 

the tension eases some when jay finally leans back, dropping the plate with the toast into the empty sink. he returns to the table, though remains standing when he grabs for the newspaper. 

“you know,” he says quietly, slowly, “malnutrition can slow your immune system. keep things like that from healing. contribute to…discoloration and the like.” he’s looking at your face now, at the matching purple circles under your eyes. 

“i’m not malnourished.” your grip is so tight on your coffee mug that your knuckles are paling. 

“your studio keep you on a tight leash?” 

anger flares inside you at his casual tone, at the suggestion he’s imposing. “i’m not a dog.”

“i know that,” he replies steadily, gaze returning the paper. “don’t know if they do.”

your nostrils flare. how dare he stand in your own kitchen and tell you off about your life like you have a say in it. what does he know about you? 

you huff aggressively, snatching the toast from the untouched plate and taking a showy, spiteful bite as you try to storm past him. he moves to block your path, just enough to stop you from storming into your room, but not enough that you can’t push past him if you really had a mind to. your hissy-fit has seemingly had no effect on him. 

“what do you think about dinner?”

“spectacular concept,” you snap, staring up at him angrily. “not for me, though.”

“you don’t have any groceries. you can’t just starve all night.”

“watch me.” 

he holds your gaze, and you hate that he almost seems amused. you can’t stand to face off with him any longer, but instead of running to your bedroom and slamming the door, you stomp over to the fainting couch and sit down, arms crossed. i’m not going to hide in my own house, you think to yourself stubbornly as you pull your legs up and wrap your robe around yourself tighter. 

jay calls your name and you look over with cutting eyes. “will you do me the honor of joining me for dinner tonight?”

his tone is teasing but his eyes are serious. you turn back to the window when you reply. “even if i didn’t loathe the concept of eating with you right now, richie said no more little outings.”

you hear the small puff of air that jay exhales, the ghost of a chuckle. “i didn’t know you held richie’s word so highly.”

“i don’t.”

“perfect. so let’s get dinner.”

“i also don’t particularly savor the idea of the triad cornering us and having my insides served up on a platter in the back booth of some banquet hall.”

jay picks up the phone that sits on your end table and shakes it at you teasingly. “ah, and thus the beauty of this wonderful invention called takeout dining.”

“you’ll just leave me here alone and defenseless while you go get it?” you scoff, more petulant and irritated by his goading than genuinely concerned for your safety. 

“i’d take you with me, obviously.”

“obviously,” you echo sarcastically, rolling your eyes. jay only smirks at your reaction, clearly taking some pleasure in your annoyance. 

he holds the phone up, ready to dial at the rotary. “i’ll call it in. what’s your establishment of choice?” 

“have you ever tried ‘not on your life’?” you reply, which gets a sarcastic laugh out of him. “close second to ‘bite me’.”

“seriously,” he says, leaning against the table. “where do you like to go? a night out after a premiere, or where you’d make richie take you on official business?”

you give a dry laugh. “i’m lucky if richie brings me coffee. i wouldn’t be caught dead in public with him.”

“well, where would you be caught dead then?” he asks, phone still in hand. he’s watching you, like always, but the intensity that had become teasing that had become prying has now simmered down into something else. intrigue, maybe. or something more, if you had let yourself believe it. 

your gaze returns to the window. you’re quiet when you speak this time.

“chaconne’s.” even the name sounds soft on your tongue, softer than the beautiful lights on the chandeliers you can instantly picture inside the restaurant. the candles, the silk tablecloths and fresh flowers and gorgeous upholstery and sleek leather booths. it was the very picture of luxury, an intimate place at the top of the boulevard near the hills. fancy, but not snobbish. beautiful, but not over-the-top. you’d only been a handful of times, but it was like heaven every visit. you wanted to live there, it was like a dream. 

“it’s this little—”

“this little place up on the hills,” jay finishes, phone dangling from his hand. “up at the end of the boulevard. chandeliers and red candles.”

you look up, surprised. “you’ve been there?”

he smiles, the ghost of a grin dancing on his lips. “i don’t look like the kind of guy who’s been there?”

“i didn’t say that.” 

he snorts. “you sounded like it.”

you turn away once more, running your fingers along the embroidery of your couch. “just call it in already. they’ll take time to prepare it.”

jay hums, the rotary clicking as it spins when he dials. he places his order, repeats yours when you whisper it to him, then thanks the staff and tells them what time he’ll be by. then he takes the newspaper back up, sits on the armchair across from you, and you both sit in what is finally bearable silence. 

you’d spent the majority of the day lounging.

some hours reciting lines, some spent on more petty arguments with jay, and then another getting ready before your venture to pick up dinner. it would be criminal to leave the house looking as wrecked as you did this morning. what if there were cameras?

jay jingles his keys at you when it’s time to leave, which makes you roll your eyes, but the hunger burning low in your stomach and the idea of real food has you hurrying after him to the car. 

the drive is peaceful, quiet. the windows are rolled down a sliver, jazz playing idly on the radio as jay taps his fingers on the wheel to the beat. the sun is hanging low over the hollywood skyline, illuminating everything like gold. you close your eyes and breathe in the fresh air. perhaps cabin fever is real after all…

jay pulls to a stop in front of chaconne’s, the noir awnings trimmed with gold tipping the place away despite its well-tucked-away nature. 

“stay in the car,” jay says, locking the doors as he climbs out. “i’ll be right back.”

you duck low into your seat, pulling your scarf up over your head in the hopes of obscuring your face from outside view. you watch as he steps into the restaurant and then your gaze flits away. 

jay doesn’t take long. you’re in the middle of tuning the radio in the hopes of hearing something more upbeat when he steps out, holding two large paper bags. 

the setting sun reflects off the metallic trim of the restaurant door when he opens it, blinding you temporarily in a flash of gold. that’s why you don’t see the gunman step out of the alley just then. you just hear the shot as it goes off. 

the bullet ricochets off the side of the car with a horrible metallic CLINK! that startles you enough to raise your head. you catch a glimpse of jay dropping the bags and lean forward to scream at him, trying in vain to alert him of the shadowed figure in the alleyway before the windshield shatters from another shot. 

you drop immediately, covering your head as best you can and praying for something, any higher power in the universe to save you. the commotion outside — screams from passersby, glass shattering, gunfire — rings in your ears. you squeeze your eyes shut and pray it stops. 

WHAM! 

you scream again when something slams into the side of the car, but you look up to find jay pounding at the window. your heart races as you lunge over to unlock the door and he throws himself into the car, peeling out of the street with a violent screech of burning rubber. 

you watch, transfixed for just a second at the state of him. chest heaving, clothes disheveled, fringe falling in his face with that intense look he always had dialed up to a manic degree. 

“get down!” he barks, the command of it reaching through to your bones. even if he hand hadn’t come up to push your head down, you would’ve folded like a wet piece of paper anyway. another few shots ring out in the distance, barely audible over the roar of the engine and the screech of the tires. you stay down until jay’s breathing finally evens out. 

jay is certain they don’t know where you live. 

if he wasn’t, he’d promised, he wouldn’t have brought you back. you’d driven just out of the city and made your way back around, just to be sure that nobody was tailing you. jay had thoroughly checked the place after walking you up, telling you to stay in the foyer until he was positive it was safe. apparently it was, and now here you both sit where, after a thorough interrogation to make sure you were not injured, you’d both sunk into the kitchen chairs, utterly and completely exhausted. 

the table is empty. there’s nothing in the kitchen but an empty fruit bowl and the plate of toast in the sink laden with crumbs. 

“so much for dinner,” you murmur with a fragile laugh, trying to play off how shaken up you felt after the ordeal. 

the tension still hasn’t left jay’s shoulders, the tightness of his jaw. but he looks up when you speak, like your voice has snapped him out of it, turning to rummage in the pocket of his coat discarded on the back of the chair behind him. you watch curiously as he takes out a crumpled-looking paper box with the chaconne’s seal on it and slides it across the table to you without a word. 

you open it to find a smushed but no less delicious slice of cheesecake, the choice dessert of the restaurant. people came from all over california to try it. 

you look back up at jay with wide eyes, who only stares back solemnly. 

“you have it,” he says quietly when you don’t move another few moments. “i already ate.”

“i’ve been with you all day,” you reply softly. “i know you haven’t.”

“you need it more than i do.”

his stubborn streak should irritate you, but you don’t have it in you to be angry after today. “i told you i’m not a dog, and i don’t have a problem. share, at least.” you nudge it halfway back across the table. “i can’t have my bodyguard dying of starvation. might get in the way of you saving my life or whatever i keep you around for.”

that gets a smile out of him. not a teasing smirk or a shit-eating grin, but a real, genuine smile, small as it may be. he sets out two forks, and even though neither of you had eaten all day and were thoroughly starved and exhausted from all the commotion, you eat it slowly enough to savor it. not just the taste, but the moment. you never knew anything could taste so good. 

this one got longer than i expected but im happy with how it turned out!! excited to keep the series going <33 feedback always encouraged mwah

© mytwinsung ♥︎ do not copy, translate, repost, feed to ai, etc. — comments + reblogs always appreciated!

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.

You’d landed. You’d texted. He’d replied immediately: good.

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.

Friday.

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Sprawled across the left side of your bed, the light from the candle burns low.

Gaze trained on the misshapen wax, your eyes start to glaze as the flame dips lower and lower.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Wax falls onto the table below, hardening as soon as it hits the surface. 

You sigh. On the sheets next to you, a thick novel lies open, its pages bared to the chill of the room. On the table beside your bed, a half-finished letter to your sister sits equally discarded. 

It’s not as if palace life has left you bored — quite the opposite, in fact. Your days are full of reports and meetings and appearances that leave you drained long before the sun sets. 

In the castle, perhaps the only person with a schedule more crammed than yours is the king.

Jungwon. 

Your eyes fall shut for a moment, as if imagination alone can conjure him. You almost wish it could. These days, the king is a difficult person to come across. Even for you, and you’re afforded far more privileges than most. 

Still, the last time you laid eyes on him was yesterday morning, and that was only for the brief moment your paths crossed in the dining hall at breakfast. 

The last time you actually spoke with him properly was… thoughts trailing, you sigh out loud to no one in particular. It must have been nearly two weeks ago now.

You have never been naive enough to think running a kingdom, especially one entrenched in the turmoil of transition, would be an easy task. But stolen moments underneath the branches of a weeping willow and the shadows of forgotten hallways have only made you crave his presence more. And, much to your disappointment, notice his absence that much more acutely.

Lying on your back, your fingers thread though your hair that splays over your pillow. The action is absentminded, a feeble attempt to distract your wandering thoughts.

The end of autumn is approaching. The air has a chill to it these days, one you recognize well. One you know the kingdom will need to prepare for. 

There is work to be done. Plenty of it. Food rations that need to be sorted. Preservation and storing that needs to be taken care of before the chill becomes deeper, before the ground starts to frost. 

The large inventory of winter coats, a new initiative you helped oversee, needs to be allocated for mass distribution among the people in the most vulnerable districts. 

You have things to do. Plenty of important tasks and work to keep you busy.

But at the end of yet another long day, it’s always this. You, a candle you’ve burned down to its bones, and a bed that’s entirely too large.

Your new chambers were a gift from your king himself. A gesture of goodwill, a thoughtful attempt to make the castle feel more like your home instead of a begrudged fulfillment of a prophecy. But it’s so much larger than the tiny bedroom you had before. With all the space, your thoughts have nothing to do but wander.

You should sleep. The sunrise always comes earlier than you think it will, and tomorrow is a busy day. Foreign dignitaries from the western kingdom will arrive sometime after breakfast, and you imagine discussions with them will take up most of your day.

Besides that, Jaeyun’s been begging you to visit. It’s been weeks, nearly a month, since you last took Nabi out to your once familiar hilltop.

You should pay him a visit in the evening, perhaps. Find out if there are any updates on the fire that broke out at the schoolhouse last month. If it was just an accident of chance or the work of the small band of dissenters that have been wreaking havoc since the transition in rulership. 

Your mind feels heavy with the weight of it all. Again, sleep calls to you. Lulling with that sense of promised comfort. A reprieve from the thoughts swirling around your brain like wind on a stormy day.

Your candle is nearly nothing now. It will be extinguished soon whether you blow out the flame or not.

Still, like every night, a part of you hesitates. 

Your graveyard of candles is growing at a rather alarming rate, but every night it’s the same thoughts that torment you. 

Perhaps tonight, hope and temptation and that feeble prayer of maybe whisper against your ear, perhaps tonight will be the night he comes. 

You can see it in your mind, all too clearly. The way it will sound, loud in the silence, as he raps his knuckles gently against the wood of your door. 

The way he’ll enter. Softly, slowly. But never unsurely. He’ll know what he’s here for, even if propriety makes it difficult to put a name to. 

Your candle, low but steady, will provide just enough light. His crown will be the first to go, and the rest will follow soon enough. 

In the secrecy of your imagination, Jungwon’s eyes never leave yours. 

The young king, consumed by duty and honor and the troubles of the kingdom he’s inherited, for at least a few moments longer, will only be thinking of you. 

It’s a thought so vivid, so terribly tempting, that you almost consider calling to him through your connection. 

You could. It would be so easy. Even in your half conscious state, reaching for him through the recesses of your mind would feel like second nature. 

But every time you think to tug at that tether between the two of you, something in you hesitates. Reconsiders. And ultimately, resigns. 

It’s not that you don’t want to. You do. Even apart from your more illicit thoughts, the truth is that you miss him. 

The man you once spent long nights with, trading secrets and unraveling misconceptions under the cover of moonlight.

Your prince and now your king. Something in you aches whenever you remember that night in the stables, the one where he insisted you drop all pretenses and propriety and just call him Jungwon. 

What you wouldn’t give to do it again now. To look in his eyes and let the castle and your duties fall away to dust as you whisper his name in the sanctity of your bedroom. 

Rolling suddenly, you press your face into your pillow, as if the pressure alone can stifle your errant thoughts. Then, after a long moment, you turn back around, sitting up to reach for your candle. Warring with your thoughts will only make your feet drag slower in the morning, after all. You need to sleep. 

Moving your half finished novel from your bedsheets to your bedside table, you let your lips hover just above the dying fire for a minute longer. 

Another night. Another smothered flame. It’s nothing new, but you hesitate yet again.

Lips parting, your breath has just begun to pass through them when the sound of your name stops you dead in your tracks.

You’re so startled you nearly lose your balance, hair coming dangerously close to the last remnants of your still burning candle. 

There’s no one else in your bedroom. Your name wasn’t spoken, at least not out loud. 

Immediately, a molten urgency begins to burn deep within you. It’s him. It has to be.

Half afraid you’ve imagined it, you’re hesitant to try reaching back out. You reach for the connection in your mind tentatively, as if the last months have meant nothing. As if this is little more than an illusion crafted from glass. As if one misstep will shatter it.

Jungwon. You’re holding your breath, terrified that the ripple effect from any of your actions will become a beast to contain.

But your connection is not an illusion. And your name was not a figment of your imagination. 

He’s quick to respond.

You’re awake. It’s not a question. Even though the bond, you can sense it, his conflicted mix of relief and disapproval. 

I am. You return immediately. A moment of silence passes then. Another. Finally, you venture back out, Do you… do you need something?

You can almost see it, the way he shakes his head. It has a small surge of panic rising in your throat. As if he’s suddenly become sand, and all you can do is watch helplessly as it slips through your fingers. 

No, I… I’m sorry. It’s late. 

But you won’t lose him now, and especially not to feeble excuses. He sought you out. He won’t break away so easily. The hour, you exhale, hardly daring to move, is the least of my concerns. 

To your immediate relief, Jungwon’s response comes quickly. 

Where are you? 

Less than a beat later, you tell him, My chambers. 

Again, he’s silent for a long moment. Afraid his responses will stop entirely, you fill the silence in his mind again by returning his question. Where are you?

It must be past midnight by now. He should be free of his meetings, although some particularly pedantic ones have been known to extend this late into the evening.

If you had to guess, though, he’s dropped his official duties for the night. You don’t think he’d run the risk of distracting himself if his attention were still required elsewhere. 

This time, nearly a minute of silence passes. Another handful of wax drops harden against your table. Your breath is shallow in your chest. 

Maybe he’s fallen asleep, you finally concede. You do your best to be relieved at the thought. Rest is a fleeting thing these days for the king. If he’s sleeping, you shouldn’t disturb him further.

Still, this is the most you’ve had in weeks. You aren’t quite ready to let it go. 

Quietly, as if your mind itself were whispering, you try one last time.

Jungwon.

For a moment, there’s nothing but the sound of your breath and the silence of your bedroom. 

And then you hear it. This time, the sound doesn’t resonate inside your mind. No, it rings out into the space of your bedroom, coming from your right. 

It’s the unmistakable rap of three muted knocks against your bedroom door. 

Head turning so fast you’re afraid your neck will be sore in the morning, you scramble, standing up from your bed. 

It has to be him. He’s here. 

Come in, you send through your bond, still not thinking entirely straight. 

Your hair is a mess around your shoulders, you’re sure. The nightgown crafted from fabric meant to provide comfort more than structure is hardly proper attire in the presence of a king, but these realizations come too little, too late.

Before you can so much as smooth down the front of your crumpled night clothes, the door to your bedroom is opening. 

And in walks the king, pushing the latch closed quietly behind him. Then, he turns to you.

The ample size of your bedroom is something you curse again now. Even with him near, the distance between the two of you still feels like an abyss, an uncrossable thing. 

Jungwon stands at your door, candlelight flickering over his features. 

It never fails to strike you, especially in quiet moments like these, just how beautiful he is. Dark hair falls over his forehead, kissing the tips of long eyelashes. His cheekbones, sharp and defined, glow warm in the low light. 

And his eyes. By the gods, his eyes. Even from a distance, you can see the shadows beneath them. Born from long nights in the throne room and the duty that weighs heavy on his broad shoulders. 

Still, they're full of light, a keen sense of alertness where they meet yours across your bedroom. 

Jungwon wears no crown, no regalia. He’s come to you as himself, the barest version of it he can muster with so many responsibilities to his name.

You watch, breath rising shallow in your chest, as his eyes trace the planes of your face. As if he’s seeing how well memory has served him these past weeks. As if he’s been dreaming of this too. 

And then his eyes fall lower, ghosting over your neck. Your exposed collarbone, revealed by the neckline that sits just above your chest. They trace you, slowly, steadily, all the way to where the hem of your nightgown brushes against your ankles. 

His gaze returns to your face. You watch as his throat works through a swallow, jaw tightening. 

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says to you out loud. “It’s late.”

You shake your head, repeating the same sentiment you told him earlier. “The hour matters little.”

“I just,” he continues, as if he’s under the incorrect assumption that his presence in your bedroom needs justifying. “I wanted to see you.”

You look at him again, then. Take in the shadows beneath his eyes. Just how deep they’ve become, even since you last saw him. The set of his shoulders. Still broad, still proud, but unmistakably weighed down by exhaustion. 

Your candlelit fantasies, then, whatever indistinct, sensation-driven form they’ve taken, start to shift. Into something softer, more delicate.

You nod, infused suddenly with a new sense of purpose. A stroke of bravery. 

“Come here,” you urge, motionting him closer.

Jungwon hesitates for only a moment. But the magnetism that tethers you pulls at him too. And eventually, even the king is bending to your requests. 

He approaches slowly, with the careful, even footsteps of a hunter trying not to startle its prey. But when he comes to stop, still an arm’s length away, you’re not sure which of you is truly in pursuit. 

Reaching, you let your fingers encircle his wrist. Then, you sit back down on your bed, pulling him along with you. 

You’re not sure if it’s the sleepiness or something else that makes him so pliant in your hold, but Jungwon offers no resistance. 

Moving backwards until your spine is pressed against the expanse of your headboard, you meet Jungwon’s gaze. He still sits with respectable distance between the two of you, hovering at the edge of your bed. 

Reaching out, you intertwine your fingers with his. 

Pulling gently, you search his eyes for any sign of hesitation. There’s none to be found. Just a wide-eyed, glassy reflection of desires that match your own. Your candle, bare flame that it may be, reflects in his gaze like starlight. 

“Come,” you urge, guiding him gently until his body is a mirror image of your earlier position, splayed across your bedsheets. His head, however, never reaches your pillow. Instead, you guide it into your lap.

He’s tense, you can tell. He won’t relax fully into you, even as he lets himself be pulled to a lying position, his head resting against your thighs. 

Tentatively, as if pressing at an invisible boundary, you thread your fingers through his hair. 

You can’t see his expression. His eyes face away from you now, but his sigh of relief is immediate. Audible. 

Your fingers press deeper into his hair and he sighs again, this time against your nightgown, as some of the tension begins to ease from his shoulders. As he relaxes further into your touch. 

Absentmindedly, you begin to trace patterns against his scalp, letting your fingertips ghost through his dark hair in soothing repetitions. His head is warm in your lap, a comfortable weight that settles over the tops of your thighs. You’re hyper aware of every shift in position, every miniscule movement he makes under your ministrations. 

You spend long moments like that, basking in the quiet, in the stillness. Your fingers continue to work through his hair, chasing the small sounds he makes whenever you come across a particularly sensitive spot. 

After long minutes, his breath becomes more even. You wonder if he’s fallen asleep. 

A sudden movement answers your question. Slowly, but absent of inhibition, his hand comes to rest on your thigh, just beneath his chin. 

It doesn’t remain motionless for long. Like you, Jungwon begins to trace patterns. He draws his with his thumb, pressing gently against you as he rubs small, even circles. 

Even through the thin layer of fabric, his touch sends a coil of heat pooling just under your skin. You’re suddenly grateful for your position. Thankful that he’s facing away from you so he can’t see the way color begins to bloom on your cheeks. 

Suddenly overcome with the need to fill the silence, you ask, “What’s on your mind?”

Jungwon’s touch continues as he thinks for a moment. Finally, he answers quietly, “At the moment? Very little.”

“I’m serious,” you urge, a frown pulling your lips down. “You seemed… tense earlier. Did something happen?”

“I was,” he admits. “A meeting with the royal advisors ran late and no one could be reasoned into agreeing with anything.” He pauses for a moment, swallowing once. “But I’m not thinking about them now.”

“You’re not?” you ask, fingers still in his hair, tracing his skin like you can soothe away any errant thoughts through touch alone.

“No,” he confirms. You feel his head shake gently against your lap. “I’m not.”

“Good,” you nod, voice so quiet it’s almost lost to the stillness of your bedroom. 

You’re both silent for a moment, breaths mingling as your candle dips impossibly lower, light flickering more erratically as it reaches its final moments. As if the wick itself isn't quite ready to let go. Can’t give into the finality of being extinguished. 

You’re whispering now, but he still hears you. He always does, whether your voice reaches his ears or his mind directly.

“Jungwon,” you breathe. 

“Mm,” he hums, vibrations sinking through your skin and settling near your bones. 

“I miss you.” It’s a strange thing to admit, perhaps, when you share a home. When he’s here now, lying in your lap, connected in more ways than one. 

When you agreed to live in the castle, now a handful of months ago, you thought it would be disarming, distracting, just how often you saw Jungwon. You never imagined you’d be spending sleepless nights aching for moments like this. That your time together would almost always have to be stolen. 

Back then, whatever was beginning to bloom between the two of you felt like hope, like possibility. But as summer gave way to autumn, reality began to root itself more firmly into the ground. As the leaves turned from green to golden and began to fall from the trees, so did the illusion that you and the newly crowned king would have nothing but time to explore the budding connection between you. 

You don’t blame him. You can’t resent him. You admire Jungwon’s dedication to bettering the world around him, to keeping his promises and seeing things through. And you know he feels the same towards you. Every solidified plan, every treaty and agreement you’ve helped draft into law has only made him more fond of you. 

But you’re long past pretending that admiration is the only feeling you harbor for your king. Here in your bedroom, the weight of it all sits heavy on your chest. 

You mean it. You want him in ways that extend beyond duty. You miss him, even when he’s right in front of you. 

For a moment, his fingers still. Their weight still presses against your skin, but his movement has stopped. You wish you could see his expression. You’re thanking every one of the ancient gods that you can’t. 

A million and one contradictions. But it always comes back to this. To him. 

“You miss me?” he echoes. There’s no accusation in his voice, nothing but a small sense of wonder. 

Still, it has a tendril of guilt blooming in your gut. He already has so much on his plate. Stretched so thin from the immense sense of duty that’s always pulling him in every direction. You can hardly be selfish enough to ask that he add something as frivolous as your feelings to his list of concerns. 

“I’m sorry,” you try to retract. “I know—”

Don’t apologize.

He whispers it into your mind this time. Mostly because his lips are occupied elsewhere. Turning slightly, he presses a long, gentle kiss against the top of your thigh, just above where his fingers have resumed their ministrations. 

It’s embarrassing, perhaps, how immediately it has heat pooling in your gut. His mouth isn’t even moving. It’s just pressed to your skin, warmth overwhelming even through the small barrier of fabric. 

You feel his lips part against you, jaw brushing your thigh as he moves higher, pressing another kiss against you. As if your nightgown is nothing to him, as if he’s imagining the taste of your skin beneath it.

“Jungwon,” you whisper, still using what’s left of your voice. In the quiet of your bedroom, with his mouth warm against your skin, it sounds scraped raw. Whether you’re urging him or begging for reprieve, you’re not entirely sure. 

He doesn’t respond out loud. His lips remain occupied with the taste of silk as his mouth begins to draw higher, carving out a trail of soft kisses. 

You’ve kissed him before, yes, but his mouth has always been on yours. Or perhaps the length of your throat, in particularly desperate moments. But those moments have become increasingly rare. And this is different. This is new. 

This has muscles tightening beneath his touch, your legs clenching, all the way down to your toes. Your fingers tangle tighter in his hair, and he exhales harshly against you, silk fluttering at the movement. 

Don’t tell me you’re sorry. He reaffirms in your mind, lips still working against you. You think I haven’t missed you too? Do you think that this hasn’t plagued every last one of my waking thoughts?

Jungwon. This time, you speak in your mind. You’re afraid of what your voice will sound like if you try to find it now.

He’s not done wreaking havoc on your last threads of coherence. 

I dream of you, you know. His mouth is on your hip now, leaving a trail of slow, deep kisses. The number of nights I’ve waited just outside your door like this… apologies are the last thing I want from you.

“Jungwon,” you urge. Somewhere in the haze, in the heat, you manage to find your voice. It’s raw, yes, but it’s there. You disentangle your hands from his hair, and he groans at the loss of contact. 

The sound is nearly your undoing. Vibrations, low and deep, spread from where he still has his mouth on you, reaching untouched places, parts of you that are beginning to ache. 

“Jungwon,” you try again, hands sliding to his jaw. Gently, you press a finger beneath his chin, urging him to look up at you. 

Pliant under your touch, his mouth leaves your skin. You mourn the loss of contact for only a moment before his eyes finally, finally meet yours. 

Wide and glassy in the low light, you can practically see your reflection in them. Forgetting your earlier embarrassment at just how easily he affected you, the sight beneath you proves that Jungwon is far worse for wear.

Pupils blown, he looks up at you like a man starved. Lips swollen and glossy from his ministrations, it’s as if he’s indulged in too much of the palace’s wine. A deep, violent flush dusts the top of his angular cheekbones, exhaustion in his eyes replaced by something entirely new. 

If the ache in your bones is beginning to sing, you imagine his must be screaming with the way he looks at you, gaze leaden with want. 

There’s a shiver of thrill that chases your spine, the same flicker you felt that afternoon in the moments just before you ducked beneath the willow tree. Only now, it’s intensified a thousand times over. 

You have his attention now, and you’ll use it well. 

Come here, you plead.

A ridiculous request given how entangled you already are, but he understands. And he doesn’t need to be told twice. 

Sitting up, Jungwon rises until it’s him who hovers above you, crowding you further into the solid expanse of your headboard. The sudden pressure against your spine makes you wince, an unintentional expression that doesn’t escape his notice. 

“Here,” he urges. His voice is low, gentle in its command even as it roughens around the edges. “Like this.”

He moves again, this time leaning back until he’s the one sat resting against your headboard. With a gentle grip that spares no urgency, he reaches for your wrists, pulling until you’re settled across his lap, legs splayed on either side of him. 

It’s a change in position, an adjustment from earlier, but it still puts your eyes above his. He looks up at you with that same glassy gaze, heavy with the weight of his desire. 

Hands against his chest, you feel the depth of his breath as it rises and falls slowly. Captivated by the way he seems almost inebriated from this, from you, you watch as the flush spreads further across his cheekbones. His gaze, locked on you, fills with a sudden intensity. Under the weight of his undivided attention, you feel a sudden flash of shyness. 

Alone in your bedroom, deep in the forgotten hours of night, there’s no one to admonish you for your actions, no one to scold you for your lack of propriety. 

It’s only you, Jungwon, and that ever-pulsing thread of desire that’s taken root deep within you, wrapping around your body, your mind, until you feel consumed by it. 

Between the deep, tightening waves of sensation and the heat simmering just under your skin, eye contact becomes a difficult thing to maintain. It’s too much. He’s only looking at you now, fingers still against the outsides of your thighs, but the combination of it all is overwhelming in ways you can’t entirely explain. 

A renewed flash of heat blooming across your features, you dip your chin, looking down at where your body rests on his. 

Immediately, one of his hands leaves the expanse of your thigh. Raising it, he gently soothes back hair that’s fallen over your eyes, tucking it behind your ear. His fingers go back to your temple, then. Retracing the same pattern even though your hair’s already been adjusted. He’s not trying to fix anything now. He’s just soothing you. 

You don’t have to say anything. Even though this breaches new barriers between the two of you, he can read every expression, every breath, like an open book. He recognizes how unmistakably overwhelmed you’re quickly becoming. 

Slowly, quietly, he lets his hand fall to the side of your neck. You can’t suppress the shudder that runs the length of your spine when it settles there. He feels it too, the way you shake, and his next exhale is a bit rougher, a bit more labored. 

With the reverence of a worshipper, his thumb begins to trace gentle lines, a repeated motion up and down the overly warm skin of your neck. 

He’s patient, even though the effort strains. Even though his own desires have started to near a boiling point. 

Still, he waits until you’ve adjusted to his touch. Until you’ve begun to relax into it.

Only then does his hand start to splay. Thumb still rubbing comforting strokes against one side of your neck, his fingers extend to the other. Until his hand covers the base of your throat.

His fingers wander, searching until they find what they’re looking for. Eventually, they come to rest in the dip above your collarbone, feeling the way your pulse hammers there. It quickens, then. Becomes impossibly more erratic. 

He’s doing it on purpose, you realize. Measuring your physical response to him. Surveying just how deeply his effect on you extends. 

Your heart skips a beat, then. A telltale sign of just how much his touch had already begun to unravel you. 

He sighs, brow creasing, breath catching like he’s in pain. 

But it’s not himself that he’s concerned with. Are you okay? he asks. Even in your mind, he’s whispering. As if you’re a skittish kitten he’s trying not to startle. As if that alone will be enough to calm your frayed nerves.

Searching for your voice, you come up hopelessly blank. His hand still sits around your throat like a promise. A reminder of his presence. 

All you can do is nod. You’re not sure you could even form your thoughts into something coherent now. 

Do you want me to stop? Stop what, you’re not entirely sure. He’s not really doing anything. Even his thumb has stilled now. His hand is wrapped loosely around the base of your throat, your thighs spilling on either side of his.

It’s not as if you’re entirely clueless, but you’ve never been here before either. None of your inexperienced fumbling or horribly awkward explanations from the castle midwives of what womanly flowering entails prepared you for the sensations you’re feeling now. They made it sound so… clinical. Detached. A simple repetition of motion. A clear start, middle, and end. 

Never once did they mention the intensity of it all. The way your nerves are all flowing into one another and you can’t quite tell where things begin and end anymore. The way having Jungwon in front of you, beneath you, makes you feel like a torch light filled with too much oil, on the verge of exploding at any given moment. 

You don’t know exactly what comes next. But you know the answer to his question. 

Silently, resolutely, you shake your head. 

But Jungwon isn’t willing to take his chances on your silence. He wants, needs to be sure. 

Tell me, he pleads. 

So you do. 

No, you assure him, finding your last train of sensible thought. No, I don’t want you to stop.

His fingers flex against your throat. Not tightening, just… there. 

Will you look at me? Even in your mind, something in his words sings with desperation. Like he needs it. Like he’ll fall apart without it.  

So slowly, gathering every last ounce of bravery, you let your eyes trace the band of his belt, the planes of his chest, the set of his jaw, before you acquiesce to his request. Taking one final, steadying breath, you bring your gaze to his. 

You don’t think any amount of time or preparation or damn breathing would make you feel ready for what you find. 

His eyes are wide, full of longing so poignant you imagine it must be painful. His fingers twitch against your neck again, and you realize then just how much restraint he holds you with. You can see it now, the rippling threads of tension evident in his shoulder, his brow, the swallow he forces down. 

Eyes on yours, he asks, somewhat hesitantly, Do you… Your mind is silent for a moment. Have you ever…

You understand what he means now. Deciding pride is a better sacrifice than honesty, you shake your head. 

He closes his eyes for a moment, eyelids tightening like the idea affects him more than he thinks it should. More than he wants you to know.

Subtly, almost as if involuntary, he shifts beneath you, hips moving slightly. Even the miniscule adjustment sends a fresh wave of heat plummeting through your veins. His gaze finds yours again. You do your best to maintain it, even as your eyelids start to flutter. 

Looking at you as if everything he has hinges on your response, he parts his lips. And then he asks slowly, almost as if he’s afraid of your answer, Does it feel good?

It takes you a moment to respond.

Good is an insufficient word for the way warmth is spreading through your body so quickly you can’t contain it. For the way you can feel your heartbeat everywhere. In your chest, against his fingers at your throat. Pulsing, low and deep, in the place beneath you where your bodies connect. 

It’s almost terrifying, the way you can’t predict what sensations you’ll be assuaged with next, the way you don’t know how your body will react to his ministrations. 

But this is Jungwon. Your Jungwon. You trust him in a way that makes your fears feel small. You want him in a way that has you desperate to chase the unknown instead of hiding from it.

Your spinning, spiraling thoughts are surely too much to tell him. You’re not even sure how to put most of them into words that he’ll understand. 

So instead, you say, Yes. Eyes locked on his, you nod. It feels good. A bit more shyly, you add, You feel good.

His eyelids shutter at that. His exhale is shaky, barely holding on by a thread. 

Opening his eyes again, he nods. Good. You don’t… you don’t have to think so hard. Just let it feel good. Do what feels good.

He’ll follow your lead, is what he means. Part of you wants to protest. You feel unsteady, unsure. You don’t know what to do. Wouldn’t it be better if he just showed you?

But his words play in your mind again. It’s exactly what he told you, isn’t it? Don’t think so hard. Just… do. 

Closing your eyes for a moment, you let your mind run a full scan of your body, all the way from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, searching for the most prominent sensations to follow. 

With all of your attention on them, they’re easy to pinpoint. Most of all, your focus snaps to that deep, pulsing ache in your gut that seems to start and end between your splayed thighs. 

Brow creasing, you adjust your weight slightly. The effect is almost instantaneous. Friction, pressure. You identify them immediately, effortlessly, as the things to chase. The shaky breath that spills from your parted lips breaks into a tiny, audible whimper. 

Jungwon’s fingers nearly spasm against your throat at the sound. 

“Yeah,” he whispers aloud, more breath than sound. “Like that.”

Your hips move slowly at first, trying to commit every angle, every new sensation to memory. 

Beneath you, Jungwon is true to his word. For long minutes, he only watches, thumb resuming its soothing patterns against the side of your neck as you chase sensations. As he lets you use his body as you please, following the pathways of your own pleasure. 

You feel him lean forward, your eyes still closed tight, as he puts his mouth on your throat, lips pressing softly just under your jaw. The added sensation has a high, helpless sound rising in your throat. It spills through your lips, without your permission, and Jungwon’s loosening grip on restraint slips further. You feel his tongue hot against your skin in response. 

So beautiful. You can’t tell if he means to send the thought to you or not. So fucking pretty.

Either way, his praise has another whimper falling through your lips. This time, Jungwon moves his mouth to yours the second it begins, as if he wants to swallow it whole. 

It’s the first time tonight he’s had his mouth on yours, but it can hardly be called a kiss, with the way your lips are practically slack against his, still a slave to the sensations unfurling beneath you. 

Jungwon doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, he works at you like a man starved, as if he wants to count just how many more of those sounds he can swallow straight from your lips.

Your hips chase relief on his thigh for minutes longer, but eventually, the sensation starts to lose its edge. The friction you feel from your movements alone is no match for the ache still building deep within you.

“Jungwon,” you whisper, lips moving against his as he presses his forehead to yours. You’re both so warm. The heat of proximity is almost as unbearable as the thought of breaking it. 

You don’t know how to tell him, the way it still feels good, but you can’t quite seem to get it just right. The way you're practically falling over yourself in search of the right angle, the right pressure, the perfect movement, but you can’t seem to find it no matter how hard you try. 

It’s so frustrating — like you’re nothing but an endless jumble of nerves. With too much energy, sensations that still ebb but you can’t maneuver into flowing. 

“Jungwon, I can’t—” your voice breaks. “It’s not—”

Even in your incoherence, even without you finishing the thought, he understands.

“Sh,” he soothes, “I have you.”

And he does. Immediately, his hand leaves the dip in your neck, breaking contact with your pulse point. Jungwon lets it wrap around your body, settling at the base of your spine instead. He uses his new leverage to pull you further onto his lap. Closer into his burning heat. Up, up, up, all the way until you feel him, feel a man, for the first time. 

Immediately, every stalled sensation begins to flow again. 

And Jungwon isn’t so still anymore either. His own body, once a tool for your pleasure, begins to take some of its own, too. He moves with you now, hands at your waist as he guides you over his lap. Angles his hips in well-timed motions that have you seeing stars. Whimpering his name until your voice sounds like sobs.

Your hands fall to his shoulders now, trying to erase any last fragment of space that still exists between the two of you as he works you over his body. 

His lips return to your throat, this time trailing further downwards. You feel his tongue press against your collarbone, following the dip of your neckline, teasing just beneath it. The air sings cooly over the path of damp kisses he leaves on your skin, a welcome reprieve from the fire burning everywhere else in your body. 

Jungwon’s breath becomes more labored, more erratic as you continue. The groan he releases on a particularly sharp uptake sends your mind spinning, a sound of your own breaking through your lips to join it. 

Jungwon, you send to his mind this time. You don’t know what to ask for, don’t know how to explain it, but you just need— more, Jungwon. Please. I can’t— 

Again, he reads your thoughts like they’re his own. 

“Okay,” he nods. Your hips still move with his, but the frantic pace he’s helped you build begins to subside. The two of you are moving slower than before, with more intent. “Okay, baby, just—” He presses a small, delicate kiss to the center of your chest, like he needs one more touch before leaning back.

Eyes meeting yours, his fingers come to rest on the ties that line the front of your nightgown. Looking up at you, hair mussed, cheeks flushed, lips swollen, he asks for permission, “Can I?”

“Yes,” you nod immediately, mind already spinning at the idea of his skin against yours, no barrier or fabric between you. “Please.”

His long fingers are slow, deliberate, as they begin to unravel the ties holding your bodice together. You watch him as he works, sighing as he leans in, covering every inch of newly exposed skin with his mouth, as if there’s no part of you he’s willing to leave untouched. 

Finally, when the last of his work is done, your nightgown pools at your waist. Bare before him, you feel exposed in the low light. Shy as his gaze travels from your eyes to your navel and then back again. 

You try not to let the discomfort take root, but it makes you fidget. “Jungwon, I—”

“You’re beautiful,” he repeats his earlier words. This time, he says them out loud, his eyes never leaving yours. In the dying light of your bedroom, he decides that your bodies aren’t the only thing worth baring. 

There’s a distinct touch of vulnerability, of pure, raw truth, when he tells you, “You cannot begin to understand the number of times I’ve imagined this. How soft you’d be.” His fingertip traces the curve of your cheek as you lean into his touch, chasing his warmth. “The way you’d look at me while I touch you.” His eyes meet yours, a new kind of heat burning in them. “The sounds you’d make while I’m inside you.”

Your eyes widen on his last admission, and he misreads it for panic, for trepidation, for uncertainty. 

“We don’t have to,” he assures you. “As I said, we’ll do whatever feels good.”

But you don’t feel any panic or trepidation. There’s no trace of uncertainty left anywhere in your bones. You’re too far down this path to not see it through until the end. Besides, you’re starting to find that the tendrils of your own pleasure are wonderful to chase, but his…

Something about knowing that it’s your body, your voice, your mind that Jungwon takes his pleasure from is satisfying in an entirely different way. If it’s something he’s imagined, you’re sure it must be worth living. 

Eyes low, you take his hand in yours. Playing with his fingers, the momentary distraction fuels your bravery. Makes what you’re about tell him a bit easier to work through your mouth. 

“I want to,” you whisper. “I want you…” your voice trails off, heat blooming anew against your cheeks as you slowly admit, “I want you inside of me.”

And you do. After all, it feels only right. He’s already carved a space for himself inside your mind and within your heart. Your body only feels like a natural progression. A final affirmation of the feelings you already have, of the declarations you’ve already made. 

Gently, he slides his fingers beneath your jaw, turning your face until you have nowhere to look but him. 

His breath falters as he takes you in again. Assesses the mess he’s already made of you. His eyes are wide as he searches your expression for any hint of hesitation. 

“Are you sure?” he whispers. “There are other ways I could—”

You shake your head. “I’m sure. Please. I want—” you admit to him what you couldn’t before. “I want you to make me feel good.”

Then Jungwon’s the one closing his eyes, forcing an exhale through his lips like your admission physically pains him. 

“Okay,” he finally says, opening his eyes to look at you again.

“Okay?”

“Gods, yes,” he affirms, already moving. “I’ll give you anything. Anything you ask for, it’s yours.”

Despite the urgency, despite the still aching heat between the two of you, Jungwon vows to take his time. To commit every expression, every miniscule movement to memory. To savor sensations instead of just chasing them to completion.

His movements are gentle, as measured as they can be as he helps you rid your nightgown entirely. There’s reverence in his gaze as it traces the expanse of your body. Silent prayers he says as he takes in every uncovered inch of skin. 

Jungwon follows suit, his hands covering yours as you help rid him of his clothes. Dark and simple, they provide just enough warmth for the light chill of the turning seasons. Now, they lie scattered across the floor near your bed. Forgotten, unnecessary. 

This time, Jungwon guides you onto your back, hair fanning over your pillow. It’s a mirror image of your earlier position. Only this time, you aren’t alone in your room anymore, wallowing in your loneliness. 

Now, he cages you in, pressing impossibly closer until your breaths are mingled, heartbeats intertwined.

Your bed doesn’t feel so terribly big now, not as he covers your body with his own, skin against skin everywhere you can reach. 

You’re so warm. Overwhelmed in a new way even as the pace begins to quiet. 

He’s gentle. Intentional. Slow as he presses his fingers against you. Inside you.

Jungwon takes his time with you. Alternates between covering every inch of you with his lips and watching the expressions that play out across your features every time he discovers a new way to touch you. 

It’s quiet. Full of breathy whispers, long sighs. And then, it’s anything but. 

Hushed whimpers, heady groans. The broken gasp that falls from his mouth to yours when he finally, finally presses his way inside of you. 

The way he soothes your hair back from your face as you wince at the unfamiliar intrusion. 

Shhh, he whispers into your mind as he holds his body still, letting you adjust. Giving you time to relax around him. You’re okay. Doing so well, aren’t you? So full and still taking it all.   

Then your hands are back in his hair, and his are back on your thighs, this time pulling them upwards as he gently encourages you to wrap them around his waist.

He starts to move, and it’s so much, so fucking overwhelming, that you think you might die.

It’s unlike anything you’ve ever felt, beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. You can feel him everywhere. 

From your fingers to the tips of your toes to the inside of your mind, and it all converges back to that place deep inside of you that he presses against every time he moves. 

Your mind is filled with him. With the two of you tangled in one another, your connection sings. He doesn’t have to send his thoughts to you. You can feel them, as if they were a part of you already. 

Look at you, he insists, reveling in the way you tug against his hair, something surging in his chest at the way your eyes screw shut in another wave of pleasure so deep you’re nearly drowning. 

Perfect, he insists when another breathy whimper spills from your lips.  

Mine, he decides when he hopes you’re too wrapped up in sensation to remember. 

Before long, something starts to build inside of you, slow at first and then impossibly fast. A new feeling, one that starts deep in your gut, imbued with a renowned sense of urgency. You chase it, running blindly even if you don’t yet know what waits on the other side. 

It’s as if you’re climbing. Higher, higher, higher. And then you’re falling. Suspended in midair. Falling. Floating. Flying. 

Jungwon is there, working you through it, talking you through it. Whispering sweet nothings in your ear and in your mind. Words blend into one another, and you can only half understand him through the way your body still trembles slightly. You can feel yourself pulsing around where he still sits inside you, stronger than anything you felt before. 

It must have the same effect on him. Only seconds later, Jungwon buries his face in your shoulder, releasing one final groan before warmth fills your body. 

For long moments after, the two of you lie motionless, still connected as his weight settles over you, either unwilling or unable to move. You suppose it doesn’t really matter which of the two it is. 

And even later still, long after the urgency has transformed into something sweeter, the two of you are awake. 

Now, your head rests against Jungwon’s still bare chest, his fingers threading through your hair. Your body feels heavy with satiation, a kind of deep, physical contentment foreign to you until now. The ghost of his touch lingers. You can still feel everywhere he was inside of you. 

Eventually, Jungwon is the one to finally break the silence. His voice is small, but it rings clearly in the quiet of your bedroom. “I don’t want you to miss me.” 

You sigh, sleepy as you curl further into his warmth. “It’s inevitable.” You’re not angry. Even if the loneliness stings on occasion, you’ll continue finding ways to make your peace with it. Although it might prove more difficult now that you know what it is to have him like this. “A king will always be bound by duty. And duty will always find a way to call at the most inopportune of times.”

You can feel the way he shakes his head. “Duty calls to everyone. We all just have different names for it.”

“Perhaps,” you agree, fighting a yawn, “but your responsibilities will always look a bit different than everyone else’s. It’s okay,” you add, sensing his lingering unease. “I understand. I don’t know what it feels like to wear a crown, but I can’t imagine it would be easy.”

For a moment, he’s silent. His fingers go still in your hair. And then— “Would you ever?”

You frown. “Would I ever what?”

There’s a tremor of hesitation in his voice now, a betrayal of his nerves. “Wear a crown.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I’m asking you.”

“I know what you’re implying,” you agree. “But don’t ask me now.” Pushing yourself up, you turn until your hand is splayed across his chest, your chin resting on top. From this angle, you can look him in the eye. “Don’t ask me when you’re afraid I’ll say no.”

Jungwon holds your gaze. Exhaling slowly, he admits, “I think I’ll always be at least a little afraid you’ll say no.”

“No,” you shake your head, a glimmer in your eye. “I promise that you won’t be.” Leaning up, you press a chaste kiss to the skin just below his chin. “Sleep,” you urge, settling back into your original position. Bare skin still pressed to his, you pull your blanket up over both of your bodies. “We’ll both need our strength for tomorrow.”

So Jungwon doesn’t ask you, not tonight. Not the next night. Not until nights have begun to bleed into one another, the frequency with which he greets you with a voice in your head and a knock against your door only growing. 

He waits, until he knows every inch of your mind. Until he understands your dreams, your hopes, your fears just as intimately as if they were his own. Until the time he’s spent learning you in the privacy of your bedroom means he knows your body just as well. 

For tonight, he does his best to follow your instructions, to put his wandering thoughts to rest and just sleep. 

Only once more does he work his way into your mind with the gentle presence of someone who’s been invited, of someone who’s grown to be welcome. 

Good night, he sends to you, and you shudder as if he’s whispered it against the shell of your ear. 

In all his life that he’d known Kim Sooah, there had never been a scenario where she hadn’t shown him a good time. Whether it was the first party with the popular kids she’d invited him to, the first drink she’d peer pressured him into drinking (and later apologised for after he’d regained consciousness), or even when she’d smuggled in alcohol to the first Big Hit party after they’d become a group - Kim Sooah knew how to crank it up.

Therefore, when she convinces him to meet her after an evening shoot instead of going home, despite how tired he is, Jimin can’t help but oblige.

He reaches the spot she’d texted him and looks around, frowning when he only sees a half-empty parking lot with a couple of dim street lamps. Fishing out his phone, he scrolls to his chat with her.

“Hey!”

Jimin almost jumps out of his skin and his phone tumbles out of his hand. “Shit!” he gasps, catching his phone just before it hits the ground and turning around, heart racing. “What is wrong with you?”

Sooah grins, head and shoulders popping out of the silver car right behind him. “How come you didn’t recognise my car?” she demands, resting her forearms on the window.

“Because it’s… silver. Like every other car here,” he answers, turning around on the spot to make his point. “Why are you…” He looks at the entire image, including the deserted parking lot “... lurking?”

“I was waiting for you,” she explains, opening the door and stepping out. “You really couldn’t tell it was my car?” she repeats, sounding hurt.

“No! Of course I could,” he corrects himself, knowing how proud Sooah was of her brand new second-hand car. “I just… forgot. I would’ve recognised it if I’d seen the inside,” he adds immediately, laughing when she glares at him. 

This car was her baby, as she put it, her first big adult purchase. Jimin had tried his best to persuade her to just let him buy her a car but she wouldn’t hear of it. After over a week of searching, budgeting and arguments that always ended in one or both of them sulking, they had compromised on Sooah buying the car and Jimin paying to upholster and redo the interiors.

Now, gesturing to the plush, beige faux leather seats, Sooah turns to him. “I have a plan for tonight and you are going to love it,” she declares. 

Behind her, Jimin can see two bags of burgers, fries and diet coke on the seat, along with a folded blanket, and he understands. “Oh, are we throwing it back to the Incheon highway night again?” he asks fondly, placing an arm around her shoulders and squeezing affectionately. “Maybe this time you won’t slip off the bonnet.”

Sooah slaps his torso lightly. “No, but remind me of that again. No, it’s a different plan - I’m throwing it way back.” She smiles up at him, with a little too much knowing.

Jimin returns it, a little uneasily. “Uh, okay… is it the time we had sex in the backseat of my car twice in the same night? Because I gotta tell you, I think we’re committed enough to do that indoors.”

“Further back, Park Jimin.”

“I give up. Are you going to tell me? Or are you driving me?”

“I could… but we’re already here.” 

Jimin looks around again. “You have to give me more of a hint, baby. Do you even have a plan? Or are you just making it up as we go along?” he asks kindly. “Because this is the road down to our high school and I don’t think we’ve ever -” He stops abruptly, noticing Sooah’s growing, brilliant smile. “No.”

“Oh, yes.”

“We cannot sneak into our high school!” Jimin hisses, looking around in half a panic. “We could get in trouble! We could -”

“What? Get detention?” Sooah shakes her head and grabs bags of food while he sputters. “You perform in front of thousands on five hundred calories, Park Jimin. This is should be a piece of cake.”

Ignoring his feeble protests, she begins walking towards the school, turning only to give him the same blazing smile again, lips red and hair shiny. “Trust me, Jimin.”

Trust me, Jimin. A seventeen year old Sooah had said the same thing, hair in a high ponytail and spiky fringe covering her forehead, as she handed him a pastel pink cocktail in a plastic glass. She was so incredible, so confident and beautiful and exciting, that seventeen year old Park Jimin had taken a deep breath, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and drunk the cocktail without objection.

“Only because you’re you, Kim Sooah,” he mutters, jogging up to catch up to her as she laughs in delight. “I suppose you have a better way for us to get in that isn’t the front gate?”

As it happens, she does. Meandering through a stealthy route including a space in between the boundary walls, a door with a broken lock and several thickets of bushes where they have to walk crouched, they finally enter the building. 

“Is this -” Jimin follows her as she opens a door and saunters inside. “God, you are cheesier than you pretend to be, jagiya.”

Sooah makes a face but smiles anyway, backing into the chemistry lab and hitching herself up on one of the tables. “I wanted to bring you back to the beginning, to remind you of what you have here,” she says simply. “Before you leave and forget about all the things you left back home.”

“Oh, you mean like all the hot chicks I’m sure to run into in the army?” he says sarcastically, taking off his jacket and joining her. It’s nothing but the moonlight streaming in from one of the windows, but it’s more than enough. “I’ll be sure to tell them all about my first kiss with the Kim Sooah in the chem lab.”

“You better,” she says, sliding off the table she was sitting on to stand before him where he’s leaning backwards against the opposite table. “In fact, you can tell them about everything else you’re going to do in the chem lab as well,” she murmurs, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him.

Jimin kisses her back eagerly, tugging her close to him. Her lips are plush and taste of cranberries, and her tongue is warm and teasing. Her hands slide up his t-shirt and a pleasurable shiver goes up his spine at the feel of her palms flat on his torso, running confidently over the muscles still activated from his rehearsal.

She sighs into his mouth and his body reacts; he helps her slip her jacket off and brings a hand to her breasts, squeezing them gently while she moans in response, biting his lip when he tugs her thin top down and brushes his thumbs over her nipple. 

“This is the kind of thing you were talking about?” he whispers in her ear, before kissing her neck below. “Because I don’t think anyone has done anything like this in the chem lab before.”

“Probably,” she agrees in a sigh. Slipping her hands out from underneath his t-shirt, she reaches for his hand and brings it down to between her legs. “We can be the first,” she says, eyes squeezing shut when he squeezes her cunt through her jeans.

Deftly undoing the button of her jeans and unzipping them, Jimin slides his hand down over her underwear, feeling himself harden even more when he feels the warm, damp cloth. “Can’t believe you’re mine, Kim Sooah,” he murmurs, loving her so much as he gently turns her around and slips his hand into her underwear, one finger entering her. 

Sooah bites her lip and moans in pleasure, pressing her back to his chest and kissing his cheek. “Mhm,” she hums when he adds another finger and massages her clit, strokes tender but firm. His other hand goes up her body again, squeezing her hips, her waist, her breasts and rubbing her core as he holds her close, not stopping until she cums.

Jimin lowers his head and tugs the sleeve of her top down her shoulder slightly, kissing the exposed skin as he retrieves his fingers. He’s painfully hard in his track pants, he acknowledges as Sooah turns around in his arms, looking deliciously ruffled. Wordlessly, she kisses him - and as if having read his thoughts, her hand snakes up his thigh to palm his crotch. 

“Your turn,” she whispers sweetly against his lips, before lowering herself to her knees.

“Damn,” says Jimin after a while, stretching out on the chair and stretching his legs out on the desk in front of him. “I can’t believe I just got a blowjob from the Kim Sooah in the chem lab. I’d high-five my fifteen-year-old self if I could. You know what -” He slaps one hand with the other. 

Sooah leaning against a windowsill with the moonlight giving her a pale, otherworldly glow, laughs and chucks a fry at him. “I definitely like this more than when Hyeri and Sol and I snuck in to smoke behind the football field. And I think I should be the one saying I hooked up with the Park Jimin. That’s the one that will really grab headlines.” 

“That’ll be a hell of a headline.”

“Oh, speaking of -” She takes a sip of Diet Coke and raises her eyebrows. “You might want to tell Tae to cool it with the home videos with his girlfriend accidentally-on-purpose in the reflections. Twitter is starting to figure out that an adult man may be having intimate relations with a woman.”

Jimin, still reeling from the fact that this isn’t the first time Sooah has snuck into their old high school, frowns belatedly. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

“I obviously have Google alerts on all your names,” she says nonchalantly.

“Obviously,” he repeats.

“I like seeing how fans are thirsting over my boyfriend,” she says simply, smiling when Jimin grins involuntarily, his cheeks getting hot. “Chae was actually the first one to do it. She was paranoid that her brother would see something about Hobi online and, like, guess that they were banging or something. She’s an angel, but I swear to god, it’s almost like she needs something to worry about all the time. Either it’s this, or her skincare, or that the shop is out of almonds so she can’t make her morning smoothie with the exact correct ingredients as this one Instagram reel she found.” She rolls her eyes. “This morning, she texted me to ask the longest I’ve gone without doing yoga and if that impacted my flexibility any.”

“So in other words, you miss her.”

Sooah laughs. “Guilty as charged,” she answers honestly. “I’m hoping I can just continue affording rent and utilities by myself until she returns so I don’t have to get another flatmate. Unless she decides she likes Dilara more than me and decides to just stay in London,” she adds dramatically.

Jimin gives her a look. “First of all, Dilara is in Seoul right now. And I’m getting a bit insecure here that you might miss Chae more than you’ll miss me.”

“Never. Why do you think I planned this tonight?” She gestures to the dark chem lab, swinging her legs off the windowsill to face him. “We don’t have a lot of time and this…” She shakes her head, a fond smile appearing on her face. “This is one thing off the bucket list.”

“Bucket list?” Jimin frowns. “Sooah, I’m not dying.”

“No… but I guess I didn’t think I’d have to deal with seeing you leave.” She shrugs, her smile fading a bit. “You know, we were - what? Twenty-one when we last broke up? It was too much to imagine that we’d somehow make it to almost thirty, together, to seeing you off -” She breaks off when he gasps. “I just mean - it’s not in a bad way,” she adds quickly. “It’s not like I didn’t have faith - I just didn’t want to let myself hope.”

“Not that,” Jimin exclaims, jaw dropping. “You just called me thirty!”

“What - I said almost thirty. And you are almost -”

“If I’m thirty, then so are you,” he shoots back, crossing his arms across his chest.

Sooah scoffs. “Actually, my birthday is after yours.”

“Ooh, I’m Kim Sooah and I follow the international age system,” he mutters sarcastically, rolling his eyes and diving for another fry. “I can’t believe you would say that to me. And it could be the last thing I ever hear from you before I leave - how does that make you feel?”

“I don’t know. I guess you’ll find out when you come back for a break.” Sooah dodges the playful flick Jimin aims at her temple and brings their clasped hands down. “Haven’t your friends already come back for at least one? No, wait, Seokjin has,” she remembers. “What about Yoongi? Have you talked to him at all?”

“You mean since he just up and left without a word to any of us?” Jimin shakes his head, feeling his mood sour at the memory. Everything had changed after that one farewell party. He can’t imagine what Yoongi might have seen or who he might have talked to, but after that night he had shut down completely. The rest of them had got exactly one message from the company saying Yoongi’s departure would not be filmed, and that was that. “I’m not holding my breath,” he mutters.

“It doesn’t really sound like him, though, does it?” Sooah ventures, tilting her head and squeezing his hand. “Actually, maybe it does?” she guesses after a pause.

“I don’t know. God, I’m gonna kick his ass the next time I see him,” Jimin says, recalling how his phone calls had gone unanswered before he’d remembered that Yoongi wouldn’t have his phone for the first few weeks. “Yeah, and I’m going to assemble a team to join me. Not Jungkook - he’ll just cry. But Tae - Tae will be pissed. Maybe Namjoon, too.”

As he says it, something occurs to him. Going by the look on Sooah’s face, it seems to have occurred to her, too. “Namjoon having no idea why Yoongi left seems unlikely,” she states evenly. “But you know them better.”

She’s right. “I’ll talk to Namjoon. I’ll force him to tell me what he knows,” he says with conviction. “With my words, not my hands,” he adds when Sooah raises her eyebrows. “Now that he’s working out again, he’s built like a tank.”

He’s not wrong; in fact, in the dim lighting of the bar that Jimin meets him in an hour later, with an oversized hoodie and hunched over something at a corner table, Namjoon looks more like a gigantic muscled boulder than ever. Jimin makes his way over to the table, bopping his head to the low R&B music playing on the speakers. The leader looks up just as Jimin reaches him, his phone on the table and lit up to what looks like a voice note.

“What are you -”

But Namjoon simply points to his phone and increases the volume, looking amused. Jimin frowns and leans forward, hearing what sounds like shouts and screams and laughter. After a few seconds of bemusement, Namjoon finally provides context.

“Kaya went out partying with her friends last night,” he explains, “and at some point accidentally left a voice note recording while she was out. So now I have about -”He checks his phone “- twenty-four minutes of a night out in Amsterdam by a bunch of students who leave the library twice a year.”

Jimin chuckles. “Kaya parties?”

“More than you think,” he answers, bringing the phone closer to them. Jimin leans even closer, now able to discern Kaya’s voice through the laughter, interspersed with at least three or four other equally drunk voices.

“- can’t even see it! Stop - oh God -” There’s laughter and screaming, followed by music getting turned on in the background. “- looking for Andrew and he’s not here with the tequila yet. Wait what? Where? The tequila’s here - shots!” A chorus of shots, shots, shots comes through the speaker, followed by the music getting louder and the piercing sound of an electric guitar drowning them all out.

“Pour some sugar on me!” Kaya shouted in a sing-songy voice, followed by a bunch of other voices cheering, laughing and singing along to an English rock song, everyone clearly drunk on tequila among other things.

“Future mother of my children,” says Namjoon proudly, pointing at the phone. He pauses the voice note and places the phone down. “I’ll listen to the rest at home. What’ve you been up to?”

“Had rehearsal, hung out with Sooah - the ush. Hey, speaking of which - what’s the deal with Yoongi hyung just ghosting the hell out of us and disappearing into the barracks?” Jimin says everything in one breath.

Namjoon blinks. “Wow, I did not see that coming.”

“So you do know something.”

The leader raises his eyebrows and shrugs innocently, all while Jimin muses at how terrible Namjoon is at lying. “I’ve already told you everything I know. We’ve talked about this, Jimin,” he says, giving him a look and pulling his beer closer to him.

“No,” says Jimin at once, having expected this. “No, we haven’t. We all wondered on the group chat, and then you said to give him space. And right now, I can’t remember why we didn’t double down on that.”

Namjoon sighs. “Look, I - I really don’t know what to tell you. If you’re asking if I know why he left without a word, I genuinely don’t know because he left without a word to all of us.”

“Yeah, but you don’t seem as concerned as we do,” points out Jimin, reaching for the beer without permission.

Namjoon watches him take a sip of the beer, looking contemplative. “I’m not… not concerned. I just know him and I know that we’re not going to get a word out of him until he wants to reach out. So there’s no point pushing him.”

“Because you know him,” repeats Jimin, waiting for Namjoon to nod. “Because you guys rapped together before any of us were BTS lived together for thirteen years?"

“Yes,” Namjoon answers deliberately, snatching his beer back. “And that’s why I’m advising you - let it go. He’s fine - he said so himself when I asked.” Too late, he seems to realise what he said.

Jimin pounces. “A-ha! I knew it!” He slams his palm on the table. “When did you ask him and what did he say?”

“It was before he left! I - I didn’t - I mean, I don’t know why -” Namjoon breaks off and sighs. “It was a few days before his farewell and he looked… not okay.”

“In what way?”

“In a… physical way, I guess? He sounded normal but he… kind of looked like he’d been mugged.”

Jimin frowns, something occurring to him. “The bruise on his face? I knew it,” he breathes, sitting back and running his hands through his hair, recalling the fading blue spot he’d seen on Yoongi’s face right before they were to film a dance challenge at the studio. “He told me he got that because he fell. He got mugged?”

“I said he looked like he’d been mugged,” Namjoon corrects him quickly. “I genuinely have no idea how he got hurt and he refused to tell me. Kept saying he was fine and that he already had a good concealer in his bathroom.” He shrugs and rolls his eyes. “And he also asked me not to tell anyone,” he adds deliberately.

Jimin shakes his head. “This is crazy,” he mutters. “What could have happened that made him just disappear?” He looks up to see Namjoon frowning at nothing in particular. “What?”

“I just remembered…” He trails off before looking up at Jimin. “I just remembered that we haven’t checked with the last person he spoke to. She has to know something…” He muttered, reaching for his phone and presumably messaging the aforementioned person. “God, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. If anyone knows something, it’s her.”

Jimin is about to ask the obvious, when something at the bar catches his eye. “Is that… Taehyung?”

Namjoon looks up and frowns. “Yeah. Isn’t that why you’re here? I thought he called you. That’s why I’m here.”

“I’m here because you’re here. He called you and asked you to come?” Jimin asks, craning his neck to watch his friend order a drink, his elbows on the bar and head bent low. “What kind of sad ass hangout is this?”

Namjoon chuckles and goes back to his text. “He didn’t invite me. At least I don’t think he did. I invited myself.”

“Classy, hyung.”

“He called me and said something about getting out of the house and getting a drink. Asked me for recommendations or something…” Namjoon shakes his head. “He sounded weird. And we can’t afford anything public right now, not so close before we all leave… so, yeah, I guess I’m just staying close.”

Jimin stares. “Weird how?”

Namjoon gives him a look. “I’m dealing with Yoongi,” he reminds him, holding up his phone. “Why don’t you deal with Taehyung?”

Holding his hands up and sliding out of the booth, Jimin jogs down the staircase towards the bar, pulling his cap lower over his head as he does. Despite this place being one of the few upscale bars in Seoul where celebrities have known to be able to hang out without being disturbed, Jimin keeps caution.

“Taehyung?” Jimin stops next to him and tilts his head to get a look at his friend’s face. “What are you doing here?”

Taehyung only points to the bartender in response who, on cue, places a tumbler of whiskey in front of him. The smell almost makes Jimin gag, but Taehyung takes a sip without flinching. “Smooth,” he murmurs, placing the glass back down.

Jimin frowns and takes a seat next to him. “Taehyung,” he tries again, giving him a gentle shake on the shoulder.

At this, Taehyung looks up at Jimin, his eyes slightly unfocused, as though just realising he’s there. His hair had grown longer in the last couple of weeks since Jimin has seen him; they fall into his eyes elegantly and effortlessly, his eyes heavily-lidded under them. Still so handsome, Jimin thinks off-handedly.

“Hey.” Taehyung speak finally, as though the word took him some effort. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I just came to meet Namjoon hyung, to ask him about… never mind.” Somehow, Jimin did not think Taehyung would be very useful right now in deducing Yoongi’s intentions. “Um, are you okay?”

Taehyung simply holds up his glass and takes a bigger sip. “Have a drink with me.” Before Jimin can respond, he’s already calling the bartender over. “One vodka with cranberry juice, please.” The bartender gives Jimin a glance, who nods in confirmation, before moving away to make the drink.

“How come you’re here?” Jimin asks lightly, hoping the question is open-ended enough for Taehyung to spare details, for Namjoon was right: Taehyung is certainly… off. 

Taehyung raises his eyebrows. “Oh, no reason, really. Felt like a drink, that’s all.” He blinks and for a moment his eyes look red, like he hasn’t slept. “What’s going on with you?”

“Um… I was with Sooah just now. She says hi,” he adds, not recalling if she had said anything of the sort, but it seemed like the normal thing to say.

Taehyung cracks a half-smile, his gaze going back to his drink. “Date night, huh?”

“Something like that. We, uh… oh, we actually snuck into our school. Remember the chem lab?” he says, hoping to get some life into this conversation for something is wrong. “Choi Han and that jackass Daehyun had an arm wrestling match in there and knocked over that bunsen burner?”

Taehyung’s hollow smile widens just a sliver. “Hyeri’s skirt caught fire. The whole class got punished for that.”

Jimin chuckles at the memory as well, remembering a time when they were all skin and bones, with pudgy cheeks and high school crushes on the popular girls. His drink arrives then, a calming shade of red-pink, and he clinks his glass with Taehyung’s before taking a sip. “Wow,” he mutters, shaking his head as the liquor burns his insides. “How’s your night going? Isn’t Dilara here?”

“Do you remember that one team we worked with for some performance, where we had to do three sound checks before we could get on stage?” Taehyung asks as though he hasn’t even heard Jimin. His eyebrows are scrunched together; he looks incredibly handsome, Jimin thinks, momentarily sidetracked. “They always had these long calls before any decision and even Namjoon was pissed off with them. What comeback was that for?”

What? Jimin hesitates, then plays along. “Um… I’m not sure. Where was it?”

“Here,” he answers, sounding more engaged than he has so far, although his eyes are definitely red. “We were wearing… black. The jackets and those gold high-top sneakers.”

“Telepathy?” Jimin guesses. “It was in Yeongam, in the summer.”

“Yes!” Taehyung’s forehead clears and he purses his lips in what could be a pained smile. He claps Jimin on the shoulder and gestures for another drink as he finishes his first one. This one arrives immediately and Taehyung drags it towards him, taking a sip. Jimin watches as he places the glass back down and his shoulders fall again, as though this conversation has sapped him of all energy.

He’s about to ask when he sees movement and looks up to see a woman approaching them. Blond, possibly part foreign and about their age, she stops next to Taehyung. When he doesn’t look up, she locks eyes with Jimin.

“Hi,” she says in English, giving him a small wave. “Me and my friends are just over there -” She points vaguely behind her at a table where two or three other girls are standing around a table and dancing to the R&B track playing, close to where other patrons are also dancing. “We were wondering if you’d like to join us? For a drink and maybe a dance?”

From her tone, Jimin can’t immediately tell if she recognises them. When her eyes dart between him and Taehyung, who still hasn’t looked up from his drink, Jimin decides she doesn’t. She’s very pretty, but it’s with some pride that Jimin shakes his head apologetically. “I have a girlfriend. So does he,” he answers preemptively. “But thank you,” he adds to be polite.

The girl’s smile falls slightly but she nods. “Alright, no worries. Have a good night.” She places a hand on Taehyung’s arm until he looks up, as though just registering something happening. With a small squeeze, she drops her hand and walks away.

“Good to know we’ve still got it,” says Jimin dryly, chugging another fourth of his drink, cold and sweet. “Does it make me conceited to say I’ll kind of miss the attention when we go in? Not all of it, of course - but sometimes it’s nice, don’t you think? People appreciating you on the streets, knowing you’ve…” He shakes his head with feeling and clenches his fist while taking another sip and feeling his head swim pleasantly. “... really done something, impacted someone with your art - hey, where are you going?”

Taehyung, who’s already hopped off his chair with his drink in his hand, turns to look back at him. “I’m just…” His eyes dart around randomly and he blinks rapidly a few times, swallowing. “I was…”

His eyes are definitely red; for a wild moment, Jimin wonders if he’s on something. “Taehyung…” Jimin hops off his own seat and steps toward his friend, squinting. “Are you okay?”

Taehyung stares at Jimin, breathing very slowly and deeply. He’s biting his lip and when his eyes flicker, he looks like he’s about to cry. But the moment passes as quickly as it appeared and he downs the last of his whiskey. “I need a pick-me-up,” he mutters, pointing vaguely behind him. Before Jimin can respond, he places his glass on the bar and drifts into the area where people are dancing.

“What just happened?” Jimin asks no one. Something is definitely wrong - and if Jimin knows his friend, this is either an enlistment issue or a Dilara issue or both. He cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of his friend but instead sees the girl who had approached them earlier, and an ancient fear grips at his heart.

No, says a voice firmly in his head. He wouldn’t, not again. He makes his way through the dancing crowd which seems to have doubled in the last five minutes, keeping his head low so as to not be spotted. He doesn’t catch sight of Taehyung until he’s almost at the end of the bar and he spots him through the window in the alley outside, head ducked low, shaggy hair covering his face and only the bright flaming tip of the cigarette giving him any indication of what was happening.

When he reaches Namjoon, who’s still sitting in the same booth and scrolling through his Instagram, he stays standing. “I’m tagging you in,” he says, tapping him on the shoulder.

Namjoon looks up. “What happened?”

“He’s smoking outside, and smokers need the company of other smokers. You know, not people who do care about their lungs,” Jimin quips, dodging Namjoon’s playful punch.

“I can only take crap about that from so many people, so unless I’m related to you by blood or sleeping with you, you don’t get to lecture me,” he tells Jimin, standing up and sliding out of the booth.

Jimin grins and flicks his hair. “Just name the time and place, handsome,” he shoots back, laughing when Namjoon gives him a startled look. “Oh, relax. I prefer my dates petite and yoga-fit. You know, the type to sneak into educational institutions to smoke up.”

Namjoon gives him a confused frown but evidently decides he doesn’t want to know. “I’ll take care of Taehyung… and I’ll let you know.”

“Okay, thanks. Wait - what about Yoongi hyung?”

He holds up his phone as he walks backwards. “I’ve dropped the text. Just have to wait and see now. Don’t worry about it. Go home to your girlfriend, Jimin,” he says good-naturedly, in a way that makes Jimin momentarily sad for him. “One of us should.”

—

The cool evening breeze hits her face and she breathes in deeply. After being holed up indoors for at least the last ten hours, fresh air feels like an underrated privilege. She sips on her iced coffee, knowing she’s in for a long night of work. 

Her phone pings and she grabs it with haste, heart slowing when she sees a group text from her boss. Any minute now, she thinks, for the call she’s expecting is very unlikely to be late. As if on cue, her phone rings and she sees a familiar name flash on her screen. Heart stuttering slightly, she answers.

“Hey,” she says, taking a sip of coffee to calm her nerves. And why am I so nervous?

“Hey.” Seokjin sounds almost breathless, like he’s been running. “Thanks for taking my call. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Nari frowns curiously. “Oh, you’re absolutely disturbing me. So much so that I think I’m going to have to hang up if this isn’t worth my time.”

There’s a pause, then he chuckles. “Duly noted. I’ll try to make it worth your time. Actually, you might have to make it worth my time,” he corrects, then immediately backtracks. “Not - not worth my time, but… I don’t know, I think you might be the only one able to help us make sense of some stuff right now.”

Nari nods, taking a seat on a bench outside the hospital. “You said it was to do with Yoongi?”

“Yeah… Namjoon says you were the last person - probably - to talk to him before he left?”

“I don’t know about last, but…” She recalls the cryptic text she’d received from him all those weeks ago, the one she’d considered for a moment as being some strange joke but had then decided was probably genuine. “Yeah, I did meet him a couple times before he left. Did he really not tell you?”

“Looks like the only person he told was Namjoon,” he says, but Nari doesn’t detect any resentment in the statement. “Or at any rate, Namjoon knew… and I’ve been elected to follow up because… well, because it’s you. It’s not like Yoongi to leave like this,” he says after a moment.

Nari nods. She’s glad he didn’t beat around why he was the obvious choice to speak with her - it feels less like he’s been pushed into it. “What do you want to know?”

Seokjin sighs, sounding tired. “I guess… when did you meet him? What did you talk about?”

She winces, knowing that any information she has will sound like cause for alarm. “Okay… just know that I did advise him to tell you guys, but -”

“He’s Yoongi,” they finish together.

“Yeah.” Nari bites her lip, wishing suddenly that they were having this conversation in person. It had been too long since the last time they spoke. From inside the hospital, at the entrance, Jason and Daeun wave at her. She holds up a finger before turning away.

“Um… okay, so I got a text from him - I guess it was about a week before he left? And all he said was that he needed some medical advice but couldn’t quite come to the hospital because he didn’t want to be recognised. It was weird but I went and…” The image of his bruised face had made her stomach fall; despite seeing worse on a daily basis, seeing someone she knew look like that had been different.

“Okay, Nari, you’re making it sound really bad.” Seokjin interrupts her memory. “Should I be worried?”

“No,” she says immediately. “I mean… I don’t know, Jinnie, he asked me not to tell anyone.”

“Yeah, but I’m not anyone,” he says at once. “So? Come on. Tell me.”

I’m not anyone. That, combined with her slip of tongue with Jinnie, almost makes it feel like they’re still friends, like before. It spurs her on, her stomach flipping faintly.

“Okay, but… try not to tell anyone else, okay? He had a - a bit of a black eye. And some bruising on his chest,” she adds, powering through Seokjin’s exclamation.

“A black eye? Like someone punched him?”

“Almost definitely,” she confirms, somewhat relieved that she’s finally able to tell someone. Yoongi had been adamant at keeping it between them, requesting her for only her medical advice in case he had any broken bones. “And a few bruised ribs. He basically wanted to know if he had to go to a hospital or if he could take care of it by himself. I advised him, very strongly, to go to a damn hospital and get an x-ray in any case but he wouldn’t hear of it,” she adds firmly.

“And he didn’t listen, obviously.” Seokjin exhales heavily. “Jesus Christ. Did he really not need a hospital, though? I mean… is he okay, do you think?”

“Honestly? Yeah,” she confirms, nodding. “His face would be fine with a few days of icing and his ribs were definitely not broken. And I did check in on him the day before he left and both injuries were a lot better.”

“Okay,” he replies uncertainly. “I mean… God, I don’t even know where to start. Why didn’t he tell us?”

“Well, I think Namjoon may have known because Yoongi referred to him a couple times,” she points out. “But other than that… I don’t know. I mean, my guess is that he didn’t want to worry you or get the company involved? He really didn’t seem to want to talk about it.” Ironically, that made me the best person to call.

Seokjin seems to be on the same train of thought. “Well, he certainly achieved that. He doesn’t even have his phone for a couple more weeks,” he adds, clicking his tongue in annoyance.

“I really do think he’s okay,” she ventures. “Physically, at least. Other than that… just a guess, but this had something to do with a girl.”

“What girl?” Seokjin asks automatically, but the answer seems to dawn on him almost immediately. “Oh. From that night?”

Nari nods. “Best date of my life,” she confirms wryly. “But, yeah. There is no way that was a one-night thing. I don’t know how it panned out, but the way he looked on the last day… he looked heartbroken, Seokjin.”

Seokjin sighs, but doesn’t respond. Nari waits, allowing him to digest this. She’s almost certain she’s right - that girl she had caught Yoongi kissing in a coat closet, right before storming out and being stopped by Seokjin, almost confessing things that could have changed everything… She squeezes her eyes shut.

“I won’t tell,” he says, after almost a minute. “Not if Yoongi didn’t want to tell us.”

That surprises her. “That’s… mature of you. Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he says, sounding troubled. “I can’t promise I won’t regret it later, but…”

“It’s Yoongi,” they say together, again.

Nari bites back a half-smile. The words had been on the tip of her tongue that night, her face and her heart in his hands. “How are you doing?” she asks softly.

He takes a beat before answering. “Same old,” he answers, his voice lowering a bit. “Not counting down the days as desperately as I was at the beginning.”

“Sounds like progress. You can scratch it out on the wall of your dorm room like in Shawshank.”

“And dig my way out? I’ll get discharged way before that happens.”

“Won’t be as exciting, though,” she teases, glad when he chuckles in agreement. “Seriously, though. You’re doing okay?”

“Yeah, of course I am,” he says easily. It sounds believable but she can’t be sure because he sounds so… grown. It’s Seokjin - and it’s her Seokjin, too - but he’s just out of reach. She doesn’t know him as well as she once did - the thought makes her deeply sad.

You aren’t asking me to wait for you, but that’s what you want, she’d guessed correctly, the last time they had met. And I didn’t, says a different voice, but you knew that.

“Seokjin,” she begins, tentatively, then pauses. This shouldn’t be so hard. “I don’t want you to find out through someone else, but… I’m - I’m kind of dating someone.” When he doesn’t immediately respond, she continues, not wanting to lose her momentum. “It was already testing the waters, I guess, back when we last… met.” She remembers the kiss, and his confession after. “And now it’s… yeah.”

“A relationship.” He says the word she couldn’t. “Nari… it’s fine. I figured as much.” It’s there again, the voice that makes him sound so much older, so grown. “Jason?” He asks lightly.

“Mhm.” She picks on a loose thread at the seam of her scrubs. “It just happened. And the pressure from my mom is kind of at an all-time high right now, so… anyway. I thought you should know.”

Seokjin doesn’t answer right away and Nari suddenly wishes she hadn’t said anything about her mother. It wasn’t news to him - in fact, if there was anyone in the world who knew the extent and the exact kind of pressure her mother put on her regarding this, it was Seokjin.

But it’s real now, the pressure and what it might lead to. Nari wishes she could share her trepidation with Seokjin, that she suspected Jason would propose and she would say no - or worse, that she would say yes and never know if she fully meant it.

“You’re happy, though?” 

Nari’s eyes sting. She grips the coffee cup, the condensation pooling around her fingers. “He’s a good guy. You’ve met him,” she reminds him softly. “He’s kind and he makes me laugh.” And my heart doesn’t hurt when I’m around him. That had been the primary thing about Jason when they had started dating: how easy it had been. Nari had almost forgotten what normal attraction could feel like without missed opportunities and words lost in translation.

“That’s good. I’m glad…” Here he trails off.

Nari tries to guess. I’m glad you’re happy? I’m glad you told me?

“... you got what you wanted.” There’s silence at the other end for a moment. “I’m gladdest for your mom, though.”

That makes Nari laugh unexpectedly. “No kidding. She was convinced I’d die a spinster. And then she would die of shame.”

“Like that one time she thought you were a lesbian because you said you were going on your graduation trip with your college roommate?”

“Yunjin,” she remembers, shaking her head. “I really thought her brain would explode right there.”

“That’s a lot of pressure on Jason, if nothing else. Fun story for the wedding toast, though.”

Nari bites her lip. She’s too old to never have pictured it. A white dress, candles, a groom in black. It looms, and she knows Seokjin knows. Of course he knows.

“I don’t think we’re there just yet,” she says quietly. 

“All in good time. He’d be a fool to wait too long, though, I suppose.”

Damn you, Kim Seokjin. “Will you come, do you think?” she asks lightly, partly in humour. She doesn’t need to specify where.

“If you want me to,” he replies, in a way that makes her heart clench. “You’re my oldest friend, Nari.”

She knows he means it. I would’ve given up everything for you. 

“Yoongi will be fine, you know.”

“Yeah. Thanks for looking out for him.” There’s a finality to his statement; their moment is coming to an end.

“Always. And…” She sighs, wishing once again that they were having this conversation in person. She wanted to hug him. “Take care of yourself, Jinnie. Eat well and sleep and… it’ll be winter soon, and areas like the barracks are primed for hypothermia and pneumonia.”

She can almost picture him nodding indulgently. “I’ll keep an eye out for hypothermia and pneumonia,” he promises. “I need to hand my phone in a bit and I still need to call my mom, so…”

“Yeah, of course. It was so nice talking after so long,” she adds, meaning it.

“I know.” There’s a pause. “Be happy, Nari. Talk to you soon.”

There’s a click and the call ends.

—