aki 🍮💫

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cortis taglist: @rickyshensgirlfriend @j-jinxee @vanilladictator @ireaiiyiikecats perm taglist: @emmaitoshi @madwheelerpilled @kpopluver167 @seonghwaswifeuuuu @mwaeom

"hey pretty," james grins, kissing the side of your head as he pulls you in a hug. he already feels you trying to pull away that he remains stubborn, clinging onto you tighter despite your rejection.

"oh god, you stink!"

he 'affectionately' rubs his head against the side of yours, "but i'm your stinky, silly thing."

"go take a shower before i throw you into one!"

"augh," james grins, leaning back to kiss your cheek and then even more to wiggle his brows at you, "don't tempt me a with a good time."

your hand reaches to the side to hit his arm as he pulls away, body already angling to run towards the bathroom in your bedroom all whilst giggling. from the bedroom, you hear his voice bellowing: "be with you in a bit!"

your first inkling would be to ignore him and get cracking with making the pair of you something warm to drink but when you noticed a pitch in his tone, you can't ignore it. curiously, you pad over to where he is. past the door, you lean against the doorframe, tilting your head at him, "you okay? you sound a lil' scratchy."

"oh," he shrugs, mindlessly tossing his shirt into your laundry basket as he continuously strips on his way to the bathroom, "throat's just a little wonky but i should be okay," he looks over his shoulder as he reaches the bathroom door, "you're not getting rid of me that easily."

before you can press further, he blows you a kiss and disappears to the bathroom. well, at least he's listening to you to take a shower.

james can't ignore the swell in his heart, feeling so cared for with just the little gestures. the light clink of the teaspoon that meets the cup is what reels him back to the present.

he's showered, dressed in the pajamas that was taken out for him and now... now he's looking at you making what he assumes is that honey lemon ginger tea that would–"this is good for you, okay? i don't care if it tastes like a bitter foot."

he blinks a couple of times to realise you're talking to him.

james smiles sheepishly, as if he's caught (but really, all he is is caught staring at someone he thinks is–) "dunno what you mean," he shrugs, skirting his way into the kitchen and swirls his arms around your waist from the back; then effectively hooking his chin over your shoulder and staying like that.

"all i could think of is how pretty you are," he murmurs, planting a kiss to your shoulder and then pressing his lips there.

you scoff, shaking your shoulder to nudge at him (not exactly to rid him off), "don't you always think this drink tastes wack?"

"i mean i still do," he snorts, lifting his head up to grin at you, "but somehow it kind of works so i don't know if it's a placebo effect or if it actually helps but either one i'll take it, y'know?"

you take a deep inhale of air and exhale before remaining a grip onto the counter with one hand, the other rubbing over james' arms around you.

"as long as you drink it,"

"yes ma'am, i gotchu."

"more like i got you."

"yeah," james nods, snuggling his face into your shoulder as his eyes fall to a close, squeezing you, "you do."

while you're thinking of whether to retort, you notice how quiet he's gotten. the slight shift in atmosphere signals to you that james is probably winding down after a long day. with the way his arms droop slightly, his feet shuffling closer to place his knees directly behind yours to minimise the space. his breathing growing shallower, like he's able to... drop everything, be present.

here, with you.

you don't press further and allow him to sink into your embrace, as you sink into his.

here, james doesn't have to put up a front.

james is just... james.

that's all you get; that's all you want.

you feel another kiss to your shoulder and james' smile against your clothed skin as he stays there.

“I think I'm about to explode.”

You were walking back home with your friends Eunchae, Seonghyeon, Wonhee and Keonho after school.

“I hope it happens soon.” Keonho smirks at you.

“Why though?” Wonhee asked.

“Why not.” You replied. “Exams are coming up, my crush got himself a girlfriend, my other crush is moving schools, the teachers won't stop picking on me and my mom has banned unhealthy snacks at home for a month which basically means no snacks which equals to me starving.” You sighed in frustration.

“If you didn't have crushes on two guys at the same time, you'd have one less problem.” Eunchae rolled her eyes at you.

“How could I possibly choose between Jaehyun and Ohyul?!”

“Community hoe” Keonho laughs at you. “Just eat snacks from outside.”

“I'm broke.”

“The only problem you should be worried about are the exams.” Eunchae intervened.

“How come none of you guys want to explode.”

“We do, we are just not vocal about it.”

“Except Seonghyeon maybe.” Eunchae said, looking back at him.

Everyone turns their head towards Sean who was walking behind them with his earphones in. He was listening to music like usual on his MP3.

He suddenly stopped on his tracks when he realised everyone was looking at him.

“What?” Sean

“Seriously what do you listen to everyday that has you disassociating so much from reality” You asked him.

Every day while walking to school, during lunch breaks and while going back home, he always carried his MP3 player and barely talked to anyone.

“Good music.” He replied.

“I'm jealous of you.”

“Why?”

“Seems like you're not worried about anything currently.”

“Nah, twin got lots of stuff on his plate.” Keonho wraps his hand around Sean’s neck and continues walking. “The music just helps him forget it, right?”

“Yeah.”

────﹒♡﹒────

The next day you brought more complaints for your friends to listen to during break time.

“I broke my phone.” You sighed, munching away on the sandwich.

“How does everything keep going downhill for you?”

“I think she just attracts negative energy.”

“Maybe we should stay away from you for safety.”

“At least she still has a shot on acing those exams.”

“Her? Acing the exams?”

“Just because people say dream big doesn't mean you gotta dream the impossible.”

“If she aces all her exams I'll dye my hair.”

Such great friends you had who constantly gave you good life advice and motivations. You were truly grateful for their annoying presence.

When break was about to be over, everyone got up from their seats to go back to their classes.

As they all walked ahead, you and Seonghyeon were behind, together.

He was in another class but still cared enough to drop Wonhee and you off.

Just when you were about to head into the class, he held your wrist and put something in the palm of your hand. It was his MP3 player which was old enough that you had to press the buttons harder than seemed necessary.

"Take it."

You looked up at him, questioning the gesture.

His expression was unreadable as always.

"You said your phone broke."

"Oh. Right."

You accepted it carefully.

"I'll give it back tomorrow."

"Whenever." His answer was immediate, like he didn't care.

Then he hesitated.

A tiny pause.

"Just don't judge my music taste."

You laughed at his slightly embarrassed face. "I make no promises, princess.”

‘Princess.’ That was what everyone called him. No one could deny that he was one.

His ears turned suspiciously red.

"Whatever."

And then he was gone.

────﹒♡﹒────

That night, you were sprawled across your bed with your earphones connected to the MP3.

The music selection was exactly what you'd expected.

A strange mix of soft indie songs, with a bit of hip hop here and there and surprisingly Justin Bieber songs too. Chet Baker, J.Cole, Tame Impala, Effie, Oasis, his playlist had it all and it was really helpful to you.

After listening to about 12 songs and almost falling asleep, the sudden silence wakes you up.

Then a click.

A recording started playing.

"I think that pigeon has been following me for three days."

You froze. The voice was unmistakably Seonghyeon's.

"I'm serious. It was outside the convenience store yesterday. Today it was near the bus stop. If it appears tomorrow, I'm moving."

After a long pause, he continues.

"Actually, I can't afford to move."

Another pause.

"Maybe the pigeon knows that."

Click.

The recording ended and the next song began. Bad Habit by Steve Lacy.

You sat upright slowly after that strange recording.

‘What was that?’ You think to yourself. ‘Had he accidentally left voice memos on here?’

Indeed he did, very accidentally, because after two songs another recording started playing.

"2:14 a.m."

His voice sounded sleepy.

"You ever think about how fire based superheroes in movies are basically just government approved arsonists?"

Silence.

"I think humans would be happier if we just accepted Celestia from that cartoon my sister watches as our new ruler."

You heard a small yawn. He was definitely sleepy.

"Hypothetically speaking of course. Would be better if we were just horses.”

Another yawn escapes.

"Goodnight."

The next song started immediately afterward. Bed Chem by Sabrina Carpenter. That was quite the unexpected song after a weird rant. You laughed so hard you almost dropped the MP3 player.

The recordings kept appearing but not often enough to expect.

Just often enough to catch you off guard.

──── ୨୧ ────

"I saw someone carrying six loaves of bread today.”

Pause.

"I hope they're doing okay."

──── ୨୧ ────

"I accidentally made eye contact with a cat."

He sighed.

"It won."

──── ୨୧ ────

"Is it really that great being 190 cm?”

Pause.

“Fuck Martin.”

──── ୨୧ ────

Each recording felt like discovering a secret version of him, unlike the quiet Seonghyeon that everyone knew. The only time he wouldn't be quiet was while expressing his dislike towards things.

The Seonghyeon trapped inside this MP3 apparently narrated his life like an exhausted wildlife documentary.

It was almost 3 a.m. and you were getting sleepy, but of course something strange happened again.

You heard your name.

"Today Y/N laughed so hard she almost fell off her chair."

A pause and then the sound of fabric rustling.

"I spent twenty minutes pretending I wasn't watching."

"She looked happy."

His voice softened.

"So that was nice."

Click.

The next song began. White Keys by Dominic Fike.

You stared at the wall as your heart had completely forgotten how to function.

Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe there were only one or two recordings mentioning you. It shouldn't be too surprising since you were technically part of his everyday life along with Keonho, Wonhee and Eunchae.

That would make sense.

Reasonable.

Normal.

Except, it kept happening.

You heard his voice again.

──── ୨୧ ────

"Y/N lent me a pen today."

A short pause before he continued.

"I own six pens."

"I still took her's."

Click.

──── ୨୧ ────

"I think Y/N notices things nobody else notices."

A faint sound, like he'd shifted against a pillow.

"It's kind of scary, not in a bad way."

"Just scary."

Click.

──── ୨୧ ────

The recording began with several seconds of silence until he finally spoke.

"I almost texted Y/N."

A groan.

"Didn't."

"Very brave of me."

Click.

──── ୨୧ ────

You buried your face in a pillow.

This was bad.

Very bad.

Because every recording sounded like something that was never meant to leave his room. And the songs in between each of them just made you more emotional, in a good way.

Like thoughts spoken aloud because nobody else was there to hear them.

Raw and unedited.

The worst one happened near 4 a.m.

You couldn't sleep after hearing all that of course so you ended up staying up till morning listening to the music (and the short recordings you were curious about).

Lying in bed, you were listening to Tightrope by Zayn when another recording appeared at the end of it.

At first there was only slow and sleepy breathing.

"Can't sleep."

Several seconds passed along with a yawn.

You almost thought the recording was over.

Then his voice emerged again, thick with exhaustion.

"Y/N smiled at me today."

Silence.

"That was nice."

"Really nice."

The mattress beneath him creaked faintly as though he'd rolled over.

"I think I like- "

The recording was cut off abruptly.

The next song started. For lovers who hesitate by JANNABI

You sat straight up and rewound it.

Listened again and again.

Every time it stopped at exactly the same point.

"I think I like-"

End. Nothing else.

You spent ten full minutes staring at the ceiling after that and let the music continue.

────﹒♡﹒────

The next morning you were about to return the MP3 player and Seonghyeon held his hand out without looking up.

"Thanks."

"Mhm."

"Good music."

"Yeah."

You watched him carefully, still holding onto it.

"Interesting recordings too." You added.

The MP3 player nearly slipped out of his hands and you caught it immediately. It was back in your hands now.

The silence that followed was catastrophic.

He lifted his head slowly.

"What recordings?" He asked, looking skeptical. An expression he rarely showed.

"You know." You said as a matter of fact.

His face was drained of color. You could practically watch the memory hit him.

The voice memos.

The forgotten files.

The accidental confessions.

Every single one.

All at once entered his head.

"Oh."

You had never seen genuine fear in his eyes before until now.

"Oh no."

His ears turned bright red.

"Oh no."

"About the pigeon-"

"Oh no."

"The ‘Celestia being our ruler’ was kinda cute."

"Please stop talking." He buried his face in his hands.

"The bread recording was my favorite."

"Please."

He looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole.

You tried to hold back the smile while watching him. Unfortunately, he noticed. Which only made him look more horrified.

"How many did you hear?" He asked, taking his hands off his face.

You considered lying but your mind worked in its own way.

"Most of them."

The expression on his face suggested immediate death would've been preferable.

"Seonghyeon?"

"Yeah?"

"There was one recording that was cut off."

His entire body froze.

You watched the realization dawn on him.

Then despair.

Then acceptance.

The complete emotional journey in under three seconds.

"Delete it from your memory." He hid his eyes in his hands. Refusing to look at you.

"So there was more?" You teased him casually.

"Delete it."

You laughed.

His hand slid down his face.

Defeated and hopelessly embarrassed.

But beneath all of that there was a tiny smile threatening to appear.

Because for all the recordings he'd never intended anyone to hear and all the sleepy rambling and accidental confessions, you hadn't laughed at him.

Not in a mean way at least.

And somehow that seemed to matter more than anything.

"Give me the MP3 player." He said, putting his hand out again.

"Why?"

"I'm destroying the evidence."

"You absolutely can't."

"Y/N."

"No."

"Y/N."

“No.” You grinned.

His face immediately turned red again and this time, neither of you looked away first.

You hear him before you see him. The soft click of the door, the quiet shuffle of shoes, the familiar sigh he always lets out because he's relieved he's home.

You're cooking when his arms slide around your waist from behind.

"Hi love," he murmurs, voice warm and tired.

You lean back into him "Hi."

He rests his chin on your shoulder, gently swaying you side to side. He always gets clingy after long days.

He starts to kiss your cheek. then your jaw. then the side of your neck.

then he stops.

his hands tighten slightly around your waist.

"..what's that?" he asks quietly.

you keep chopping the vegtables. "what's what?"

he doesn't answer right away. you feel him shift, trying to get a better look at the faint mark you blended onto your skin. his breath catches a little.

"did you.. hurt yourself?" he asks, voice loe. "or.. is that from someone?"

he says it gently, like he's afraid of what you might say.

you turn to face him. his expression is calm, but his eyes are searching yours, steady and serious.

'it's nothing," you say.

he reaches up and lightly grabs your jaw, brushing his thumb over the mark. his touch is light, almost hesitant.

"it doesn't look like nothing," he says softly.

his thumb stays on the mark, barely touching it, like as if he's afraid that if he touches it one of his worst fears would come true.

"did anyone come over when i was gone?"

you hum, keeping your face neutral. "no?"

he goes still, "are you sure, you know if someone touched you like that.. i'd wanna know."

you swallow a laugh "why?"

he hesitates, only for a second, "because i care, and i would want to know if my partner was cheating on me."

"james im not," you say, turning back to the counter.

he watches you for a moment. then steps closer, his hand resting lightly on your hip.

"okay," he says quietly. "i trust you"

you hear the tiniest bit of uncertainty in his voice.

he kisses your cheek again, but its a bit different, as if he's reassuring himself you're still his.

then he burshes your hair aside to look at the mark again.

his thumb presses a little more firmly.

it smudges.

he freezes.

"..wait."

uh oh.

you bite your lip, trying not to laugh.

he wipes his finger across the mark. it fades.

he stares at his thumb, then at your neck, then at you.

"you've gotta be kidding me," he whispers

you grin. "surprise!"

James closes his eyes, smiling as he lets out the a soft exhausted laugh.

"i was actually worried," he mutters, leaning his forehead against your shoulder. "you're evil."

you turn to face him. "you fell for it."

he lifts his head, cheeks warm and eyes soft.

"well yeah, it looked real!"

you smile. "guess that means i should be a makeup artist huh?"

he hums, brushing your hair back again, thumb tracing the now faded spot.

"you know.. if you ever want something like that," he says, voice low but gentle, "you don't need makeup."

you raise a brow. "oh?"

he trails slow kisses down you neck. "yeah, i can give you one." he murmurs against your skin, "or more than one."

🏷️ — @nnkento @haechann0606 @soupysnoopy1 @ascxan @lianahai @soobvns @mokkicchi @lilli-171517 @bitterinkandblood @ijustchokeonacaii @yvalrik @flwrhui @katsukisser @cortisean @chaorik1i @how-what-why-huh @lenachp @xvivianmustdiex @wwoonniiee @mkissed @jesmightjumptmr @coershyy @httpsbarsbymars @samiyahdavis44 @fleumurr

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𝐄𝐕𝐄 🪽 —— ‎TY FOR READING ! sorry that this took so long but i appreciate the ppl who liked the first part hehe <3 love u all ! part 3 is in the making (i want to finish this series asap lowk) i hope this chapter is ok?? 😭 it took so long to outline the flow.. and make it but i tried my best hehe ALSO this is just the start!! hopefully, in the next few parts, i'll be able to flesh out this story more. i feel like this part lacked some things i wanted to explore more: why yn/reader "hates" jake (she obv doesn't look like it..), jungwon making a move on yn, etc. but that's because there'll be part 3 ehhehe ><

perm taglist / my loves ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡ @kienhawon @evangelicai @hyuneskkami @mailovesreading @vikeuchu @coergene @ilofflee @bhunlit @gyuguys @luv4dani @jakeycakeys @riknywngi @630hee @eliisannieee @firstclassjaylee @user131422 @meiktstv @heevansslut @blvengene @simjaeyunslut @chowonasblog @laylaandsstuff @mkissed @emmaxdelicate @sakuyang @lemongularly @cosm1cgarbage3 @ssounou @verozkkii

Needless to say, he was hooked, hadn't been able to listen to anything else in weeks and only sound coming out of his AirPods was your music. Layered synths, a bass that hit just enough to make his shoulders move on their own, and that voice —god, that voice— cutting through the mix like it was whispering little secrets only he was meant to hear.

Maybe that was what mythological creatures were all about, he'd figured.

He'd replayed your latest EP until the waveforms were burned into his brain, every subtle reverb, every intentional breath between phrases, every tiny creative choice ? He'd memorized them all.

Your english was so precise and so devastating that Martin had to remind himself -sometimes- what you'd told an interviewer once.

That you'd learned the language just to write in it.

That you thought in mandarin, dreamed in mandarin, but chose english for your songs because- and this was the part that had replayed in his head more than any other- "it creates distance. distance is easier to be honest inside of."

You were so beautifully spoken he had a hard time believing you were his age, you sounded like you were 200 years old and had a lifetime of sorrow behind you. Martin secretly loved it, the way it bled into your music, the way he'd —shamelessly— shed a couple tears listening.

You were terribly deep in both languages.

He'd also watched the interview that quote came from three times— which was how he knew that when the host tried to follow up in english— ,you'd smiled politely and waited for your interpreter. He knew you'd nodded along with the translation and answered in your own language without self-consciousness, unhurried, like the language barrier was simply a feature of the landscape and not a high wall.

He was not okay with those facts. Embarrassingly so.

Probably captivated also.

Not with you, exactly- he kept making that distinction to himself, because it felt important.

It was the music.

He'd produced enough songs to know when someone was doing something only technically correct, and when someone was doing something true. And every single choice on that EP had been 'true' in a way that made his own recent work feel like a rough draft.

Martin needed to understand how your brain worked— he needed to be in a room with you.

Which was why— after two weeks of replaying your songs and one increasingly embarrassing pitch to his label about something like 'creative synergy' and 'sonic landscape expansion' (which had not been in his vocabulary prior to that)- Martin was now standing outside a studio door. He had his laptop bag on one shoulder, a track he'd rewritten six times since Tuesday, and —this was the part he was least proud of- a folded piece of paper with notes written in mandarin.

Rough mandarin- embarrassingly rough, typed into a translation app and then hand-copied because he'd read that you found it more sincere when people tried.

He wasn't sure where he'd read that and maybe  he'd made it up. Maybe he'd just wanted a reason to spend forty minutes practicing chinese characters at midnight.

The label had set this up as a "casual introduction," but Martin had spent the last three days rewriting his own beat just in case you asked to hear something.

He wanted- scratch that needed- to co-produce with you.

In his ideal world, the two of you would lock yourselves in this room for twelve straight hours, trading ideas until something magical happened.

But you weren't the type to be easily impressed.

He knew that much from the interviews he'd watched twice (okay, three times).

You were blunt, focused, and notoriously picky about collaborators. You didn't do fan-service. You didn't do ego-stroking. You just made music that stuck like chewing gum in people's heads.

And Martin was thirsty, hungry to finally figure out the person behind these songs, to know how a simple human brain could create lyrics so beautiful they made even the most intransigent men cry.

The door to the studio opened before he could knock.

You stood there in an oversized hoodie, headphones around your neck, one eyebrow already arched like you were sizing him up— in your hand was a book that he didn't recognize.

"Martin." your voice was exactly what it sounded like on the tracks- low, a little raspy, entirely unbothered. "Cortis."

That wasnt a question.

Your English landed cleanly, each word chosen like you kept an inventory of vocabulary, and it sounded like Martin was in a waiting room waiting for a job interview. If he was honest, you looked quite terrifying, intimidating but at the same time— you looked exactly like the melodies in your songs, scalding and forever impossible to reach.

"Come in. Thirty minutes. I have session after." you spoke.

Thirty minutes. In his ideal world- Martin would get thirty hours- a whiteboard and room service.

But he stepped inside, eternally grateful, trying not to grin like an idiot when your arm brushed his as you closed the door. The contact was brief, casual, but it sent a stupid little spark up his spine anyway. He imagined that was what fans felt whenever their idols would accidentally touch them- then he thought of himself as the biggest idiot in the world.

"I've been listening to your EP," he started, which was an understatement so severe it was nearly a lie. "The track- 红底鞋."

He tried the mandarin- and almost certainly fucked it up.

"Red Bottoms. The way you built the bridge- the vocal chops, and everything-" He shook his head like he was still in disbelief. "I've never heard anyone make these choices and have them sound so good."

You tilted your head, an avid listener.

"It's smart. Really smart. I brought some sketches I've been messing with. Thought we could try bouncing ideas."

You leaned back, arms loosely crossed, watching the screen

with mild disinterest. "Alright. Play then."

Martin queued up the first track and the room filled with his rough beat-, built around a sample he'd been obsessed with for days. You listened without nodding, without comment, fingers tapping once against your arm— and when it ended, you gave a small shrug.

"Clean," you nodded. "Structure is good." A pause. "What do you want from it?"

Martin had prepared several professional answers to this question. He said none of them.

"I- um... kept coming back to your music because it does something to me," he started, keeping his eyes on the waveform. "Not just the technique-though that's insane- but the way it hits emotionally. 'red bottoms' makes me feel this... sorry i'm gonna be corny but— ache, like nostalgia for a place I've never been. That's rare. That's why I pushed for this session. I think we could make something that does that even stronger."

You were quiet for long enough that Martin wondered if he'd said something wrong, or if the translation -the invisible constant translation running behind your eyes- was taking a moment.

Then you rolled your chair a little closer, your knee brushing his in the tight space. You didn't pull away, instead you reached over and dragged the trackpad yourself, restarting his demo from the beginning.

"Play again," you spoke, voice still cool but now carrying a thread of curiosity. "From the top. And tell me where you hear the ache."

   The thirty minutes became ninety— maybe Martin was in his ideal world. You'd pulled up your own project files somewhere around the forty-minute mark- swiveling your monitor slightly so he could see the arrangement without being asked and Martin had leaned forward without thinking, elbows on knees, studying your session like it was a text he needed to memorize before an exam (he'd given up on school long ago.)

Your layers were immaculate. That was the word that kept arriving, they weren't clean- clean was what he'd been going for in his own work, clean was achievable- yours were Nobel prize worthy.

Alright maybe that was exaggerated.

But fuck, it felt true in the moment. Martin was leaning so far forward his elbows were digging into his knees, eyes glued to your screen like it held the secrets of the universe.

Your layers weren't just stacked— they breathed. There was this one vocal stem buried so deep he almost missed it, a whispery mandarin phrase reversed and pitched down, sitting right under the main hook.

You pointed at it with two fingers. "You can't hear that one."

"I... yeah, no. But it's there," he said, half-laughing in disbelief. "Why bury it?"

You shrugged, the oversized hoodie slipping off one shoulder. "Because it should feel like memory. Not loud. Just... there."

Martin's brain short-circuited for a second. God, she's cool. Like actually, terrifyingly cool. He wanted to say something smart but all that came out was, "That's fucking genius."

You gave him a small look— half amused, half 'why is this guy like this' —and dragged the playhead back. "Play again. From the ache part."

He did. And this time when the bridge hit, he actually pointed out the exact moment his shoulders had lifted the first time he heard your EP. You listened without nodding, but your fingers tapped a different rhythm on your arm, not matching his beat but something of your own.

The thirty minutes bled into ninety, then two hours. Your manager knocked once but you waved her off with a quick mandarin phrase that sounded like 'five more minutes'. Martin didn't speak the language but he understood the tone: don't fuck with my flow.

At some point you pulled out a half-empty bag of spicy peanuts from your bag and offered him some without ceremony. He took a handful, immediately regretted it when the heat hit, and coughed like an idiot.

"Shit—warn a guy," he wheezed, eyes watering.

You actually smiled. "Weak."

"My spice tolerance is bad, sorry."

That got a soft huff out of you and Martin felt it like a hook sinking into his ribs. Don't get flattered, dumbass.

But it was hard not to when you started explaining your process. You talked about sound like it was weather— how certain frequencies felt like fog rolling off the Yangtze, how a good drop should hit like summer rain on hot pavement. He hung on every word, even the ones where your English tripped and you switched to typing on your phone for precision.

You were unconsciously poetic— the thing was, you didn’t even realise what you were saying was potent and moved something deep inside his chest.

Then you asked him something —a technical question, he thought, about sidechain compression and whatnot, but the sentence had restructured itself between your brain and your mouth.

Lost in translation.

And Martin was aware of something now that he hadn't let himself be aware of before.

There was a door in this room that neither of you had a key to.

He was fluent in your music. He could hear your creative language with accuracy —could predict, sometimes, where a track was going, could feel when a choice was wrong before he could articulate why.

In that language, he and you were almost eerily aligned.

You'd leaned back at some point arms loosely crossed, and for once your expression softened by a millimeter. "We're not so different in here," you said quietly, tapping the screen. "Outside... maybe. But here?" A small shrug. "Same language."

Around the 2 hours mark, your manager knocked twice and opened the door without waiting, she said something in your language, one hand on her hip.

You looked at him. "I have to-" You gestured at the door. "Session."

"Right." He started closing his laptop. "Yeah, of course."

You were looking at his screen- at the demo, still open, the waveform sitting there half-discussed. Then you walked him to the door, which wasn't a long walk in a studio that size- and when he stepped into the hallway you were already turning back toward the board.

No 'nice to meet you'. No 'I'll be in touch'

Just- back to work. Like he'd been a parenthesis.

Gosh- had he really been that awkward?

"I'll send you the updated file," he spoke to your back.

You raised one hand- not really a wave, more like an acknowledgment and the door closed. Martin stood in the hallway for approximately four seconds, then started walking.

Fuck my life, he thought.

He sent the file that evening. Clean mix, properly labeled, a short note underneath—  because he didn't know what the right amount to say was and defaulted to less.

He watched the delivered receipt appear, then he watched it stay delivered for three whole days.

MARTIN THOUGHT MAYBE it was because of the language barrier- maybe you preferred working with people who could actually understand you without having to use Google translate.

Maybe after he left you'd sat back down at the board and thought, 'never again', and that had been that.

He also wondered if maybe you hadn't liked his music- his way of working- or maybe it was his personality?

He'd talked too much about what your music did to him, which in retrospect- was possibly a lot to say to someone he'd met eleven minutes prior.

He could've come across as a lot.

He was potentially a lot.

Instead of spending hours trying to figure out what he could change about himself— Martin chose to do something much healthier with his time— listen for the umpteenth time to your EP.

The first time he'd ever encountered you- your name had not been immediately googleable. He'd heard the track on Juhoon's phone- he had it queued in a playlist, one of those late-night sessions where nobody was making anything, just listening, sprawled across studio furniture with takeout going cold.

And Martin had sat up halfway through the second verse and said 'who is this'.

Like he needed to know right know or he'd die.

Juhoon hadn't known the artist name offhand. Had to dig through the playlist- and the name that came up was your alias- two words.

When Martin searched it, the results were sparse.

A Soundcloud with six tracks, oldest upload three years ago, an Instagram with maybe forty posts, mostly studio photos -equipment, waveforms, the occasional selfie.

He'd found an interview eventually- a small music publication, with english subtitles- you were on screen in a plain chair in what looked like your own studio, answering questions.

Your English in the interview was functional but minimal- you chose words lik you were packing a bag for a short trip— nothing unnecessary.

But when you talked about the music you lit up in a different way.

Here is the thing Martin had not said to Juhoon, or Seonghyeon, or even James, because there wasn't a version of it that didn't sound insane:

You were extraordinarily beautiful and but it was almost completely irrelevant.

He'd seen your face for the first time in a video someone had posted from a small showcase- grainy phone footage really. You looked objectively nice- screw that- nicer than anything he'd ever seen.

Martin wasn't foreign to pretty girls trust me— but the knowledge that you made music so touching added even more to your already beautiful face.

So yes, you were beautiful, in the way that became a secondary fact.

Like learning that a book you loved also had a gorgeous cover.

Noted. Filed. Definitely not the point.

YOU ALMOST DIDNT GO.That was the thing anybody could've known from looking at you in that lobby -standing there, weight on one foot, like an idiot.

You'd listened to his file the night he sent it. That was the other thing. The delivered receipt wasn't indifference- er.. maybe it was.

You couldn't pin point it though- what had brought you there in that specific moment.

Here is what you knew about him before the session; Cortis.

The group, the name, the general thing, not much more.

You existed in the same industry without overlapping much —your world was smaller, quieter, more underground, and you'd kept it that way deliberately. But you'd heard his name in production circles.

'Good ear', some guy had said once. 'Real one'.

Then he'd walked in your studio and said your EP name in mandarin, badly, clearly practiced, and you'd found it secretly endearing.

Funny guy, you'd thought, awkward and weird.

People talked about your music in a particular way- in interviews and comments and the occasional review- random words that seemed way too complicated. You'd learned to receive those words with the same expression you received everything: mildly, without giving away whether they'd landed.

But Martin had said it much more simply, 'nostalgia for a place I've never been' and then had looked almost embarrassed about saying it, eyes on the waveform instead of you, and something in your chest had done a thing you hadn't anticipated and hadn't appreciated.

Because your music wasn't all that complicated- it wasn't "ethereal" or whatever stupid word critics used to seem smart; your music was simple, based on experiences and stuff you'd learned, there was no need to get pretentious.

And you'd never heard anyone say it back to you in those words. Humble. In mandarin or rnglish or anything in between.

Now— the receptionist at the Hybe building had been professional about it.

You'd asked for him by name in english, careful enough to be understood, explained in the most efficient possible sentence, and you waited.

You'd been fine while waiting.

And then the elevator had opened and Martin had walked out in dance practice clothes, slightly out of breath, water bottle in hand- hair unmanaged.

He wasn’t expecting to see you— understandable— so his eyebrows rose to his forehead, mouth opening and closing like a blob fish.

Funny, you thought as he scrambled for words.

"You said you'd show me," you raised your chin."The bridge. What you would put there." You made a pause that wasn't awkward because didn't seem to do awkward. "I have time now."

Martin stood there for approximately three seconds wondering what the fuck was going on.

Three weeks. Three weeks of delivered-and-nothing. Martin still wasn't even sure you remembered his name and now all of a sudden, you came looking for him.

"Erm- okay," he ended up saying.

He almost heard Keonho's voice in his ears, "what wouldn't you do for the huzz..."

And apparently he needed to add 'absolute pathetic douchebag' in his personality traits.

The elevator ride up was quiet. Martin was aware that he was in dance practice clothes. He was aware that his hair was doing something crazy on top of his head. He was also very aware that you were standing approximately two feet away from him in an elevator that felt, for no reason, very small.

He wanted to ask 'why now', but he didn't.

The elevator opened on his floor.

"It's not a proper studio," Martin announced, leading you down the hall, which was true -it was a production room, good equipment, acoustically treated, but smaller than what you were used to, he guessed, based on the setup he'd seen at your session. “We use it for demos mostly. Personal stuff."

You nodded, taking in the hallway with the same mild attention you seemed to give everything. He opened the door, the room was exactly as he'd left it that morning —his project file still open on the monitor, three empty water bottles on the desk that he immediately wanted to remove.

You walked in and went directly to the monitor. Not the couch, not the chair- the monitor. You leaned forward and read the open file without touching anything, just looking.

Martin watched you clock the timestamp, the track name, the arrangement and whatever else your brain extracted in those few seconds.

"You kept working on it," you stated, neutral.

"Ah- yeah..."

You straightened and looked at him. "Play it."

He set down the water bottle, moved to the chair, pulled up the current version -not the one he'd sent you, three iterations past that now- and pressed pay.

You listened with your arms loosely crossed, expressionless. And when it ended, the silence was a different kind than before.

You looked at him, he wasn’t sure what exactly what was going on— you’d came in, all business, and hadn’t even explained the past few weeks, acting like you were just two friends making music.

"What do you want to do," you asked him. "What are you expecting?"

Martin opened his mouth. Closed it. He didn't even know what to say.

"Well-" He exhaled. "Erm." He turned the water bottle in his hands once. "I don't know, I thought maybe you'd- I thought if you replied, we could maybe discuss a possible-" He paused. "Well. But you didn't really reply."

You looked at the monitor, trying to figure out what to say. "I was out of country,"

Lie. You'd been in this city for the entire three weeks.

"The-" You paused, reaching for the word. "Computer. Was not working." Also not true. "But I'm here now. Yes?"

"Yeah." Martin nodded. "Yeah, I can see that. I was- well. What I'm trying to say is- if maybe you'd consider giving me a chance. I really wanna work with you."

You rubbed the center of your chest once, almost absentmindedly, the way people do when heartburn hits. Then you leaned forward again as if nothing happened.

"Is this why you sent demo?" you asked flatly. "You want work with me. Really bad."

"Yes." it was immediate with no hesitation. "I'm sorry if I was being pushy- I just really like-" He stopped to correct himself. "Love your music."

You were quiet, assembling words in your mind to make a sentence.

"I don't know," you said finally. "I'm busy these days. I don't know."

"Well- I could give you time to think about it, if you—”

"No." you cut him, dry, but not unkind. "I'm busy these days, I said. Maybe one day."

Martin was quiet for a moment but then decided to stop being careful and to say it in his own stupid messy way.

"Look. Let me put it clearly. I've never felt this way about any other music. Not like this." He held your gaze. "Please consider this. Or- heck, I don't know."

A short, slightly helpless exhale came out of his mouth, "Free your schedule. Let's do something outside and I'll show you I'm really serious about this." He paused. "Please."

You considered him- maybe because the word 'please' in english always sounded more exposed than in mandarin, you'd always thought. Less formal architecture to hide inside- it just sat there, plain and asking.

"I can't," you concluded. "Have two meetings later. Can't."

"Tonight then?"

You looked at him.

"Please," Martin insisted.

"Tonight?" You repeated it back.

"Yes. Tonight."

The room was very quiet as you wondered if you should give him a chance. Maybe something- anything could come out of it. Maybe you'd gain some sort of competence- maybe even new english vocabulary.

"Not long then," you decided.

Martin's expression did something he didn't fully manage to contain- like a kid being allowed to eat sweets.

"Not long," he agreed, immediately like he was agreeing before you could change your mind.

You looked back at the monitor. At his arrangement, still open, the bridge sitting there, "Finish the session first," you said. “I meet you there later.”

THE RECORD SHOP was the kind that didn't have a sign you could read from the street. It was just a door and a window with a few sleeves propped against the glass and —when you pushed it open— the smell of old vinyl and central heating.

Martin was already inside.

He'd worn a mask and a cap pulled low, the standard-issue attempt at anonymity that you recognized because you'd put on your own mask for the same reason.

He was flipping through a section near the back when you came in, and he looked up with the expression of someone who —had been trying to look like they hadn't been watching the door.

"You found it," he observed.

"The pin was good," you said.

He smiled, slightly. The mask hid most of it but not the way his eyes changed. You put your hands in your pockets and looked around the shop- it was small and dense, organized neatly with color coded alleys.

"Do you come here a lot?" you asked him.

"When I can." He moved to make room beside him. "Which is not a lot. But- when I need to think about something differently. About music. I come here and I remember what made me want to do it."

"What made you?" you interrogated- like the answer would help you make a quicker decision.

"The feeling of hearing something for the first time that-" He paused for a beat "That takes the top of your head off. You know?"

You knew- for a fact— what he meant. You didn't say so but you moved to the nearest shelf and started looking, because that was easier than going into depth about the tragic reason why you started making music.

You moved through the sections without talking much, which suited you and Martin drifted nearby - doing the same thing. He'd pick something up occasionally- hold it out for you to see without commentary- you'd look, and either nod or make the small sound of approval.

"Okay," Martin began, after a while. "Favorite album. What do you go back to."

You considered the question seriously, the way it deserved. You had quite a few in mind, but only one sat at the top of that list, so you walked three shelves over, found the section you wanted, and flipped through it.

When you found it you pulled it out and held it toward him, he took it— looked at it and went very very still.

Jar of Flies- Alice in Chains.

The cover art faced up in his hands, worn at the corners, a used copy that someone had loved before it got here.

"You like Alice in Chains," he almost choked out.

It wasn't quite a question though- he had the living proof in his hands.

"Yes." You watched his face. "Why. You don't like?"

"I-" He looked up. "I love."

You recognized the thing people did in reaction to your broken english- they accommodated without even realizing- started to use the same manner of language unconsciously. It was funny.

Something in his expression had shifted entirely though— replaced by something unguarded and disbelieving.

"I love them. I just didn't-"He stopped. You watched him recalibrate. "Well. Now that I think about it." He looked at you. "You do seem like the type of person who listens to good music. Since you make good music and all-"

"Martin."

"Yeah?"

"What's yours," you cut him off. "Favorite album."

"Oh-" He paused. Looked down at the sleeve in his hands. "Um. Well." A short exhale, almost a laugh. "It's kind of in my hands, actually."

You looked at the record. Then at him. "What. Jar of Flies?"

"Yeah." Martin turned it over, looked at the tracklist like he'd memorized it a long time ago and was just confirming. "I always go back to that one. I listen to it when I need to breathe."

“You make it sound like medication.”

“It kind of is.” he shrugged.

Silence stretched between you as Martin ran his thumb along the edge of the cardboard sleeve.

“My dad used to play records when I was a kid.” He shrugged. “Not because he was one of those vinyl purists. He just couldn’t afford Spotify for a while.”

You smiled despite yourself.

“So we’d sit on the floor and he’d play albums from start to finish.” His eyes stayed on the record. “No skipping. No playlists. If track three sucked, well…” He lifted a shoulder. “Too fucking bad.”

“You had to earn track seven.” you added, speaking from experience.

“Exactly. But it fucked me up, though.”

“How?”you tilted your head, very mcuh aware that you were having a full blown conversation in the middle of the shop like it was a coffee table.

“I can’t listen to music casually anymore. I think like… if an album doesn’t feel like someone’s whole nervous system got printed onto plastic…” Martin grimaced. “I don’t know. It just feels empty.”

You stared at him for a second “Music is different for everyone.”

His eyes lifted but you looked away first.

“In China,” you said carefully, searching for words, “my father…He worked. So, no music allowed in the house. Only in the headphones. So it was private. When I was young everything was loud.”

You hated speaking English. Every sentence felt like dragging furniture through a doorway too small.

“But music…” You touched two fingers against your chest without thinking. “…made one room.”

Martin didn’t answer immediately, people would think he didnt understand what you meant because your english was messy— (and to be fair I don’t think you readers understood what y/n meant either). But that went behind the point, because he could see clearly through your thoughts, like he’d known you for years.

“Jesus.” he said. “I’ve never heard anyone explain headphones like that.”

You frowned. “Is it bad English?”

“No.” he smiled fondly, “It’s good truth. You’re doing great.”

It felt nice. You’d been around enough people to know that accents— especially a chinese one, were constantly mocked, made fun of and used for shits and giggles. Nobody saw through that— nobody saw the girl standing in a country far too big, head still in a place her feet don’t recognize anymore.

You folded your arms tighter. “I don’t think people hear songs. I think they hear themselves.”

“Hm.”

“They say they love an artist, but really…They love who they become for four minutes.” you gestured vaguely, “who do you become when you listen to Alice in Chains?”

Martin stared, as if the answer wasn’t just sitting on the surface waiting to be spoken.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “Smaller. Not in a bad way. Just… the parts of me that are always trying to explain themselves kind of shut up.”

You glanced around, the shop empty felt like you were both existing in a secluded space in time— one where conversations were truly meaningful and went beyond weather-talks. One in which you could be yourself and not be called ‘too emotional.’

“So?” you said.

“So?”

“You want to produce with me.”

“I do.” Martin let out an amused laugh, kind of nervous at the same time.

“Because I speak weird? Or because what?”

“I want to produce with you because your demos pissed me off.” he admitted

You blinked. “…huh?”

“They’re unfinished but they still made me feel like shit.”

You scoffed, cocking an eyebrow, “…Thank you?”

“I mean that as a compliment.” Martin clarified.

“You Americans are confusing.” you rolled your eyes, slightly amused.

He stood there from his 6ft-something tower, looking down at you like you were the craziest thing he’d ever met, the brilliant shell of a woman— and didn’t even get mad when you confused his nationality because at least you were acknowledging his presence.

“I’m Canadian.” he simply said, matter-of-factly.

“Oh.”

And God, you hated that you sounded like a bitch.

“…Sorry.”

“I’ll recover.” he gave an awkward laugh, hand on the back of his neck.

A tiny smile threatened the corner of your mouth before you killed it, but he noticed anyway.

“There it is.”

“What?” you brought back the poker-face.

Martin’s cheeks got red for an instant, “You smile.”

“I don’t.”

“You literally just did.”

“Oh, fuck you.” it slipped out faster than intended, and you clutched your mouth.

Cursing was bad— you’d learned it from a very young age. You never cursed, having always been taught to be put together and classy— but inside your mind? You did nothing but.

“There she is.” Martin chuckled when you rolled your eyes.

Martin smiled like he’d won something— not the argument— just the sound of your laugh. And it was very you, very beautiful. He committed it to memory, keeping it in a locked box inside his brain, one he planned to open every now and then just to remind himself of how sweet it sounded.

“You know,” he said after a moment, quieter now, “I don’t actually care if we make a track… I mean—I do. But that’s not why I asked you to come here.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “I heard your music before I saw you. And I had this really stupid feeling that whoever made it might understand me.”

The shop was quiet around you until somebody somewhere decided to put a needle down and the soft opening of a familiar song filled the space.

'I want someone badly' by Jeff Buckley.

Here we go. You braced for impact.

You couldn’t tell him why the song had affected you. For one, trying to explain it in english would be impossible, and his mandarin was practically nonexistent. But mostly because there was nothing to explain that wouldn’t sound completely ridiculous.

You knew it was. You’d always known there was something a little wrong with you.

Music was the only thing that didn't need translation for you- social relationships did- but music didn't.

And now, standing there with heat creeping up your face, you wondered if it was really possible to start liking someone simply because they liked the same songs you did.

He was a stranger —with good music taste— but a stranger nonetheless.

You wanted to believe that music taste told a lot about who a person was- that maybe if you listened to 'Jar of flies' with him- you could figure him out in minutes.

And the Jeff Buckley song only accented that- because you believed if you stood there for a few minutes more— you'd actually start to appreciate his presence.

You ended up buying three records. Martin bought two, including a pressing you'd pointed at without comment- that he'd looked at for a long time before putting under his arm.

When you got out, the city had gotten colder— you and Martin walked in the direction of nothing in particular, which was the only direction either of you seemed to have— bags from the shop in hand, masks back up against the cold and the recognition.

"Not long," you reiterated, which was what you'd agreed to, and which had now been almost two hours.

"Right," Martin nodded, glancing sideways at you. "Are you hungry?"

You considered it. "A little."

"There's a noraebang near here." He said it carefully, watching your face. "Not a big one. Private rooms. We could-" He paused. "Or not. If you have to leave-"

"Noraebang," you repeated.

You thought about your empty apartment- your studio, which you'd been in for nine hours before coming here. The two meetings that had ended at six and left you with an evening that had no shape yet. Boring.

"Okay," you ended up saying, shrugging.

Martin looked straight ahead but you saw his shoulders do a weird something.

The place was small, the way he'd said— a narrow staircase down from street level, a front desk staffed by a woman who didn't look up from her phone, and corridor of numbered doors.

The room he booked was just large enough- a curved booth, a screen, two microphones on the table, and a tambourine absolutely nobody was going to touch.

The song catalog was on a tablet between you- a small speaker in the corner played an upbeat song while you ordered food from the laminated menu, communicating with the front desk through a buzzer system that required no language whatsoever. It suited you.

"You pick a song first," Martin said, sliding the tablet toward you.

"Me?"

Yeah you, idiot.

"You." He leaned back- arms crossed. "I wanna see what you pick."

You looked at him for a moment before you took the tablet. You found your song without much searching- you'd known before you sat down, if you were being honest, from the moment the song had come through the record shop speakers and made you feel conflicted.

You typed Jeff Buckley into the search bar, found the song almost immediately, and stared at it for a second before pressing queue.

The opening drifted through the room’s speakers—softer than it had been in the record shop, but it carried the same strange shift in temperature, the same subtle way of changing the air around you.

You reached for the microphone, your fingers wrapping around its base.

This was dangerous. For all you knew, you’d end up crying before the song was over. Loud music had always done something strange to you, overwhelming you with an inexplicable urge to cry, as though your body responded to volume before your mind ever could.

Still, you knew this song the way you knew your own name in both languages, so you sang it.

You didn’t look at Martin. Instead, your gaze settled somewhere in the middle distance—the place singers on television always seemed to look, as if fixing their eyes on something far away was the only way to stop their feelings from spilling out.

So you let the song do what it had always done.

It arrived fully, without asking permission, in that particular way Jeff Buckley had of slipping into your mind and wrapping himself around your brain tightly.

Your singing voice in English barely sounded like your speaking voice, it was steadier somehow, as though the language created just enough distance for honesty to slip through the cracks.

Now I want someone badly. Got a girl here tonight, want someone new. Someone new. A little cry, want someone badly I wanna know if this is a bad lease on me

(I want to know) I want to know. Am I sure that I heard you right. I want to know

If you're leaving, just do it tonight. Now I want someone badly. To burn in here with me, you better listen, baby 'Cause I, I cry all over madly

Don't do anything, do it for me Ooh-ooh, I wanna know (l wanna know. Am I sure that I have your love I wanna know (I wanna know). If you're leaving, just make sure it's right. Now I want someone badly.

Could it be true that someone is you?

You finished the last line and let the note go- the backing track faded and the room was quiet for a moment that lasted. You lowered the microphone and looked at Martin- who'd been silent the whole time.

He was facing the table- and when you looked more carefully—

"Martin."

He didn't look up immediately, but when he did, he was weird- you registered it in pieces. The brightness in his eyes- the way he was pressing his mouth together- the extremely controlled quality of his breathing.

He was crying.

Martin Edwards Park was crying.

The evidence was there, undeniable, in the corners of his eyes and the particular set of his jaw- and the wetness on his cheeks.

You stared at him and he made a sound that was almost a laugh.

"Don't-" He stopped. Pressed the back of his hand against one eye, quick, like he could undo it. "Sorry. I'm-" Another sound, closer to a laugh this time. "Shit. I'm so sorry this is ridiculous."

"You're crying," you remarked.

"I'm aware," he deadpanned. "Thank you."

"Why?"

"It's the-"

Martin exhaled, looked at the ceiling briefly and when he looked back at you his eyes were still bright, his expression had shifted into something that was equal parts embarrassed and helpless.

"This is- I feel stupid. I feel genuinely stupid right now."

You looked at him- something happening in your chest that moved up into your face before you could manage it, and you laughed.

Martin stared at you. "You're laughing at me," he spoke.

"No-" You pressed your hand over your mouth. "No, I'm not- I'm-" The laugh came again, quieter. "Sorry. Sorry, it's not-"

But the words wouldn't come- not in english.

There was so much you could've said to him if only he'd understood your language.

"It's a little bit at me." Martin tilted his head.

"It's a little bit at you," you admitted.

He looked at you for a second, then he laughed through the tears too.

"I can't help it," he explained, when he'd recovered enough. "I've been like this since I was a kid. My members make fun of me for it. Keonho once caught me tearing up in the studio and told the whole group chat. That was a difficult week."

"You cried in the studio," you repeated, trying not to laugh.

"I was mixing something really sad- well it wasn't really that sad. But i tend to- like... feel music way too deeply. Until it becomes overwhelming, i can't help it... i'm sorry."

You wanted to say a lot of things- but the language barrier wouldn't let you. To be honest it wasn’t the only reason, you were just scared of oversharing if you opened your mouth— because wMartin was so relatable in that moment it felt comical.

"What song." you shifted your attention elsewhere.

He told you- and you knew it. It was the kind of song that deserved that reaction, at least in your book. And when you told him so- Martin looked at you with an expression that suggested nobody had ever validated this particular aspect of his personality before.

Like maybe he wasn't all that ridiculous for feeling too much and too intensely.

"I thought it was-" He searched for the word. "Too much. That I was too much about it."

You considered this as a person who’d been endlessly told she was too much and took too much place.

"That’s not true. Music should feel like something... big. Or, what is it for?"

The room was quiet as Martin looked at you for a long moment.

"Yeah," he ended up saying quietly. "Yeah, exactly."

You could tell in that moment- the moment when two souls shared the same ugly sensation.

That same dramatic feeling when meeting someone and thinking- this is the person.

The brain says it's absurd but not the heart.

The feeling when living a whole life of never being fully understood and finally being seen for something. That naive and ridiculous thing that- rationally - shouldn't exist with someone you've been around only a few times.

But you didn't step back this time, you weren't sure why. Maybe it was the record shop. Maybe it was Jar of Flies worn at the corners in his hands.

Maybe it was the crying -the way he hadn't tried to hide it and hadn't tried to explain it away until you'd already seen it, and even what he'd said. 

That he felt music too deeply, like that was something to apologize for- rather than the only correct way to feel it.

So you didn't make a big deal out of it.

"Your turn," you told him, nodding at the tablet.

He took it without argument, scrolled for a moment and queued something without showing you the title, wiping his face.

The opening came through the room's speakers- just guitar at first, bare and unhurried- and you placed it immediately.

Alice in Chains. Down in a Hole. Unplugged version.

You looked at him and he'd already picked up the microphone. He was looking at the same place you'd looked during Buckley when he started to sing.

You had not been prepared for that. Not for his voice itself -you'd known, abstractly, that he was an amazing singer, that singing was the thing, professionally, that he did.

But there was a difference betwen knowing- and then sitting three feet away from Martin Edwards Park in a small room while he sang Down in a Hole with his eyes half-closed.

His voice did something low and unhurried and raspy in exactly the right places- those were different experiences entirely. It came from somewhere far inside his body- like it had to travel a long way to get out.

You went back and forth for a while after that-you'd pick something, he'd pick somethingz. Then the food arrived and got slowly eaten between songs- the tablet passing between you with less and less ceremony.

You sang 'Rotten Apple' at some point— he listened without moving and when you finished he smiled. Martin sang something of his own after- slower, something you didn't recognize, not a cover. You didn't ask, you just listened the same way he listened to you.

It was a good song, it grieved in exactly the right place but ou didn't tell him that yet.

Instead you said :

"I think- We could make good music together."

And Martin's head turned like he'd been waiting for this.

"I was being complicated," you continued, looking at the table. "I just didn't want to- involve myself. I have um-" You paused, reaching. "What is the word? Deadlines. And I don't know....I'm not good with working with others. Usually."

He was quiet for a moment- reflecting.

"That's okay," he finally said. "I respect that. I'm not asking for much- I just wanted you to consider it. I really like what you do. And I think we could do good things. Fuck that. Great things."

He held your gaze without flinching, which you noted, because most people didn't do that when they'd just said something that exposed them.

"Yeah," you answered slowly. "You're right- but I don't know how it's going to work. I don't speak very good english and you—well…”

You gestured at him, at the general fact of him—korean and obviously busy; operating in a world that ran on a language you'd taught yourself through song lyrics and netflix tv shows.

"I'm learning mandarin," Martin responded quickly, like it was already decided. "I can learn."

You looked at him for a moment before your lips curved into a laugh.

Silly boy.

"Mandarin." You shook your head. "You can't learn it in a week, Martin."

"Well-" He made a face. "Yeah, you're right. But we'll make it work. And plus I don't think there's much to be said anyway. When we're making music. I feel like— Okay this is gonna be corny."

"Say it," you encouraged.

"I just... I feel like you get me. A little bit. So you'd understand me. In there." He tilted his head toward an imaginary studio, an imaginary session, something that hadn't happened yet.

"I don't get you," you replied. "But i get your music, maybe."

"That's the same thing," he maintained. "My music is basically- Me. It's just me. Everything I can't say out loud or don't know how to explain- it goes in there. So if you get the music, you get me.”

"Okay," you concluded. Like it was a decision. Probably a bad one at that.

"We try. One session. Properly." You held up one finger. “One. And if it doesn't-"

If it doesn't work. If the door is still there. If the language is still a wall.

"One session," Martin agreed immediately before you could attach more conditions to it. "That's all I'm asking."

You nodded- looked at the tablet and woke the screen.

"One more song," you announced. "Then I go."

"One more," he agreed with a hint of a smile.

You handed him the tablet.

"You pick," you said. "Something that's you." You touched your chest. "From here. So I can- So I know what I'm working with."

He found it extremely endearing the way you couldn't name your body parts so you resolved to pointing at them. It was on top of a long list of things he couldn’t possibly keep track of.

The room, without the music, was just a room again. Like you, sort of.

You put your mask back on and so did Martin; the street was quiet- a  few people passing but nobody paying attention to anyone else.

Martin looked in the direction of the road while you held your bag strap with both hands.

This was the part, you were realizing, that the evening hadn't prepared you for- the inside of the record shop had been easy- the noraebang room had been easy.

But out here there was no music

"I'll-" Martin started.

"Yes," you said, at the same time- realizing you sounded like a complete idiot.

"I was about to say I'll get you a car," he continued. "It's late."

"I can get myself a car"

"I know you can." He answered "I just want to."

He was already on his phone, the app open- and you let him, because the english for "i dont like when people pay for my stuff" wasn't available and you weren't going to pull out google translate.

You stood beside him on the pavement while he sorted it- realizing you were both going to go back to being separate people in separate places, after sharing one of your most intimate forms of art.

"Three minutes," he updated you, showing you the phone with the little car moving on the map.

"Okay," you nodded. "Thanks, you didn't have to. And for the session, I'll have my manager reach out. For scheduling."

"Yeah," Martin agreed. "Yeah, that works."

Formal, correct.

The language of two professionals who hadnt just spent the last two hours singing 'Alice in chains’ to each other in a small warm room

A car turned onto the street, the one on the map, slowing toward you. You picked up your bag properly, adjuste your mask.

Martin stepped to the curb slightly, checking the plate and confirming it then he opened the door for you, standing there with his hand on it, close enough that the city noise seemed slightly further away.

"Thank you," you said "For the record shop. And the-" You gestured back in the direction of the noraebang.

"Thank you for coming to my company building," he looked down- cheeks flushing. "With your laptop bag. And your face."

Your lips curved into a smile, revealing your teeth.

"That came out wrong," he shook his head immediately.

"It's okay, I make sure to bring my face again next time, yeah?"

You got in the car— feeling the driver's impatience.

You gave him one last smile- because apparently you were smiling now- and Martin gave it back sheepishly, cheeks the same color as tomatoes.

THE SESSION WAS SCHEDULED for a Thursday. Two weeks after the noraebang- long enough for the ugly feelings to slowly fade- leaving the usual indifference you'd always had.

Your manager had coordinated with his people; scheduling it in a neutral studio, not yours, nor his- a place in the middle that belonged to neither of you, which you'd requested without explaining why.

Yours felt too much like yours- and his felt too much like walking into someone's space.

You'd told yourself it was one session.

You were still telling yourself that on Thursday morning when you packed your laptop bag and stood in your apartment for a moment before leaving- and thought, it's just music.

Martin was already there when you arrived -the studio already open, monitors on and a project file open on the screen that he closed as soon as you came in. He was in a plain sweatshirt and the same cap from the record shop, and he looked up when the door opened, hair doing a bouncy thing on his head.

"Hey," he greeted.

"Hi," you responded simply.

You looked at each other for a moment- it felt strangely professional- like standing inside a corporate office and talking to a co-worker.

Two weeks of voice memos, file exchanges and a scheduling chain that had gone through four different people- had set you guys back to separate people in separate worlds.

"Coffee?" he cleared his throat.

"Please,"

The first five minutes were practical- coffee, bag down, laptop out, the equipment check that you did automatically in any new space- testing the monitors, looking around.

"Okay," he finally said, settling into the chair beside yours. "So I was thinking-"

"I have an idea," you said, at the same time.

You both stopped.

"You first," he let out a breathy laugh.

"No," you conceded. "You."

"Well- i've been building something. Since the noraebang actually. I wasn't going to show you yet but-" He reached for his laptop. "Can I just play it? And you tell me what you think."

"Play it," you nodded.

He queued it up and the room filled with it- a rough sketch, clearly, but the bone structure was good. Better than good.

You listened without moving- trying to figure out what part of the tune sounded the most like him.

When it ended you concluded, "The intro is too long."

"Yeah," he agreed immediately. "I know. I couldn't figure out where to cut it."

"Four bars," you indicated. "Cut first four bars, start where the bass comes in."

He nodded, already reaching for the mouse. "And what about the—"

"The mid section needs something. It's missing-" You reached for the word. "Weight. In the low end. It floats too much in the middle."

"I was thinking sub," he said. "But I didn't want to make it sound weid"

"Sub would work. Careful with the frequency. It can get muddy there."

"Yeah, I was going to sidechain it to the kick."

The first hour was good. Better than good -actually. Professional, filled with a bunch of overcomplicated words. You could point at a section of the waveform and he'd already know what you were about to say. There was no need for google translate.

You built on his sketch, adding layers, pulling things back, making decisions that you could feel both of you arriving at simultaneously from different directions.

He'd pick something up and you'd extend it- it worked surprisingly well.

This part of you- didn't need translation. You'd known that from the first session— from the way you could finish each other's musical thoughts mid-sentence.

Then you were working on the bridge- the section that had been the conversation piece since the very beginning- nd you had an idea for it that you'd been developing for three days.

Something specific.

You started to explain it in english- and you got through the first sentence fine- and then in the second sentence, which was where the actual reasoning lived, you flunked it.

"I want it to feel like-" You paused to reach for a word. "Like when you are in a place that used to be- Like the moment before you remember something that-"

You pressed your fingers against your temple briefly. "There's a word. There's specific- in mandarin there is a word for this exact thing and I can't-"

"Take your time," Martin said, gently.

"I don't want to take time," you shook your head. "I want to say the thing."

"Okay," he said, recalibrating. "Well explain it to me."

"It's like-" You tried again. "You know when you're in a city. And the city look like home but is not home. And your body thinks it's home and then- And then it isn't. And there's this -this feeling in the chest-"

"Like a false recognition?" Martin hypothesized.

You looked at him- expression indecipherable

"Is that-" He gestured with his hands "Like something that looks like home but isn't."

"Yes," you nodded. "That. That's what the bridge should feel like. That specific-" You put your hand to your chest briefly. "Here."

"Okay," Martin said, nodding, leaning forward. "Okay I get that- so you want it to feel like-"

"Like 乡愁," you said, and it came out in mandarin because that was where it lived- the ache of homesickness.

English had the word 'homesickness' but it was a flat translation that didn't carry the weight that '乡愁' carried.

Martin had his phone out- he typed it in. You watched him type the characters, getting them wrong the first time and correcting, the translation app loading.

"Homesickness," he read.

"Yes," you said. "But more than that- homesickness is- it's too simple. 乡愁 is the grief of it. Not just missing. Grieving. For a place that is still there but you are not in it, and you might not-"

You stopped again- the words were spinning in your head and you wanted to honestly cry- you could've been so much clearer, so intelligible in your own language. You could’ve sounded so smart.

"Might not go back," Martin finished quietly.

You looked at the screen instead of him- nodded, feeling like a complete idiot.

"So the bridge," he said, carefully navigating back to the music, which you appreciated. "You want it to carry that. The grief of a place that still exists without you."

"Yes. And to do that I need to strip it back. Because 乡愁 is- it's a quiet feeling. it's not loud. It lives here-" You touched your sternum. "Quietly. All the time. So the bridge needs to be quiet. Remove layers. Let it breathe."

He reached for the mouse and started pulling layers out of the bridge section, muting tracks, and when he'd done the obvious ones- there was still something wrong.

Something that'd been lost in translation.

"The piano," you pointed. "Move it. It's sitting in the wrong place-"

"Where do you want it?"

"Later. Two bars later. After the-"

"After the vocal comes in?"

"No, before. One bar before."

He moved it. Played it back.

"That's- no," you shook your head. "That's not-"

You knew you were being a pain- deep down- but you were so frustrated- so so frustrated, because in some ugly way- you wanted him to see how smart you could be in your own language.

"Too early?" Martin asked.

"No it's not about early or late it's about-"

You stopped because the word wasn't coming. The specific word for what was wrong with it- the word that would explain why the placement felt off, was sitting in mandarin and wouldn't translate into something useful.

"It needs to feel like it arrives after the feeling. Like- like someone who sees you crying and doesn't say anything but puts their hand— i don't know how to say."

"I understand," Martin said simply. "Let me try something,"

He moved the piano in a different position, slightly later, a rhythmic placement you wouldn't have chosen but that he seemed sure about.

It was close. Very close. But something was still sitting wrong.

"It's almost right," you said.

"Almost where?"

"Almost- The note. The first note of the piano. It's-"

"Too bright?"

"It's not a technincal thing- When you write in English, and you want to say something sad- you choose words that sound like the thing. The sound of the word matches the feeling. Yes?"

"Yeah," Martin said, following you. "Like sonic texture in language."

"Yes. The first note of the piano sounds like-" You searched. "Like question. And it should sound like statement. Like something that already been decided. Like grief... is not asking to be felt but is simply- felt. Present. 已经在了."

You said the last part in mandarin without meaning to- already there and Martin reached for his phone again.

And something about that- the translation app, the inevitable flattening of '已经在了' into something that would come back technically correct but emotionally miles from the thing you'd said— made you loose your patience completely.

"I could really-" You stopped to take a breath.

Martin looked up at you- curious.

"I could really be myself right now," you told him. "And say the things I want to say. If I were speaking mandarin."

"I know," Martin nodded quietly.

"You don't know," you said- not unkindly. "You hear what I say and you think you know what I mean. But I'm giving you—" You held up your hand, fingers close together. "This much. I'm giving you this much of what I actually mean. Because this much fits in the English i have." You looked at him. "The rest-" You opened your hand and motioned letting it go.

"The feeling I'm trying to describe," you continued, "In my language it takes one word. One word and you understand exactly and we move on and the music would be correct." You looked at the screen. "Instead we are here."

"Then teach me," Martin said very quickly.

"I can't teach you '乡愁' in an afternoon, Martin." You said it flatly. "I can't teach you what it feels like. You have to have felt it. You have to have been far from a place and felt it missing from your body. Like here" You touched your ribs.

"But, I have." Martin claimed.

"Then you know '乡愁," you said. "You just don't have the word for it."

"But you do," he continued. "And I don't. And that's the problem.” He stopped.

You looked at the screen. At the bridge section, the piano sitting in its almost-right position, the bridge almost carrying the thing you needed it to carry.

"I'm not-" You started. "I'm not frustrated with you. I want to be clear. I'm frustrated with-" You gestured at the space between you. "This."

"I know," Martin nodded. "I do- but it's gonna be okay- we'll end up understanding each other. If we try a little more."

"I came here today and I had things I wanted to make- I could hear them and I could feel them and I-" You exhaled. "I can't get them out in a language that isn't mine. I don't want music to feel dumb- just because i don't speak the language."

"It's not." he shook his head. "Hey, one day you said something in an interview. You said it in english- i remember it. You said that- 'music doesn't need translation the way relationships do.' And not to be weird or anything- but i think you sound smart in all the languages. You dont need a translation because you already have the feeling- that's enough."

The thing about being seen in a language that wasn't yours was that it arrived differently than being seen in your own.

In mandarin, someone understanding you was expected- the words did their job. But in english, when someone reached through the reduced version of you- through the compressed thought, it was a different kind of 'being seen'.

"I've been trying to learn mandarin,” Martin continued when he saw you were struggling to reply, "I know it's not enough. Iknow a few words and tones I'm mispronouncing and a phrase I looked up at midnight isn't- enough. I know that."

"It's not about learning Mandarin," you finally spoke, a small smile tickling the corners of your lips. "It's about- It's about the fact that I have been far from home for two years. And in those two years I have said- Maybe thirty percent of what I actually think. But today I wanted to say the full thing. So we could understand each other."

Outside, somewhere in the building, music was playing from another session. Another song. Another room. Someone else making something in whatever language they had.

"Do you miss it," Martin asked quietly.

"Every day," you smiled. "The food first, I know that sounds- fat"

He found it amusing, the way you'd used the word "fat".

"No it doesn't sound fat, i miss korean food too when i'm abroad." he chuckled.

"There is a- a specific noodle. From a specific place near where I grew up. I try to find it here. Something similar. I can't." You shook your head. "And my mother makes soup. In winter. And I can smell it sometimes. When I'm in the studio very late and I'm tired."

The boy listened, eyes bored on you, like listening to a very interesting TED talk.

"I miss speaking without thinking," you continued. "I miss saying exactly the thing I mean without building it first. Without losing half of it. My thoughts in mandarin are so interesting. In English they are dumb.”

"I'm sorry," Martin replied.

"Don't be," you shrugged. "I chose this. I chose to come here, to work here, you didn’t drag me out of china.”

And you realized maybe you'd said entirely too much until Martin spoke again.

"Earlier you said you missed noodles. Specific noodles. From a specific place. What kind ?"

You looked at him for a moment, one eyebrow raised.

"Why," you questioned.

"Because I wanna know," he said simply.

"重庆小面," you replied, "重庆, It's the city where I'm from." And 小面 means like- small noodles. But small is wrong. The translation is wrong. They're not small. They're humble, maybe. That's better. Humble noodles. Street noodles."

Martin listened, the track long forgotten.

"The woman who made them- she was there since before I was born. Very small, very fast. I watched her when I was a child."

"Is she still there," Martin asked, eyes bright now. Like he was smiling with his eyes.

"It's her daughter now," you said. "Same hands. Same speed."

So you told him about your country. Like you'd tell a good friend about things that didn't really matter in that moment- since you were both supposed to work. You told him about Chongqing, about the food, about your old house... a little about the rivers and the mountains. The fog that came in off the Yangtze in the mornin- the hotpot restraints open until four- the smell of charcoal. Many many things.

You talked- he listened, and then he told you about where he came from, the food he enjoyed, the things he did.

And you started to understand a little more why Martin was the way he was. He'd grown up full of love- a child with too many passions- and it showed now, in his adult form.

"Songpa-gu is where i grew up," he said. "Seoul. So technically I'm from here- but it didn't feel like this city when I was growing up. It felt like its own thing."

"Your family is here?," you asked.

"My mother is Korean," he said. "My father is Canadian. So- It was always a little bit of both. A little bit of neither, sometimes."

You looked at him. "You grew up between two languages."

"Yeah, we lived in Ottawa for a year and a half when I was a kid. So English came early. And then Korean at home with my mother."

"Did you like it, Ottawa?"

"I liked the snow," he said. "And I liked that nobody knew who anyone was. Like-" He paused. "I was just a kid there. Not a Korean kid or a half-Canadian kid or anything with a label. My sister hated it though. She was thirteen and very unhappy about the whole thing."

"You have a sister," you said.

"Older," he said. "By a few years. She's the reason I'm serious about anything- she was always more disciplined than me. More focused. I had way too many interests."

"Like what?” you asked- finding him more and more relatable.

So he told you about the passions, plural and overlapping. Music first and always, but also: drawing, which he'd done seriously until he was a teenager and then stopped without knowing why— photography, briefly, one summer. Cooking- specifically one dish he'd learned from a YouTube video at seventeen and had since made approximately two hundred times.

"And then there was the fish," he announced with a smile.

You looked at him, deadpanning. "The fish."

"I went through a phase of wanting to learn everything about deep sea fish. Specifically. For about eight months when I was sixteen."

"Why," you chuckled.

You thought maybe you'd heard it wrong- maybe your english was that bad, but turned out Martin was really talking about fish.

"I don't know," he shrugged. "I genuinely don't know. I just became very interested in the fact that there were things living at the bottom of the ocean that had never seen. I thought that was— something."

Martin had grown up full of love- a child with too many passions and a father who cried at Nutshell on the third listen. A mother who fed everyone who came through the door.

It made sense that he'd been moved by Layne Staley's voice at twelve, everything made sense.

He'd grown up being listened to, and it had made him into someone who listened the same way.

LATER THAT DAY. . .

Martin thought about countless ways he could make you smile, for days. You looked like you weren’t necessarily doing good— and in all likelihood he would have to do something about it- that’s just the way he was. He spent the afternoon looking for places that had your specific noodles, one that wouldn’t be too far away but familiar enough.

He thought about getting you something, a gift maybe, then he opted out— that would make him look ridiculous. Come on, he didn’t even know you all that well. But he spent the next few days planning how to ask you regardless— drafted different messages in different tones, compared them withthe help of James, and decided to just send a quick, ‘hey, i wanna take you somewhere to eat, is that okay?’

He stared at the sent message for a solid ten minutes, heart doing that stupid flip thing again. ‘Fuck, what if she thinks I’m a creep? Or worse, what if she says no and I just ruined the whole music thing?’

Your reply came two hours later, which felt like two years.

You: Okay. When?

Martin almost dropped his phone. He typed back way too fast.

Martin: Tomorrow night? 7? There’s this place I found. Chongqing style. No pressure tho

You: Fine. Send location.

That was it. No emojis. No “sounds good.” Just Fine. Martin grinned at his screen like an idiot anyway.

‘She said yes. Holy shit she said yes.’

The restaurant was small, tucked between a closed karaoke bar and a convenience store. Red lanterns hung outside even though it wasn’t a holiday, and the smell of chili oil and garlic hit Martin the second he opened the door for you. You walked in first, mask down now that you were inside, scanning the place with that same careful look you gave everything.

The auntie behind the counter lit up when she saw you, like she could just tell you were a native. She said something fast in Mandarin and you answered back without hesitation, your voice suddenly smoother, faster, like English had been weighing it down the whole time.

Martin stood there awkwardly, smiling like he understood a single word.

You glanced at him. “She says the noodles are fresh today. Sit.”

He followed you to a corner table like a puppy.

The place was half-full, mostly locals, and the auntie brought water and a menu without asking. You ordered for both of you— Chongqing small noodles, mild for him, normal for you—then handed the menu back.

The noodles arrived fast, steaming bowls piled with green onions, peanuts, and that dark red sauce. You picked up your chopsticks and took the first bite. For a second— just a second—your whole face changed, your eyes softened, shoulders dropped, and you made this small satisfied sound in the back of your throat.

“Fuck… good,” you muttered, almost to yourself.

It seemed the curse words just couldn’t stop flowing around him, like you could finally speak your thoughts without being called ‘vulgar.’

Martin laughed, nearly choking on his first bite. “Holy shit this is spicy. My mouth is dying.”

You looked at him, chopsticks paused. “You picked mild. Still too much?”

“Yeah but I’m surviving. I’ll be aight.” He took another bite, eyes watering. “Tell me about the real place. The one near your house.”

You ate slowly, like you were savoring every strand. “重庆小面. The auntie there knew me since I was small. Always extra peanuts for me. She yelled at boys who tried to talk to me after school.” A tiny, rare smile tugged at your lips. “I sat there every day after class. Did homework. Ate. Listened to music on cheap earphones.”

Martin watched you, mesmerized. “Sounds nice. I wish I could’ve had that, I became a trainee when I was like… thirteen? Fourteen? Everything after that was schedules, practice rooms, sleeping in the dorm.”

You tilted your head. “Thirteen? That is very young. No normal childhood?”

“Nah. I mean, it was fun sometimes. But I missed a lot. First dates? Never really had normal ones. Just… sneaking around or group stuff where everyone was watching.” He rubbed the back of his neck, laughing awkwardly. “My last ‘relationship’ was mostly texting between schedules. She got tired of me canceling plans. Can’t blame her.”

You nodded, understanding flickering across your face. “Idol life. I saw some. Very… strict. I stayed underground longer. More freedom. But lonely too.”

“Yeah?” Martin leaned in. “Any crazy ex stories? Or am I being nosy?”

You took another bite, chewing slowly. “One. Trainee too. Thought music was competition. Always compared our streams.” You made a small dismissive sound. “Annoying. I ended it. Better alone than pretending.”

“Damn. Brutal but fair.” Martin grinned. “I had one who said I was too emotional because i cried during sad movies. She called it cute at first, then said it was embarrassing in front of friends.”

You looked at him directly. “Crying is honest. Nothing wrong.”

Martin’s chest did that warm flip again. “You’re the first person who’s ever said that without laughing.”

The auntie came back, refilling waters and chatting with you again in. You spoke more freely this time— laughing quietly at something she said, gesturing with your chopsticks. Martin just watched, smiling softly.

You translated bits for him without him asking.

“She says you look like a good boy. But too skinny. Eat more.”

He laughed. “Tell her I’m trying. These noodles are trying to kill me though.”

You relayed it and the auntie clapped her hands, saying something that made you huff. “She says Korean boys cannot handle real spice. Come back when you are stronger.”

Martin clutched his chest dramatically. “Ouch. Tell her I’ll train every day.”

You did, and for a moment the three of you were laughing— you translating between languages, the auntie patting your shoulder like you were family. Martin caught the way your face lit up when you spoke your own language.

It was so rare. Beautiful. He wanted to see it more.

As the bowls emptied, conversation drifted deeper. You talked about your friends back home, asked him about his music, about Cortis. He told you about sneaking snacks into the dorm, swarmed airports, and how stressful it all was. Then he talked about how lonely it felt not to be able to live teenage life normally, how happy he was back when he could mess around with girls without consequences.

“I had zero game,” he admitted, poking at the last peanuts. “Still don’t, honestly. I get too excited about music and forget how to talk like a normal person.”

You were quiet for a second, pushing a stray hair behind your ear. “You talk fine. When it is about music. Real.”

Martin felt his face heat. “Thanks. Coming from you that means a lot.”

The flutter came back while you were talking— a familiar tightness under your sternum. You pressed two fingers there lightly under the table, breathing slow.

Not now. It must’ve been the spice.

You hid it well, sipping water like nothing happened. Martin didn’t notice. Or if he did, he thought it was the heat from the noodles.

After he paid (he insisted, waving off your protest), you stepped out into the cool evening air. The city was loud around you, neon mixing with the leftover chili warmth on your tongues.

“You liked it?” he asked, walking beside you.

You nodded. “Yes. Tasted like home.” Your voice was quieter now, the exhaustion was creeping in, hollowing out the small joy from the noodles. But you didn’t say it. Couldn’t.

You felt grateful, that he’d taken time out of his day to make you smile like that— it wasn’t his job— but he did it anyway.

Martin walked close but not too close. “I’m glad. I spent way too long googling places. James called me pathetic.”

You huffed, almost a laugh. “Not pathetic. Thoughtful.”

That sentence died the second you started coughing, you folded in half, hand over your mouth. Martin thought it was probably the cold night air— or the spice again.

He stopped under a streetlight, turning to you. “Hey.” His hand lifted slowly, giving you time to pull away.

When you didn’t, he brushed a loose strand of hair from your face, tucking it gently behind your ear, his fingers lingered half a second longer than necessary. “Are you fine? Breathe.”

You straightened up, pressing the back of your hand on your mouth. “I’m okay. Just spice.” you cleared your throat, suddenly very aware of his hand.

Your breath caught. His eyes met yours—searching, soft, like he was trying to read every layer you kept buried. For a moment it felt like he could see straight through the careful english and the guarded expressions, right into the tired, aching parts you hid even from yourself.

“I’m glad you smiled today, looks good on you.” he said quietly. “Are you okay though?”

You looked away first, heart doing something complicated. “I am fine.”

The lie tasted heavier than the noodles. You felt seen— dangerously seen—and it made guilt twist in your chest right next to the flutter.

He is trying so hard. And you are hiding. Always hiding.

Martin pulled out one earbud from his pocket and offered it to you. “Here. Walk back with this, we don’t have to talk.”

You took it, surprised, and he started playing one of his unfinished demos on his phone— The shared sound connected you as you walked, shoulders occasionally brushing.

It felt intimate. Too intimate for two people who barely knew each other. But it also felt terribly right.

At the corner where your car would pick you up, you stopped. “Thank you, for the noodles. For trying.”

“Anytime,” he said, meaning it. “So… more sessions? Real ones this time?”

You hesitated, the guilt and exhaustion heavy, but the music pulled stronger. “Yes. More sessions. One more at least, we will see.”

Martin’s smile was bright enough to cut through the night. “That’s all I’m asking.”

You climbed into the car when it arrived, watching him wave through the window. Alone again, you pressed your palm flat against your chest and closed your eyes— thhe flutter had settled, but the hollowness remained.

Martin made you feel seen in a way no one had in this city. That was terrifying.

Because the more he saw, the harder it became to keep hiding how much everything— the distance, the language, your body— was wearing you down. You leaned your head against the seat, replaying the way his fingers had brushed your hair.

Just music, you told yourself. It has to stay just music.

But you already knew it wasn’t.

Music was deep. Martin was even deeper.

The next time— you arrived first, laptop already open, the rough demo from last time playing low on the monitors and Martin showed up ten minutes late, hair messy like he’d run here, two iced coffees in hand and a stupid grin that made him look twelve instead of his own age.

“Sorry, practice ran long,” he said, sliding into the chair right next to yours. The wheels squeaked as he scooted closer without asking. Your arms were already brushing when he set the coffee down. “One’s for you. No idea if you like it sweet or whatever, so I got it kinda in the middle.”

You took it, fingers grazing his. “Thanks.” You sipped. It was too sweet, but you didn’t say anything. The chair was close enough that your knee kept bumping his when you moved.

Martin leaned in, elbows on the desk, peering at your screen. “Okay so… we’re really doing this? Finishing it today?”

You nodded, mouse already moving. “Yes. Let’s finish.”

He bumped your arm on purpose this time. “Bossy. I like it.”

You gave him a sideways look but didn’t pull away; the work started easy, you tweaked a vocal chop while he messed with the low end— arms brushing every few seconds. Accidental at first, then erm… not so much.

“You’re so focused, stop biting your lip so hard” Martin said, laughing under his breath as he dragged a fader. “I know you were desperate to collab with me but damn…”

You huffed, a small amused sound. “Right. Funny guy.”

“Oh c’mon, we’re past that now.” He nudged your chair with his foot. “We’re practically best friends now.”

“I did not say that,” you said, adjusting a reverb tail. Your elbow brushed his again. “I never said it.”

Martin snorted. “Mmhh… right. Okay. Whatever you say bossy.”

You shook your head, fighting a smile. “You are dramatic. Crying in noraebang. What’s next, crying in this studio because we’re not friends ?”

“Probably,” he admitted cheerfully. “But also if this bridge comes out right I might actually sob. Fair warning.”

You both laughed at that—quiet at first, the chairs so close your shoulders touched when you leaned back. It felt easy. Stupidly easy.

Martin queued up a silly sample he’d added yesterday —a cartoonish boing sound. “What do you think? Genius or garbage?”

You listened, head tilted. “Garbage. Delete.”

“Jeez, tough crowd.” He clutched his chest like you’d stabbed him. “I worked so hard on that boing. Two whole minutes.”

“Two minutes wasted.” You reached over and deleted it yourself, your arm fully pressed against his now. “Better.”

He groaned dramatically but was grinning. “You’re so mean when you’re focused. I respect it though. My members just nod and say everything’s fire even when it’s ass.”

You took another sip of the too-sweet coffee. “They lie to protect your feelings. I don’t lie about music.”

“Brutal honesty. Noted.” He bumped your knee again. “Okay, real talk though— did you actually like the noodles or were you just being nice because I looked desperate?”

You paused the playback. “I liked them. Really. Tasted close enough to home. The auntie was funny too.” Your voice softened just a fraction. “You googled a lot for that, right?”

Martin rubbed the back of his neck, ears going pink. “Yeah… maybe too much. James said I was down bad. I told him to shut up.”

You let out a short laugh. “Down bad. What does that mean exactly?”

“Like… really into someone. Can’t stop thinking about them. Pathetic levels.” He glanced at you, then quickly back at the screen. “Not saying that’s me. Just… the phrase.”

“Uh huh.” You dragged the playhead, arms brushing again for the nth time, “You are a little pathetic. But nice pathetic.”

“Hey” He poked your arm lightly. “Rude. I bought you coffee and everything.”

You poked him back, surprising yourself. “Coffee is bribe. Not enough.”

He laughed, bright and loud, the kind that filled the entire room and made him look like a kid again. “Okay, fair. Next time I’ll bring a whole offering or something, deal?”

“Deal.” You restarted the section.

Martin started humming along off-key on purpose. “This part needs more… soul. Like this—” He did a ridiculous vibrato that cracked halfway.

“Shutup.” You couldn’t help laughing. “Or what do they say again? Shut you ass up??”

“Yeah don’t say that” But he was laughing too, leaning into you so your arms pressed fully together. “Dont say this okay? Thats not something you tell random people, you can say it to me but don’t go saying it to other people or you’ll get into trouble.”

“Okay, shut your ass up then.”

“Yes maa’m.”

The work continued like that— talking over the music, fixing tiny things while trading stories. Martin told you about the time he accidentally walked into the wrong practice room and danced to girl group choreography for ten minutes before realizing. You told him about sneaking into underground shows back home when you were sixteen, pretending you were older.

“Trainee life sounds exhausting,” you said, mouse clicking steadily.

Your pinky brushed his on the desk— mind you the room was big enough to avoid that— but your bodies kept finding each other’s.

“It was. Still is. But worth it most days.” He turned his hand slightly so your fingers touched more. “What about you? Ever get homesick so bad you wanted to quit everything?”

“Sometimes,” you admitted. “But then I make something and it feels less heavy.”

Martin nodded, eyes soft. “Yeah. Same.”

The demo was coming together. You added a layer; he adjusted the bass, complementary.

At one point Martin tried to reach for the keyboard and nearly knocked his coffee over. You caught it just in time, both of you freezing with your hands overlapping on the cup.

“Nice reflexes,” he said, voice a little quieter.

“You are clumsy,” you replied, but there was no bite to it.

He didn’t move his hand right away and quite frankly neither did you.

Your manager had texted earlier saying she’d be late picking you up, so time stretched. The song kept playing on loop as you refined it.

The tension was thick, you knew it. Palpable even. Your heart was doing that annoying flutter again, but you ignored it, pressing your free hand lightly under the table against your sternum for a moment.

It was probably the coffee.

Martin noticed the small movement but misread it. “You okay?”

“Fine.” You straightened a little, but your knee stayed locked with his.

The demo was nearly done when Martin played the full thing from the top. You listened with your eyes half-closed, shoulder pressed solidly to his. When it ended, the laughter faded into comfortable quiet as you both focused on the final stretch.

The song was beautiful, it was as if you’d carved out both your souls and put them in a mixer together. A pretty mix of you both.

Neither of you had moved away in the last forty minutes and the forced proximity had become its own kind of conversation— every brush of fabric, every shared inhale, every accidental graze of fingers feeling heavier than the last.

Martin turned his head slowly, his face was only inches from yours now, you could smell everythung from the coffee on his breath to the scent of his hoodie.

His eyes searched yours, except he wasn’t playful anymore. His gaze dropped to your lips for a long second before flicking back up, like he was asking permission without words.

It was the song, you told yourself, the artistic euphoria of making something beautiful and wanting to let those feelings spill out- it was a human reflex.

But the tension had been building for hours—the physical was aligning with the emotional— everything you’d felt for him, everytime your soul had recognised his, it translated into body language now.

Want. Fear. The terrifying knowledge that this was crossing a line you didn’t know how to uncross.

Martin swallowed hard, his voice came out rough, barely above a whisper. “I’ve been thinking about this since… the record shop. Since… fuck, since the first session probably.” His hand lifted slowly, giving you every second to stop him, his fingers brushed your cheek, then tucked a strand of hair behind your ear with aching gentleness. “Tell me if I’m reading this wrong. Tell me to stop and I will, okay?”

You didn’t speak, instead, you leaned in just a fraction— barely anything, but enough. Your nose brushed his. The air between you holding all the things you couldn’t say properly in english or mandarin.

The body did not know language barrier.

Martin’s breath hitched, then he closed the last inch.

The kiss was soft at first— hesitant, almost careful, like both of you were afraid of breaking something fragile. His lips were warm, slightly chapped from biting them nervously during the session. You felt like you were holding something very dear in your hands, never squeezing tight in fears of breaking it.

You tasted the sweetness of coffee and the salt of his skin when your lips parted just enough and his hand slid from your jaw to the back of your neck, fingers threading gently into your hair, holding you there like he still couldn’t believe this was real.

Your own hand came up to grip the front of his hoodie, knuckles brushing the warm skin at the base of his throat where his pulse hammered wildly.

His other arm wrapped around your waist in the cramped space, pulling you closer until there was no space left between your bodies. Your knees pressed hard together, your chest against his. You could feel his heartbeat through the fabric—fast, unsteady, matching the flutter in your own chest.

Could Martin feel yours? Could he feel how wrong it was beating, trying to catch up with his rythm?

The music was still playing softly in the background as he fell in deeper.

It felt like drinking straight out of the bottle when you had spent your whole life using glasses. Risky. Dangerous. Messy and overwhelming and everything in between.

But it was all you had ever wanted. You felt incredibly overwhelmingly seen.

When you finally broke apart, foreheads still pressed together, breaths mingling, neither of you spoke right away. Martin’s eyes stayed closed for a second longer, like he was trying to hold onto the feeling, is thumb brushed your bottom lip gently.

“Fuck,” he whispered, voice wrecked. A small, disbelieving laugh escaped him. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long, is it… is that bad? Was that okay?”

But before you could say anything, his phone exploded with ringing on the desk.

He jumped, fumbling for it without thinking.

Juhoon’s name flashed and Martin answered fast. “Hey man, I’m kinda in the—”

Juhoon’s voice blasted on speaker because Martin had hit it accidentally. “Yo. So how’s it going with fine shit? You finally kiss her or what?”

Martin froze, face instantly tomato red. “Juhoon—what the fuck—”

You stared at the phone, then at him, amusement flickering across your face.

Juhoon kept going, oblivious. “Come on, did she friendzone you already? I told you not to be such a simp with the noodles—”

Martin looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him, he kept fumbling with the hang up button. “Dude. She’s right here. Shut the fuck up.”

There was a pause, then Juhoon: “Oh shit. My bad. Uh… hey. I’m gonna—”

Before he could hang up, you leaned in, grabbed Martin by the front of his hoodie, and kissed him again— firmer this time. A clear “not friendzoned” statement. Martin made a surprised sound against your lips but melted into it immediately.

From the speaker came a dramatic fake gag. “Oh god— ewww, I can hear that man. Gross. I’m hanging up now.”

The call ended with a click.

Martin pulled back, face burning, eyes wide. “I’m actually dead. Kill me. Please. He’s never letting me live this down.”

You were smirking, still holding his hoodie. “Fine shit? Friendzone?”

He groaned, burying his face in your shoulder, arms wrapping loosely around you “I’m so sorry. He’s an idiot. I’m an idiot—”

You laughed quietly, the sound vibrating against him. “It is funny. And I am not friendzoning you.”

Debatable considering what you’d said earlier.

Martin lifted his head, still red but smiling now and bumped his forehead gently against yours. “So… more sessions? Or did that just scare you off forever?”

You stayed close, your hand still loosely on his hoodie, the flutter in your chest was back, but the warmth from him made it easier to ignore. “More sessions. We can try.”

His grin came back, silly and bright. “Yeah?”

“Yes. But no more speaker phone. Ever.”

“Deal.” He bumped your knee one last time, reluctant to create any distance. “And maybe more coffee bribes. And no more surprise calls from idiots.”

The next few weeks blurred into something that felt a liiiitle too close to routine. After that night in the studio— things shifted without either of you naming it. You kept telling yourself it was just music, just proximity. (you were that delusional.)

But Martin made it impossible to stay detached.

He started texting more, just stupid shit that made you huff a laugh in your empty apartment, memes he thought you’d like.

Voice notes of him trying (and failing bad) new mandarin phrases he’d learned from Duolingo at 2 am “Nǐ hǎo, wǒ shì Martin. Wǒ xǐhuān nǐ de yīnyuè… and also you. Wait, that last part wasn’t in the app.” His tones were still garbage, but you laughed anyway, the sound surprising you.

One night he picked you up after a long session.

“Late-night walk?” he asked, already knowing you’d say yes. You ended up on some empty road outside the city, Martin’s hand found yours fingers threading together like it was the most natural thing.

“Remember when I sounded like a mess trying to speak mandarin?” he said, grinning. “Well, you’ll be surprised I’ve been practicing. Listen—”

He proceeded to butcher a full sentence about liking spicy food and— tall mountains??

You corrected him between laughs, your head leaning against him. The flutter in your chest came again many times, but you breathed through it, squeezing his hand instead of pressing against your sternum.

Another time you dragged him to a second record shop, smaller and dustier than the first. You pulled out underground Chinese indie—artists he’d never heard— and played snippets on your phone while flipping through sleeves. “This one,” you said, pointing to a track with raw, lo-fi production. “You need to listen, it makes me think of you.”

Martin listened with his whole body, eyes closed, shoulder pressed to yours in the narrow aisle. “Damn, that means i’m kind of sad...” He tried pronouncing the artist’s name and mangled it so badly you actually laughed out loud, covering your mouth.

He looked proud as hell. “Worth it just for that sound.”

You showed him mandarin rap next, late one evening in his dorm when his members were out. Sitting on his bed with laptops open, you translated bits while the aggressive beats filled the small room— Martin attempted to rap along to a line and sounded so ridiculous you had to pause the track, shoulders shaking. “You are terrible,” you told him, but your voice was softer than usual.

“Yeah, but you’re laughing,” he shot back, pulling you closer until your back rested against his chest. “I’ll take the L.”

Those months had pockets of warmth like that. Deep conversations that started light and turned heavy. One night after another record shop visit, you sat in a rental car in the parking lot, engine off, the city humming around you. You tried to explain the growing numbness— the way everything felt further away lately, like you were watching your own life through frosted glass.

“It’s not just missing home,” you said slowly. “My words fail again. Stupid. But i’m happy here with you. I wish I could take you home.”

Martin pulled you into a hug right there in the front seat, arms wrapping tight around you. His chin rested on your head. “Hey. It’s okay. I get it—you miss home. You’ve been here alone for so long.” He kissed your forehead, soft then another on your temple. “I’m here though. For whatever you need.”

You let him hold you, guilt twisting harder because he thought it was simple homesickness.

You didn’t correct him. Couldn’t. The flutter had been worse that week, and you were tired down to your bones. “I am okay,” you murmured against his hoodie. “Just tired.”

He believed you. Of course he did. He terribly wanted to.

You recorded vocals for the song a few days later the studio was dim, just the two of you. Martin hugged you after the take, forehead kiss again, whispering how proud he was. You leaned into him, letting the warmth cover the hollowness for a little while.

The turning point came quietly, the way bad things often do, you started canceling sessions. First one was “manager changed my schedule.” Then another: “tired today, tomorrow?”

Martin noticed— you were quieter in texts, slower to reply—but he chalked it up to your busy schedule. You were an artist after all, underground didn’t mean easy.

In person it was harder to hide— you’d lost a little weight; your hoodie hung looser. You stared into space more at times,eyes distant while he talked about his day.

When he asked, you always said the same thing: “I’m okay. Just tired. Studio work is a lot.”

Martin believed you because he needed to. He’d pull you closer in those moments, arm around your shoulders, playing your shared playlist until you relaxed against him.

Your family started hearing about him around then— your mom called one evening while you were at his place, you answered in mandarin, voice lighter than it had been in weeks. Martin sat quietly on the couch, pretending not to listen but clearly curious and when you hung up, he raised an eyebrow.

“She asked who the boy who keeps stealing my time is,” you said dryly. “I told her ‘he is annoying but makes good music’.”

Martin grinned like an idiot.

Later that month you met his members—casual dinner at the dorm. Juhoon was there, of course, and immediately brought up the speakerphone incident. “So you’re the one who friendzoned him and then didn’t,” he teased.

Martin turned bright red and tried to smother him with a pillow while you watched, amused.

The others were nice—loud but welcoming. They teased Martin for being down bad and you for putting up with him. You didn’t talk much, but you stayed close to Martin’s side, his hand on your knee under the table.

He introduced you as “the genius behind the best song I’ve ever made.” The pride in his voice made your chest ache in many different ways.

It all piled up, messy, beautiful. You’d never felt so safe.

He kissed you often now— soft forehead kisses when you looked distant, longer ones in private when the music hit just right, hesitant and deep like he was still scared you’d disappear or walk away.

One evening after a shortened session you canceled the next day, Martin showed up at your building with flowers.

“Not a big gesture,” he said, sheepish. “Just… missed you. You’ve been quiet lately.”

You let him in, let him hug you for a long time. “I am fine,” you whispered into his shoulder.

The lie tasted worse every time, your body felt heavier,the numbness deeper. But his warmth made you want to believe it too, just for a little longer.

Your mom started asking more questions on calls. “This Martin boy— he treats you well? You sound tired, daughter. Come home soon.” You reassured her, but the guilt sat heavy.

Martin was trying so so hard— learning clumsy phrases, planning small dates, holding you like you were something precious— he met your guarded silences with patience and stupid jokes that made you laugh despite everything.

He thought the distance was just homesickness.

You let him. Because admitting more felt impossible, and the music— the song you’d made together— still felt like the only honest thing between you.

Those months were the brightest.

Martin e looked at you like you hung the stars, but underneath, the cracks were widening. You shortened more sessions, started off more. Lost more weight. Martin noticed the changes but always accepted “just tired” because the alternative scared him too much.

And you? You felt seen in a way that terrified you. Guilty for hiding, hollow in ways the music couldn’t always fix anymore. But you kept saying yes to one more drive, one more kiss, one more late night in his arms.

For now, that was enough.

He wanted to believe you were fine. Fuck, he needed to believe you— so he planned something stupid and big and hopeful.

A surprise trip to Chongqing, just a long weekend.

He’d cleared it with your manager through a million careful texts, booked tickets, found a small airbnb near the river, even researched noodle spots that matched the one you’d described.

He practiced the mandarin for “I want to see your home with you” until his tongue hurt.

This would fix it. Seeing home, even briefly, would bring you back.

Bring you back to him.

The insomnia was worse tonight, you lay in bed staring at the ceiling, chest tight, breaths shallow. Every time you closed your eyes the flutter came — irregular, annoying, like your heart was arguing with itself.

You thought about telling him. Really telling him. But the words wouldn’t line up in english, and the idea of worrying him felt dreadful.

Just a little longer, you thought. One more good day please.

“Martin,” you started. “I need time.”

He froze from his side of the bed, phone in hand, “Time?”

You looked at the ceiling. “Time to go home. Really home. For a while. Things are… not good. I need space.”

The English came out wrong and clipped and distant. You meant ‘I need to return to China for my health, for rest, maybe a month or two’. But it landed like— I need time away from ‘this’. From us.

Martin’s face changed and the hopeful light drained fast. “Oh. Fuck. Okay… You need time from… us.”

You tried to correct it. “Not us. Home. My body—”

But he was already panicking, scooting closer, hands gentle on your arms. “Wait, please. I know I’ve been a lot— I can back off. I can give you space here. Don’t… don’t pull away completely. We can make this work. The song, us, everything. I’ll learn faster. I’ll be better.”

His voice cracked a little as he pulled you into a hug, tight and desperate, forehead pressed to yours. “I’m sorry if I made it worse. Just… don’t say you need time from us. Please.”

You let him hold you, pretending the flutter wasnt back, worse. You wanted to explain — the insomnia, the way food wouldn’t stay down, the way your heart kept skipping like it was tired of carrying everything alone. But the words stuck. “I am tired,” you said instead. “Very tired.”

Martin kissed your forehead, then your temple, then your cheek —small, frantic kisses like he could hold you together through touch alone. “Then rest. Here. With me. I’ll take care of everything baby. We don’t have to go out. We can stay in. Just don’t leave yet.”

You nodded because arguing felt impossible, because part of you wanted the warmth— also because saying the full truth was too heavy in this language.

You were pulling away. He could feel it. The surprise trip was supposed to fix things, but now you were saying you needed time and he was spiraling. He became clingier without meaning to, texting more when you were apart. Showing up with food after shortened sessions. Planning more small dates. Anything to distract from the huge gap in between you.

Every time you said “I’m okay, just tired,” he hugged you tighter. Forehead kisses turned into long embraces where he rocked you gently.

“I got you,” he’d whisper. “Whatever it is, I got you.”

To Martin it was still homesickness. Stress. He’d fix it by loving harder.

Sessions got even shorter at som. point. You canceled two in a row so Martin showed up at your door with takeout and that worried, hopeful smile.

“I’m giving you space but also… not really,” he admitted, rubbing his neck. “Sorry. I’m bad at this. But I’m here.”

You let him in, let him hold you on the couch while music played, the flutter was constant now. The numbness even deeper. You pressed your face into his shoulder and said nothing.

He thought he was helping, and he was, on some level. You felt so stupid for not being able to tell him, not being able to pick up the damn google translate and say the things that needed to be said. Because it would mean all of this had an expiration date, and you weren’t ready for that.

You felt the walls closing in, one misunderstood sentence at a time. Martin sensed the wrongness but kept reaching holding you closer every time you seemed distant.

You spiraled quieter— you blamed the studio air, the long hours, everything except the truth your body was screaming in a language only you could hear.

And Martin, desperately in love, heard only what he could understand: that you needed time.

He just didn’t realize how little time might be left.

You canceled two sessions in a row but when you finally met, you were quieter, staring at the studio screen without really seeing it. Your hoodie hung looser and your breaths came shallower.

“I’m okay,” you kept saying. “Just tired.”

He didn’t believe it anymore, but he pretended he did.

Martin stayed by the desk, fists clenched at his sides. His voice was barely a whisper as you reached the door a couple hours later.

“When you feel like leaving… just come to me. I’ll always be there. Even if it’s only half.” he said.

That night you fought. You fought because of a lot of things that don’t need explaining. People fight, people in love fight.

You fought because admitting the truth felt like handing him the knife— better to push him away with half-truths than watch him break trying to carry something he couldn’t fix.

He fought because love had made him porous. Every time you pulled back, he felt it in his bones, a fear so deep it tasted like childhood abandonment dressed up as adult terror.

“I’m right here,” he kept saying, the sentence looping “Why does it feel like you’re already gone?”

Two days after the fight, Martin showed up at your apartment door with a bag full of snacks, a new hoodie that looked exactly like your favorite oversized one, and red eyes like he hadn’t slept.

You opened the door in silence— he looked at you for a long second, then stepped inside without waiting for an invitation.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, voice rough. “I was an asshole. I heard what I wanted to hear instead of what you were actually saying. I’m really fucking sorry.”

You stood there in the hallway, arms wrapped around yourself. “You were scared,” you said finally. “I was tired. We both said things.”

Martin set the bag down and crossed the distance slowly, like you might bolt. When you didn’t, he pulled you into his chest, arms wrapping around you so tightly it felt like he was trying to hold all your broken pieces together. “I don’t want half,” he whispered into your hair. “I want all of you. Even the parts I don’t understand yet. Even when you need space. I’ll wait. I’ll learn. Just… don’t disappear on me.”

You let yourself lean into him- for once, you didn’t pull away. “Okay,” you murmured against his hoodie. “Not disappear. But I still need… slower.”

He nodded fast, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “Slower. Got it. I’ll be whatever you need. Just let me take care of you a little. Please.”

That night he stayed over. He ran you a shower without asking twice and when you came out in his oversized hoodie (the new one he’d bought), hair damp, he was waiting with warm tea and your favorite peanuts arranged in a silly heart shape on a plate.

“You’re ridiculous,” you said, but the corner of your mouth twitched.

“Ridiculously in love with you, yeah.” He pulled you onto the couch, settling you between his legs so your back rested against his chest. His arms wrapped around your middle, holding you tight. “Is this okay?”

You nodded. For the first time in weeks, the hollowness felt a little smaller.

He kissed the side of your neck, soft and slow. “I brought stuff from that auntie’s stall near your old house. The one you told me about.”

And God, he wanted to tell you about the trip— felt like his heart was leaping out of his body at how excited he was to surprise you.

You turned your head to look at him, his eyes were so earnest it hurt. “You did all that?”

“Obviously.” Martin kissed your forehead, then your temple, then the corner of your eye like he could kiss away the tiredness. “I’m going to make you feel better. Even if it’s just a little bit every day. You don’t have to be strong all the time with me.”

That night he held you in bed like you were something precious, one arm under your head, the other wrapped around your waist, legs tangled. Every time you shifted, he pulled you closer, pressing lazy kisses to your shoulder. “I’ve got you,” he whispered when your breathing hitched. “Sleep. I’m right here.”

The next few days were devastatingly sweet.

Martin basically moved in, he canceled practices when he could, brought over his laptop so you could work from bed. When you were too tired to shower, he helped —gentle, careful, no pressure. He washed your hair with slow fingers, massaging your scalp until you almost fell asleep standing up, he wrapped you in warm towels after, carried you back to bed like you weighed nothing, then held you while your hair dried.

“You don’t have to do this,” you mumbled one evening, face buried in his neck.

“I want to,” he said simply. “Let me. Please. It makes me feel useful when I can’t fix the big stuff yet.”

He gave you pieces of himself in return.

One night he played you old voice memos from when he was a trainee —awkward, cracking voice singing covers, crying after a bad evaluation. “This is the me before I learned how to hide it,” he said, cheeks pink. “The overly emotional mess. I figured if you’re giving me the hard parts of you, I should give you mine too.”

You listened with your head on his chest, his heartbeat steady under your ear. “I like this version,” you told him quietly. “The real one.”

He kissed you then —slow, deep, full of all the things he couldn’t say right. When he pulled back, forehead against yours, he smiled that silly, devoted smile. “Good. Because he’s all yours.”

Another night he cooked terrible Korean-Chinese fusion food and fed you bites when you had no appetite. He made you laugh with awful mandarin impressions, then held you tight when the laughter turned into quiet tears you couldn’t explain.

“I’ve got you,” Martin repeated like a promise, rocking you gently. “I’ve got you okay?”

He kissed every part of you only he could reach— your knuckles when your hands trembled, your closed eyelids when you were fighting sleep, the spot right over your sternum when you pressed your fingers there without thinking. “Whatever this is,” he whispered against your skin, “we’ll figure it out together. No more half. Okay?”

For those few days, it felt like enough. He was devoted in the most heartbreakingly pure way — cooking, carrying, kissing, listening even when you couldn’t explain. He thought it was homesickness and stress. He thought his love could carry the weight.

You let him believe it, like a stupid stupid mean mad-woman.

Martin woke up tangled in his sheets, smiling like an idiot before he even opened his eyes. The past week had been pure warmth. He’d held you every night, arms locked around your smaller frame like he could shield you from the world. He’d washed your hair in the shower, fingers gentle on your scalp while you leaned into him with a tired little sigh that made his chest ache in the best way.

He made breakfast that morning —terrible scrambled eggs and toast cut into hearts because he was a sap and proud of it.

He sent you a voice note in broken mandarin: “Good morning, sexy beautiful wonderful woman. Eat something today, okay? I’m coming over later with real food. Miss you.” His tones were still awful, but he knew it would make you huff that tiny laugh he was addicted to.

Martin felt hopeful. The fight was behind you, you were letting him in more, the trip to Chongqing was coming closer and closer.

But something felt off.

A low stomach ache had settled in his gut since he woke up, not bad enough to ruin the day, but persistent. Like his body knew something his brain didn’t.

He rubbed his abdomen absently while scrolling through social media— reading fan comments from cortis’ latest comeback.

It was probably just nerves, he thought despite the unease, or maybe he’d ate too much again.

The morning unfolded gently, the way good days were supposed to. He deep cleaned his laptop with music playing low —one of your unfinished demos.

Martin spent twenty minutes picking flowers from the small patch near his dorm building — pink and white ones, the kind you once said reminded you of spring in Chongqing even if they weren’t the same. He arranged them clumsily in a glass jar, feeling like the biggest sappiest idiot on earth. No reply yet, but that was okay. You were probably still sleeping. You’d been so tired lately.

By midday the stomach ache had sharpened, a dull twist that made him wince when he bent down to tie his shoes. He ignored it. Popped some medicine. Told himself it was anxiety about making the trip perfect. He wanted everything right for you. He practiced more mandarin on the way to your place, murmuring full sentences under his breath in the taxi. “Wǒ ài nǐ. Nǐ shì wǒ de yīqiè.” Martin’s accent was still terrible, but the intention felt real.

The driver asked if he was okay. Martin laughed it off. “Yeah, just excited. Taking my girl somewhere special.” The words felt good in his mouth. My girl. After all the half-steps and half-understandings, it finally felt like you two were moving forward.

His phone buzzed on his thigh and the screen lit up with your name. His heart did a full flip —that stupid, lovesick jump he never got tired of and he answered immediately, grin wide.

“Hey precious—”

“Martin?”

It wasn’t your voice.

The woman on the line sounded shaky, speaking careful english with a heavy accent. One of your friends —the one you’d mentioned a few times, that one producer you trusted. “This is Lin. I’m… I’m calling from the hospital. Y/n collapsed last night. They brought her in this morning.”

The world tilted on its axis.

Martin’s stomach dropped like a stone, the ache flared sharp and vicious. “What?— I’m coming… i’m coming right now—. where?”

“She’s stable for now,” Lin said, but her voice cracked. “Just… get here. She was asking for you before she lost consciousness again.”

He was already signaling to the driver, heart hammering so hard he felt dizzy. “Tell her I’m coming. Tell her I love her. Fuck— tell her I’m sorry I didn’t come over last night.“

“Martin. Just get here.”

He hung up and told the taxi driver the adress.

It was hell. Martin sat in the back, leg bouncing, stomach twisting into knots. Guilt ate him alive. Why didn’t he go over last night? you said you were tired, but he should’ve known.He should’ve pushed. He should’ve been there to hold you.

He thought it was just homesickness. Stress. He thought this love was enough.

The driver weaved through traffic while Martin stared out the window, phone clutched so tight his knuckles were white. “Faster, please,” he begged. Tears pricked his eyes.

He arrived at the hospital in record time, throwing cash at the driver and bolting toward the entrance. The parking lot was chaotic —cars honking, people rushing, ambulances pulling in. His stomach ached worse now, sharp and nauseating, he felt like throwing up, like the world was ending and he was the only one who hadn’t seen it coming.

His phone rang again. Same number. Lin.

Martin answered instantly, voice cracking. “I’m here! I’m in the parking lot, almost inside. How is she? Can I see her? Tell her I’m coming—”

“Martin.” Lin’s voice was different this time. And it made him sick to his stomach. “Are you somewhere safe? Where are you right now?”

“I’m in the fucking parking lot!” he snapped, panic rising. “Why? What’s going on? Is she awake? Can I talk to her?”

There was a long, horrible pause. Time was a fucking traitor.

“Martin… you need to come inside. But I need you to breathe, okay?”

His legs felt weak. “Why are you saying that? Why? What the fuck is going on???”

Lin’s voice broke completely. “She… she passed away while you were on the way. The doctors tried everything. Her heart… it just gave out. I’m so sorry.”

The words hit like a truck.

Martin stopped dead in the middle of the parking lot. Cars honked around him. Someone shouted. He didn’t hear any of it.

“What?” His voice was small. Childlike. “What did you say?”

“She’s gone, Martin. I’m so sorry.”

The phone slipped in his grip but he caught it, squeezing it like a lifeline, the world spun. His stomach ache exploded into pure agony, his body dizzy, vision blurring.

“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no— that’s not— Stop.”

His knees buckled.

And oh, Martin felt like a kid again.

He dropped to his knees, the hard concrete scraping the caps, bits of dirt engraving into his skin until it felt raw. He dropped to his knees except this time it wasn’t to love you.

The phone still squeezed in his grip, his other hand clasped over his mouth- fingers molding itself to the shape of his lips. Lips that once caressed yours with such duplicity, eating at you until you were nothing but scraps of flesh.

Martin wanted— in that moment— to call his mom. He wanted to crawl back in her womb, forget all that had your name, forget he even had existed for the tiniest moment.

Maybe he would finally, finally, learn. Learn how not to feel so deeply- so painfully- maybe he’d finally be less of a man.

But the only thing he could do in that moment, was sit there until his knees bled into the ground, until maybe the wind erased the smell of you from his clothes.

Cars kept honking, someone asked if he was okay. He couldn’t answer. The phone had gone silent in his hand. The world kept moving around him —people rushing to appointments, families laughing, life continuing like his hadn’t just ended in a hospital parking lot.

Martin wanted to bargain. That was until his stomach pushed out everything he’d eaten that day, and he heaved on the ground like a wounded animal. You’d never know he was on his way to see you. He threw up again, food and a bit of his heart.

Martin remembered the way you used to steal the last bite of everything. Not in a greedy way. Never that. You’d push your plate toward him at the end of every meal, fork hovering with that one perfect remaining piece —whether it was the crispy edge of a dumpling, the last strawberry in a bowl of fruit, or the final spoonful of rice. “You have it,” you’d say, voice quiet but certain, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I saved it for you.”

Martin had teased you about it once, early on. “You always do that. Why?”

You had shrugged, looking almost embarrassed. “Because you eat like the food might disappear if you don’t enjoy it. I like watching you enjoy things.”

It was such a small thing. Stupidly human. Just you — thoughtful in the quietest ways, saving the best for someone else even when you were the one who needed it more. He had fallen a little harder every single time you did it. You were his silly silly girl, his beautiful precious girl.

But now that small habit haunted every meal he tried to eat.

You left fingerprints on every version of his future.

They were everywhere, in the way he reached for two mugs out of habit and had to set one down with shaking hands. In the empty side of the bed that still smelled like your shampoo. In the way he caught himself practicing mandarin phrases out loud, only to realize there was no point cause he’d learned it for you, only you.

Learning you were gone was the closest he’d felt to dying.

And now the apartment still expected you. So did he.

The hoodie you’d worn last time hung on the back of the chair, a half-empty bag of peanuts sat on the counter where he’d left it for you. The playlist you’d made together still queued up automatically every time he opened his laptop. He kept thinking he’d hear the door open, that soft sound of your footsteps, your voice saying “Hi, baby— no! ‘Fuck face’, i learned that new word today!”

You were supposed to outlive his bad habits, you were supposed to be the one who stayed when he got too emotional, when he cried at songs, when he overthought everything. Instead he was the one left behind, staring at the ceiling at 4 a.m., stomach aching with guilt and grief so heavy it felt physical.

A few days blurred into nothing.

Martin didn’t cry, not even once. The numbness had settled in deep, like frostbite that reached all the way to his bones, he barely moved from the couch. His company had issued a hiatus notice — “personal reasons” —and the members checked in constantly, but their voices sounded far far away. He answered texts with single words. Ate when someone forced food into his hands. Slept in fits and starts, waking up reaching for you.

He learned afterward that you’d been sick for a long time— longer than anyone had let him believe— longer than he’d been holding your hand without realizing how carefully you had been rationing your strength, how many smiles had cost you something, how many times you’d said you were just tired when your body had already been quietly losing a war.

Everyone seemed to brace themselves for his anger when they told him, as though betrayal was the only thing love could become after death. But he never felt betrayed, not even for a second.

What would have been the point? Whatever reasons had made you carry that weight alone had died with you, and he refused to drag them back into the light just so he could resent someone who wasn’t there to defend herself.

He never wanted to ask why you hadn’t told him, the question had nowhere to go. There would never be an answer that could change anything, never be a version of the truth that ended with you alive again.

Maybe you had been scared.

Maybe you had wanted one part of your life to remain untouched by hospitals and pity, maybe you had convinced yourself you were protecting him, maybe you hadn’t known how to say the words out loud without making them real. None of it mattered anymore.

Martin loved you before he knew, and he loved you after he knew.

He didn’t need an explanation. He didn’t need someone to blame. He only wished, with a grief so quiet it never stopped hurting, that for just one evening, just one impossible hour, you had let him be afraid with you instead of letting you be brave all by yourself.

Your friends had texted him about the funeral, he read the message three times before it sank in. Closed casket. Private ceremony. They thought it would be easier that way.

He got ready on autopilot. Black shirt, black pants. He stared at himself in the mirror for a long time, wondering if the person looking back was still the one you had kissed so gently in the studio.

The funeral was small.

He sat in the back, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles were white. Thank god the casket was closed. The thought made him feel like shit immediately — how could he be relieved not to see you? — but the other part of him ached with it.

He wanted to see his sweet girl one last time, the one who scrunched her nose when she was thinking hard— not the one who was gone.

Your friends and family spoke. Beautiful, painful words in mandarin and english. Stories about your laugh, your stubbornness, the way you poured everything into your work. He listened like a ghost haunting the edges of someone else’s life.

Then your aunt turned to him, eyes red but kind. “Martin? Would you like to say a few words?”

The room went quiet.

The boy stood up without thinking, legs carrying him to the front like they belonged to someone else. The paper in his pocket —the speech he hadn’t written —stayed blank. He gripped the edge of the podium, staring at the closed casket draped in white flowers.

For a long moment, he didn’t speak. He stood at the podium, hands gripping the edges like it was the only thing keeping him upright, no notes, no plan, just his heart cracking open in front of everyone.

"My sweet girl." His voice almost disappeared "You hated when I looked sad. So... this is awkward. But I just need to talk to you. Even if you can’t hear me anymore.”

Martin didn’t dare look at your casket— in hopes he’d find you to be anywhere but there.

“You… you remember the first time we met? I stood outside in that studio like a complete idiot and told you I’d learn mandarin so we could work together properly. You looked at me with that one eyebrow raised and said I couldn’t learn it in a short period of time. You were right.”

His voice shook, and broke.

“But I did, baby. I learned it. And now we finally speak the same language.”

His voice broke hard, a sob catching in his throat as fresh tears fell. He didn’t wipe them. “I’m so sorry, baby. I've been trying to remember our last conversation but I can’t. I remember your laugh, and… I remember what you were wearing, but I don’t— sorry. I don’t remember what i told you. I hope it was ‘I loved you’. I wish I could’ve learned your language earlier— cause maybe if I spoke it… then maybe I could’ve understood you better, maybe i could’ve loved you better.”

Martin’s voice shattered completely on the last words, shoulders shaking with deep, broken sobs he couldn’t hold back anymore.

“I found out afterward. I found out you’d been sick for so long, and… I didn’t even feel betrayed. Everyone keeps asking me if I’m angry that you never told me, and I’m not. I swear to God, I’m not”

“I just keep thinking about what it must’ve been like for you to wake up every morning already knowing something I didn’t. I’m wondering how many times you looked at me and decided, ‘Not today. I’ll let him be happy one more day.’”

His voice cracked again.

“You were protecting me.”

A tear slipped from his jaw.

“And that’s so unfair.”

Martin’s lips quivered. “Not because you lied to me. Because even while you were dying… you were still taking care of me.”

“You barely spoke my language when we met. Half our conversations were messy.” He gave a watery smile, “But somehow… you understood me better than people who’d known me for years.”

He looked down at his shaking hands.

“I used to think being understood was this like… huge miracle. Then I met you. And suddenly I wasn’t explaining myself anymore— I was just… existing. And you loved me there.”

His breathing faltered.

“I don’t know if you ever understood what that did to a person like me. To be loved by someone so precious— i’m sorry,” he choked on a sob, “By someone so smart and so creative. And I keep thinking about how you didn’t even realize it, like you thought you were just… existing, but you were doing so much more than that for everyone around you. Especially for me. And now I just don’t know how I’m supposed to unlearn what it felt like to be seen by you.”

His voice dissolved into tears. “So if theres a language that’s more appropriate for this… if you can hear me somewhere,”

He spoke the next words in Mandarin, slow, careful, with the same determination he’d had the first day he’d promised he’d learn.

“I love you. I loved you. I will keep loving you. Okay? You’re my girl.”

The room was silent, nobody spoke. He didn’t want to monopolise the funeral, so he retreated a bit.

"My sweet girl. I’m gonna leave now,” his voice shook, "I've never gone anywhere without making sure you were coming too. I don't really… know how to do this. So if you can...”

Martin closed his eyes, tears spilling out.

"wait for me a little, yeah?”

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

Back in late 1999, everyone in Seoul had been terrified of the Y2K bug, fearing planes falling from the sky, power grids collapsing, and digital history erasing itself at the stroke of midnight. People had hoarded canned goods and bottled water. But midnight had come and gone, the digital clocks had rolled over smoothly into the new millennium, and life had simply moved on.

To anyone else, Jeju was a paradise of recovery. To Choi Soobin, it was just a beautiful, inescapable cage.

He had been making this exact trip every single summer for as long as he could remember. When he was five, it meant scraping his knees on rocks and catching tiny crabs in tidal pools. When he was fourteen, it meant suffering through long, damp afternoons with zero reception on his digital pager, reading old comic books until his eyes blurred. Now, at twenty-two, it felt like an annual exile.

"Make sure you grab the heavy suitcase from the carousel, Soobin-ah," his mother’s voice broke through his thoughts as the plane taxied down the runway. She was already unbuckling her seatbelt the second the chime sounded, fixing her hair in a small compact mirror. "Your father packed those heavy ginseng sets for your grandparents. Don't let them drag on the floor."

"I know, Mom," Soobin muttered, stretching his legs as much as the cramped economy seating allowed.

He pulled his embroidered baseball cap lower over his eyes, following his parents through the bustling terminal. The airport was suffocatingly alive, packed with domestic tourists in bright linen shirts, families holding hands, and couples carrying matching straw hats. Everyone was vibrating with the frantic energy of a vacation, celebrating a new century that felt safe after all.

But Soobin wasn't on vacation. He was just relocating his stress.

As they walked through the automatic sliding doors of the arrivals terminal, the Jeju summer hit him like a physical wall. It wasn't the dry, baking heat of Seoul's asphalt jungles; it was a heavy, suffocating moisture that instantly glued his oversized grey t-shirt to his back. The air smelled thick—thick with salt, rotting seaweed, and the sweet, heavy scent of overripe tangerines from the gift shops lining the exit.

His father flagged down a white Hyundai Sonata taxi, speaking to the driver in a familiar, comfortable cadence. Soobin slid into the back seat, pressing his shoulder against the door as his parents filled the rest of the space. The air conditioning in the older car hummed loudly, blowing a weak, lukewarm breeze that smelled faintly of cheap hazelnut air freshener and old cigarette smoke.

As the taxi rattled away from the neon signs of Jeju City, heading toward the quiet eastern side of the island, the landscape began to shift dramatically. The small island was a place untouched by the heavy commercial tourism that would define its future. It felt raw, ancient, and deeply quiet—an island shaped entirely by wind, water, and volcanic rock.

Soobin rested his chin in his hand, staring out the window as the modern buildings faded into the background. In their place rose the island’s signature feature: the stone. Low, meandering walls called batdam—made from porous, pitch-black basalt rocks piled loosely on top of one another without a shred of mortar—weaved through the landscape like dark ribbons. They separated the narrow dirt paths from small patches of vibrant green garlic and sweet potato fields, a striking contrast of midnight-black stone against the emerald earth.

The taxi sped past rolling, undulating slopes that bled toward the sea. The iconic oreums—the small, extinct volcanic cones that dotted the countryside—rose like soft, grassy shoulders against a sky so blue it looked painted.

Because it was June, the fierce, biting winter winds had softened into a thick, salt-heavy breeze that slammed into the side of the car. Everywhere Soobin looked, the island was blooming. Patches of wild, bright yellow canola flowers still lingered in the ditches, and the deep green leaves of the tangerine orchards hung heavy over the stone walls, the tiny, unripe green fruits hiding like marbles among the foliage.

For his parents, this road was a return to roots, a nostalgic escape from their busy lives in the capital. For Soobin's older siblings, it was an obligation they had successfully dodged this year, both of them flying off to Europe and Japan with their respective partners. Soobin, being the youngest and still stuck under the thumb of a brutal engineering curriculum at Korea University and his parents, hadn't been given a choice.

“You look like a ghost, Soobin,” his mother had told him over fried chicken in their Seoul apartment just two days ago, her voice echoing in his memory as she chatted amiably with the taxi driver. “You’ve done nothing but stare at those thick problem sets and computer text for six months.”

As the car rounded a long bend, the coastline suddenly came into view. The black volcanic cliffs met the sea with a restless, rhythmic violence. The water wasn't the murky grey of the capital’s Han River; it was a brilliant, translucent turquoise near the shore that deepened into a moody, bottomless indigo further out. There were no massive luxury resorts or crowded high-rises here yet. Instead, the coastline was dotted only with the small, brightly colored buoys of the haenyeo and the occasional weathered wooden fishing boat tied to a concrete pier.

Soobin pulled his bulky, silver Samsung folder phone from his pocket. He flipped it open with a satisfying clack, checking the tiny screen.

No signal.

He couldn't even send a text message to his classmates back at Korea University, who were likely drinking beer in Anam-dong or listening to the latest g.o.d or Yoon Mi-rae tracks on their MP3 players. He held the phone up toward the window, twisting his wrist to the left, hoping to catch a single bar of reception from a distant tower. Nothing.

He let out a soft, defeated sigh, letting his head drop back against the vinyl headrest. The sun was high, baking the road until the heat shimmered over the asphalt. The island seemed to vibrate with a quiet, overwhelming presence that reminded him, with absolute certainty, that he was trapped. Two months of this. Two months of sun, silence, and absolutely nothing to do.

When the taxi finally pulled up to his grandparents’ home, the silence of the village was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic, distant roar of the ocean and the shrill, metallic buzz of cicadas hidden in the hackberry trees.

"Our student has arrived!"

His grandfather stood by the wooden gate, his face weathered and dark from a lifetime under the island sun, but his smile was wide and genuine. Before Soobin could even set the luggage down, his grandmother emerged from the kitchen, her hands dusted with flour. She immediately reached up, her small, wrinkled hands patting Soobin’s cheeks with enough force to make his teeth click.

"Look at you," she lamented, shaking her head. "So tall, but so thin. Do they not feed you at that fancy university? You look like a beanpole."

"I eat well, Halmeoni," Soobin smiled faintly, dimples showing as he leaned down so she didn't have to strain her arms.

"He does nothing but study," his mother chimed in, dragging her own bags into the courtyard. "He needs to clear his head. He's going to turn into a calculator if he stays in Seoul any longer."

Within an hour, his parents and grandparents were settled into the main room, the sliding doors thrown open to catch the faint sea breeze. A large watermelon had been cracked open, its red flesh sweating on a glass platter. The conversation flowed easily between the adults—gossip about distant relatives, the price of garlic, the upcoming typhoon season.

Soobin sat on the edge of the wooden veranda, his long legs dangling off the side. He held a slice of watermelon, staring blankly out at the courtyard.

"Don't waste your youth staring at nothing," his grandfather called out from inside, raising his glass of barley tea. "Go wash your face. If you're bored, take a walk down to the main road. The village hasn't moved an inch since last year."

Soobin closed his eyes, the heavy scent of his grandmother’s drying radishes filling his nose, wondering how on earth he was going to survive until August.

The heavy scent of scorched rice and boiling fish stew began to drift from the kitchen, mingling with the salt-sticky air of the courtyard.

"Come inside and eat before the food gets cold," his grandmother called out, slide-shuffling across the polished wooden floor of the main room.

Soobin pulled his long legs up onto the veranda, carefully ducking beneath the low wooden doorframe to slip inside. The center of the room was dominated by a heavy, low-lying wooden table that was practically groaning under the weight of the spread. There was a steaming pot of braised hairtail fish bubbling away, surrounded by an army of small side dishes: kimchi, japchae, salted squid, and a massive bowl of cold cucumber soup with ice cubes bobbing on top.

"Sit, sit," his grandfather instructed, gesturing to a floor cushion.

Soobin managed to fold his 185-centimeter frame into a cross-legged position, his knees awkwardly high. No sooner had his butt hit the cushion than the questioning began.

"Your mother says you’re studying how to build bridges and dams," his grandfather started, scooping a generous portion of the fiery red fish onto Soobin’s stainless-steel rice bowl. "Is that true? At that big school in Seoul?"

"Civil engineering, Hal-abeoji," Soobin corrected gently, lifting his chopsticks. "We're mostly focusing on fluid mechanics and material sciences right now."

"A calculator," his grandmother summarized with a firm nod, pouring him a glass of icy barley tea. "That's what I said. But tell me, Soobin-ah, do they even let you sleep up there? Last summer you had cheeks. Look at you now, your jaw is sharp enough to slice a radish. Are you skipping meals to buy those fancy computer books?"

"No, Halmeoni, I eat three times a day, I promise," Soobin said, his dimples peeking out as he took a big bite of the savory fish. The taste was instantly nostalgic—rich, spicy, and distinctly of the sea. "The coursework is just a bit heavy this semester. I had to stay up late for the design finals."

"And what about a girl?"

Soobin nearly choked on his radish. He coughed into his fist, his face instantly flushing a light pink that matched the watermelon rind.

His mother let out a loud laugh from across the table. "Oh, Mother, don't even ask. He spends all his weekends in the library or at the internet cafe looking at blueprints. I don't think he even knows what a girl looks like anymore."

"A young man at Korea University with no girlfriend? Absurd," his grandmother clucked her tongue, leaning forward and squinting at his face as if inspecting a piece of produce. "He has a good face. Clear skin. Tall like his uncle. You should be holding hands and walking under the cherry blossoms, not staring at computer screens. What about that girl from next door? The one who used to live next door with you?"

"Halmeoni, she’s married and has a kid," Soobin said, desperately trying to steer the conversation away from his nonexistent love life.

"See? Everyone is moving fast in the new century," his grandfather chuckled, pouring a small shot of local green-bottle soju for Soobin's father. "You city boys think too much. You analyze the wind instead of just feeling it. That’s your problem. You come down here, you need to empty your head. Stop calculating."

"He can't help it, Father," his mother sighed, though her eyes were warm. "He got his stubbornness from you."

For the next hour, the small room was a cacophony of clinking metal chopsticks, loud laughter, and the relentless barrage of grandparent trivia. They wanted to know if he was able to finish his internship, if he still listened to that "noisy music," and what his plan was after graduation.

Soobin mostly kept his head down, smiling and nodding, stuffing his mouth with food whenever a particularly difficult question about his future career path arose. It was overwhelming, suffocating in that uniquely loving way that only family could manage.

By the time the table was cleared, the afternoon heat had reached its peak. The adults, heavy with food and the humid air, began to doze off. His father was already snoring softly against a wooden armrest, and his mother was flipping through a local supermarket flyer.

Soobin slid back out onto the veranda, his stomach completely full but his mind feeling more restless than ever. He pulled out his silver folder phone again. He flipped it open. Still no service. Just the digital clock staring back at him: 02:14 PM.

The whole summer stretched out before him, vast, empty, and entirely unscripted.

The mid-day heat of early June didn't just rise; it stagnated, pooling into the low valleys and stone-walled courtyards of the eastern village until breathing felt like inhaling hot steam.

Inside the house, the atmosphere wasn't much better. Five days of rural confinement had officially broken Soobin's spirit. The initial novelty of his grandmother’s cooking had long since worn off into a numbing, humid routine, and the summer heat had only intensified, settling over the coastal town like a damp, heavy wool blanket. The menu today was cold kongguksu—a thick, creamy soy milk broth that tasted heavily of toasted sesame seeds, with ice cubes loudly clinking against the stainless-steel bowls, topped with a sparse, colorful heap of thin julienned cucumbers.

Soobin sat in his usual spot near the open sliding doors, slumped over so low his chest nearly touched his knees. He dragged his chopsticks through the thick, pale white broth, swirling a single ice cube around and around with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner marking days on a dark cell wall.

"Look at him," his grandmother said, pausing with her spoon halfway to her mouth. She didn't look at Soobin; she looked directly at his mother, pointing a sharp, silver-ringed finger at his miserably slumped shoulders. "Five days he’s been here, Seon-young. Five days of moping around the courtyard like a wet dog. His father asked him to go up the oreum to check the garlic patches—no. His grandfather asked him to go out on the boat to catch some mackerel—no. He just sits on the veranda, flipping that silver plastic toy open and closed. Clack, clack, clack. It’s driving me crazy. I'm going to throw that folder phone into the water if he doesn't stop."

"I have a remote design project due right when the autumn semester starts, Halmeoni," Soobin pleaded softly, his deep voice sounding muffled in the small room. He didn't lift his eyes from the soy milk. "I'm trying to mentally draft the stress analysis for a reinforced concrete retaining wall. If my calculations are off by even a millimeter—"

"Stress? You're twenty-two, what stress do you have?" his grandfather barked from the head of the table, though his heavily wrinkled eyes were twinkling with old-man amusement as he chewed a piece of salted squid. "In my day, stress was when the summer typhoon took the thatch roof right off the kitchen and we had to sleep under a fishing tarp. You sit in an air-conditioned room in Seoul and look at numbers on a glowing screen, and you call it stress?"

They clearly don't understand the engineering jargon, Soobin thought.

"Exactly," his grandmother clucked her tongue, lifting a massive heap of fiery, red radish kimchi from a stoneware dish and dropping it straight into Soobin’s bowl, splashing a tiny drop of white broth onto his grey shirt. "You need to be out doing things. Sweat it out! Look at the Choi family’s boy down the road—Yeonjun! He’s in his second year at Seoul National University now. His mother won't stop bragging about him at the morning fish market. Says he’s studying finance up there. And the Jeon's daughter? She’s up in Seoul too, top of her class. Everyone is doing something out in the world except our KU engineer, who looks like he’s practicing to become a stone statue."

Soobin closed his eyes, taking a long, slow sip of the cold broth to keep from groaning aloud. Yeonjun. He remembered Choi Yeonjun from the summers he has spent in Jeju. Hearing that he was at SNU now just felt like a personal, calculated attack from the universe.

"He's just tired, Mother," his mother defended him weakly, though she kept her focus entirely on her own bowl, picking out a stray sesame seed. "The Seoul air is full of yellow dust this year. He's just detoxing from the city."

"Well, he can detox while being useful to his elders," his grandmother said. She set her stainless-steel spoon down against the table with a definitive, heavy clack that signaled the absolute end of lunch.

She stood up, her small knees popping slightly in the quiet room, and shuffled over to the varnished chest of drawers sitting in the corner of the main room, right beneath a framed calligraphy scroll. When she turned back around, she was cradling a heavy, highly precarious stack of thick paperbacks against her apron. The spines were deeply creased, the edges yellowed from years of salt air and thumbing, and they gave off a strong, unmistakable scent of old ink, cheap glue, and basement dust.

"Since you're determined to do absolutely nothing but catch flies with your mouth open, walk these down to the main road," she instructed, dropping the heavy stack right next to his empty bowl. The wooden table shook, making his spoon rattle. "They’re historical epics about the Joseon dynasty. Five volumes in total. And they are nearly two weeks overdue."

Soobin blinked up at the mountain of paper, his engineering brain momentarily failing to process the sight of physical card-catalog sleeves sticking out of the tops. "A book rental shop? Halmeoni, it's 2001. Who still rents books?"

"The Liu’s rental shop has been sitting on that corner since before your father courted your mother, Choi Soobin," she cut him off cleanly, giving his broad, city-softened shoulder a firm, maternal slap that echoed through the room. "And he will give me a vicious earful at the town meeting this Friday if I keep them any longer. It's just past the intersection on the main street. Dongbaek Book Rental. Go on, get some sun on those pale shoulders before you blend into the wallpaper. And don't you dare lose the index cards inside them!"

Realizing there was absolutely no escape from the matriarch of the Choi family, Soobin let out a long, defeated sigh that puffed his cheeks out. 

The heavy wooden frame of the screen door slid shut behind Soobin with a hollow clack, cutting off the immediate drone of his mother and grandmother arguing over who would handle the leftover soy milk.

He stood alone in the narrow gravel courtyard, and the blinding June sun hit him like a physical blow to the chest. The light was flat and white, bleaching the color out of the old tiled roofs. The concrete under his shoes was baking, radiating waves of dry, shimmering heat that made the horizon look wavy. He shifted the heavy weight of the five volumes, the sharp cardboard corner of Volume Three digging right through his thin grey t-shirt into his ribs. They smelled heavily of his grandparents' house.

"Dongbaek Book Rental," Soobin muttered under his breath, his thumbs catching the bottom edge of the books to keep them from sliding onto the gravel.

He nudged the rusty iron gate open with his hip and stepped out onto the narrow village path. The silence of the early afternoon was absolute, heavy, and dead. In the peak heat of the day, even the village stray dogs had crawled deep beneath the shadows of the low basalt stone walls to sleep. The only movement was the occasional shimmer of a black dragonfly, and the only sound was the crunch of his own sandals on the dirt road, drowned out by the metallic, rhythmic scream of the cicadas hidden high in the hackberry trees overhead.

He walked down the sloping path, his tall frame casting a short, blocky shadow on the dry earth. To his left, past the low-slung batdam stone walls, the vibrant green sweet potato fields rolled out in waves toward the jagged shoreline, where the turquoise edge of the sea met the dark volcanic rocks. On any other day, a tourist might have stopped to take a photo with a disposable camera, but right now, a thick bead of sweat was trickling down the back of Soobin's neck, tracing the line of his spine before soaking into his waistband.

He reached into his pocket, his fingers brushing against his silver Samsung folder phone. He flipped it open out of pure habit.

No Service.

The digital clock on the small outer screen read 01:42 PM. He let out a soft, defeated sigh, letting his head drop forward as he turned the corner onto the village's single, two-lane asphalt strip.

The main street was entirely empty, saving for a rusted blue farm truck parked outside the hardware store. He passed the tiny local pharmacy with its faded green cross sticker peeling off the glass, then the small agricultural market where a few crates of bruised, early-season tangerines sat melting in the sun. Finally, tucked tightly between a silent barber shop and a shuttered rice mill, he found it.

Above the low doorway, a hand-painted wooden sign hung crookedly from two rusted metal chains: Dongbaek Book Rental. The red camellia logo was heavily weathered, the paint flaking away in small spirals from years of salt-heavy winter storms. A small wooden chalkboard stood by the entrance, though the previous week's rain had smeared the old chalk text into ghostly, illegible white streaks across the slate.

Soobin took a deep breath of the hot air, shifted the heavy mountain of novels to his left arm, and pushed the heavy glass door open.

A small brass bell chimes overhead—a crisp, clear ring that seemed to instantly cut through the heavy, vibrating noise of the cicadas outside.

The air inside the shop was a shock to his system. It was instantly cooler, trapped behind thick, vintage concrete walls and shaded by heavy, dark green velvet curtains that blocked out the midday glare. It didn't smell like the sea or the dirt outside; it smelled intensely of ink, cheap binding glue, aged wood pulp, and a faint, lingering hint of dried lavender sachets. Shelves made of dark, mismatched timber lined the narrow walls from the floor all the way to the water-stained ceiling, packed tightly with comic books, old martial arts serials, classic literature, and endless rows of thick, bound Korean manhwa. It was small, chaotic, and completely analog.

Soobin walked carefully down the narrow aisle, his shoulder accidentally brushing against a tall stack of Slam Dunk comic books piled precariously on a plastic stool.

"Hello?" he called out, his deep voice sounding strangely loud in the small, paper-packed room.

He approached the high wooden counter at the very back of the shop. The desk was a graveyard of old-world habits: a vintage blue stamping pad, small wooden boxes filled with alphabetized index cards, a half-empty glass of iced barley tea sweating profusely onto a newspaper crossword puzzle, and a mountain of returns waiting to be sorted.

Behind the counter, half-hidden by an open copy of a thick thriller novel, sat a girl.

When the bell chimed, she didn't rush, but she didn't ignore him either. She cleanly finished the sentence she was reading, slid a pressed green bookmark between the pages to hold her place, and set the novel down with a soft, careful touch.

When she lifted her head, Soobin’s breath caught slightly in his throat.

She was beautiful, but it wasn't the sharp, artificial, heavily styled beauty of the girls he usually saw crowded around the cafes in Sinchon or the Korea University campus. Her beauty was soft, radiant, and entirely unbothered by the heavy summer heat. She had warm, clear skin that held a very faint, healthy glow from the coastal sun, and her dark hair was pushed back in a headband, a few stray, wavy tendrils framing her face and the nape of her neck. Her eyes were large and clear, crinkling at the corners into a small, welcoming expression as she took him in.

She noted his height first, her eyebrows lifting slightly in mild surprise, before her gaze drifted to his clean Seoul clothes and the massive, clumsy stack of historical fiction novels cradled precariously in his arms.

"Hi there," she said, her voice surprisingly bright, carrying the gentle, melodic lilt of a partial Jeju dialect that sounded soft rather than harsh. "Can I help you return those?"

Soobin cleared his throat, suddenly feeling very large and very awkward in his oversized clothes. "Uh. Hello. Yeah. I'm here to return these for my grandmother. Choi Sun-ja?"

"Oh, Halmeoni Choi!" Y/N smiled, and the change in her face was striking. Her whole expression softened, a small, genuine smile showing near the corner of her mouth. She pulled one of the wooden index boxes toward her, her slender fingers flipping through the alphabetized cards with practiced ease. "I was wondering when we'd get these back. She’s the only one around here who can clear through a five-volume royal court epic before the month even ends."

She reached out across the counter. Soobin quickly dropped the heavy stack down, the wood groaning slightly. As she steadied the top book to keep it from tumbling, her fingers lightly brushed against his thumb. Her skin was cool despite the heat, smelling faintly of the lavender sachets tucked into the bookshelves.

She opened the back cover of the top volume, checking the paper sleeve where the little white stamped card lived. Her long eyelashes fluttered as she did the quick math in her head, her lips parting slightly.

"Ah," she said softly, looking up at him with a look of genuine, apologetic sympathy. "They’re about fourteen days overdue. The system automatically fixes it at... seven thousand won in late fees. I'm sorry, our system is kind of strict about the old classics."

"Seven thousand?" Soobin blinked, rubbing the back of his neck, though he couldn't even find it in himself to complain because she looked so genuinely apologetic about it. "Wow. Okay. For books that look like they survived the war."

Y/N let out a small, melodic laugh that sounded like a wind chime, her eyes curving into sweet crescents. "Hey, don't insult our treasures and the late fees are basically what keeps our single lightbulb from flickering out." She gestured up to the humming fluorescent tube overhead, giving him a playful, good-natured look.

Soobin smiled faintly, his own dimples finally making an appearance as he dug into his back pocket. He pulled out his leather wallet and flipped it open, only to feel a sudden jolt of dry panic. He had spent his last ten-thousand-won bill on a pack of gum and a drink at the airport kiosk. His wallet held nothing but his university debit card and a couple of Seoul subway tokens.

"Do you... take card?" he asked, holding the piece of plastic up sheepishly.

Y/N winced slightly, her expression incredibly sweet as she pointed to a little cracked plastic basket on the desk. "Ah, I'm so sorry. We really want to get a card terminal, but my dad says the line rental costs too much. We're cash-only for payments. There's a little dog sign right there."

Soobin looked down at the hand-drawn sign, which was mostly covered by a fading cartoon sticker. He felt a sudden wave of heat rush up his throat. "I don't have a single bill on me. Is there an ATM nearby?"

"The closest one is at the agricultural coop down by the main bus terminal," Y/N said, looking out the window at the blinding, white-hot street before looking back at him with an expression of pure pity. "But it's a twenty-minute walk in this sun. You'll completely melt before you make it halfway there."

Soobin looked down at his useless folder phone, then back at her warm, expectant face. "Can I... bring it by tomorrow? I promise I'm not running away. My grandparents live right up the lane."

Y/N paused, looking at his big, anxious eyes, and then she let out a soft, comforting hum. She reached under the counter and pulled out a large ledger bound in black electrical tape, flipping to a page marked with a neat, handwritten C.

"Tell you what," she said, picking up a blue ballpoint pen. "I’ll just write down that Halmeoni Choi’s very tall grandson promised to pay it tomorrow. That way, my dad won't see a missing balance on the daily sheet, and you don't have to get heatstroke walking to the coop." She looked up, flashing him a reassuring, warm smile. "Sounds fair?"

Soobin felt his heart give a strange, unfamiliar little thud against his ribs. "Yeah. Yes. Thank you. That's... really nice of you."

"Don't worry about it," she said smoothly, writing the note in neat, elegant cursive. As she finished, she leaned her elbows on the counter, resting her chin in her hands as she looked up at him with curious, friendly eyes. "So, you're visiting from Seoul? You definitely look like a city boy."

"Is it that obvious?" Soobin muttered, suddenly self-conscious about his grey shirt and pristine cap.

"In a village where everyone wears orange sun hats and rubber boots? Yes," she teased gently, her eyes sparkling. "Very obvious."

Soobin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his long arms suddenly feeling empty without the heavy stack of books. Through the glass door behind him, the external world looked completely bleached out by the midday sun, the air visibly shimmering over the asphalt. The mere thought of stepping back out into that stifling, salt-heavy heat made a fresh wave of sweat break out along his collarbone.

He looked back at Y/N, then glanced down at the cool, shaded concrete floor of the shop.

"Um," Soobin began, his voice dropping an octave into that soft, hesitant register he used whenever he was stepping outside his comfort zone. "Would it be okay if I... just looked around for a little bit? Your AC is really nice, and honestly, if I go back out there right now, I think I actually might melt."

Y/N’s eyes crinkled into a warm, amused line, her dimple reappearing instantly. She straightened up from her elbows, gesturing generously toward the rows of dark wooden shelves that filled the narrow space.

"Of course," she said, her voice carrying that gentle, rhythmic Jeju lilt. "Stay as long as you need to cool down. My dad spent half of last year's earnings fixing that wall unit up there, so we might as well get our money's worth out of it. Just ignore the rattling noise it makes."

"Thank you," Soobin said, letting out a genuine sigh of relief that made his shoulders drop.

He took off his baseball cap, running a long hand through his dark hair to loosen the flattened strands, and stepped into the first aisle.

The transition from the blinding exterior to the dim, paper-scented labyrinth of the shop felt like diving underwater. The air here was perfectly still, cooled by the ancient, humming machine tucked high in the corner. As he walked deeper into the narrow rows, the walls of text seemed to swallow him up, muffling the distant, metallic scream of the cicadas outside until they were nothing but a faint, rhythmic pulse.

He wandered slowly, his large frame making the tight spaces feel even tighter. He had to tuck his elbows close to his sides to keep from knocking over loose stacks of old literary magazines.

To his left were rows upon rows of serialized martial arts novels, their covers boasting dramatic, ink-brushed illustrations of swordsmen. To his right were the comic books. He ran his index finger lightly along the spines of a complete set of Full House, the glossy covers slightly tacky from years of humid summer air and the fingers of countless local kids. Further down, he found the classic literature section—thick, heavy volumes with faded gold lettering on the spines, sitting quietly in the deepest shadows of the shop.

It was entirely different from the sterile, fluorescent-lit engineering library at Korea University, where every book was bound in uniform plastic and smelled of industrial adhesive. This place felt alive, every single cover bearing the invisible history of the people who had held it before him.

As he reached the end of the third aisle, he paused, looking through a gap between two loosely packed shelves.

From this angle, he could see back to the counter. Y/N had already reopened her thick thriller novel. The soft, golden light from a small desk lamp caught the side of her face, highlighting the delicate slope of her nose and the soft. She looked completely at peace, entirely unbound by the frantic, time-crushing anxiety that seemed to dictate every single life back in Seoul.

She turned a page, the crisp slip of the paper echoing softly in the quiet room.

Soobin pulled his eyes away, a strange, quiet warmth settling into his chest.

The heavy, suffocating humidity of the afternoon finally cracked as the sun began its slow descent behind the jagged purple silhouette of Hallasan Mountain. In its wake, the sky transformed into a breathtaking canvas of deep tangerine, violet, and dusty rose, casting a warm, copper glow across the volcanic stone walls of the courtyard. A cool, salt-laden evening breeze swept in from the coast, rustling the thick leaves of the hackberry trees and bringing the first real relief of the day.

With his father and grandfather still out at the village community center dinner was a much quieter affair.

Soobin’s grandmother had set up a small, portable butane stove on the wooden veranda patio. A thick, seasoned iron grill plate sat over the blue flame, sizzling loudly as strips of thick-cut, local black pork belly rendered down, sending a mouth-watering, smoky aroma into the twilight air.

Soobin sat cross-legged on a woven mat, his long legs tucked out of the way of the hot grease. He picked up a crisp piece of lettuce, spreading a dollop of savory ssamjang onto it before adding a perfectly grilled, sizzling piece of pork and a sliver of roasted garlic. He popped the whole thing into his mouth, his eyes closing in brief bliss.

"See? I told you the island air would bring his appetite back," his mother said, turning over another strip of pork with a pair of metal tongs. Her face looked soft and relaxed in the warm glow of the sunset. "He never eats like this in Seoul. Up there, it's just instant ramyun and cold coffee over his plates."

"It's because he actually did some work today," his grandmother clucked, sitting comfortably with her legs stretched out to the side as she fanned herself with a traditional paper fan. She peered at Soobin over the rim of her reading glasses. "Well? Did you make it down to the main road without fainting, my big-city scholar?"

Soobin swallowed, wiping his mouth with a napkin. "Yeah. I returned them, Halmeoni. All five volumes."

"And? Did you see the owner's daughter behind the counter?" his grandmother asked, her sharp eyes twinkling with a sudden, mischievous curiosity that made Soobin pause mid-reach for his honey iced tea. "Did you talk to Y/N?"

Soobin’s hand hovered over his glass. Y/N.

The name sounded soft, rolling out in his grandmother's thick Jeju cadence, but it instantly brought back the vivid image of the girl from the afternoon—the way the dim golden light of the desk lamp had caught the soft curve of her nose, the scent of dried lavender clinging to the dark wooden shelves, and the bright, melodic sound of her laugh when he had stood there holding his useless debit card.

"I... I don't know," Soobin muttered, his cheeks warming slightly. He quickly took a sip of tea, hoping his mother would just mistake his red face for the heat radiating from the grill. "She didn't tell me her name. She was... really nice, though. She let me stay inside to cool down because of the AC."

His mother and grandmother exchanged a swift, knowing look across the sizzling grill. A collective, identical smirk bloomed on both of their faces.

"Oh, look at him," his mother teased, leaning forward and nudging Soobin’s arm with her elbow. "A girl lets him sit in the air conditioning for ten minutes, and our boy is already blushing."

"She really is a lovely girl," his grandmother chimed in, thoroughly enjoying the way Soobin was desperately trying to avoid their eyes by hyper-focusing on a piece of kimchi. "Her family has had a hard time keeping that shop open since the turn of the century, but Y/N works so hard to help her father. She’s smart, too. She’s starting her first year of university this August."

Soobin blinked, finally looking up from his bowl. "University? Where?"

His grandmother’s grin widened, delighted that she had successfully re-engaged him. "Right up in Seoul! She got into a good school up there… though i forgot which one was it. Her father was bragging about it at the market last week. She’s spending her very last summer here running the shop before she leaves the island."

"See? She'll be a freshman just as you're starting your final year," his mother added, nudging him again, her eyes dancing with amusement. "You two will be in the same city. Maybe you should offer to show her around Seoul. You know, since she was so nice to let you use her AC."

"Mom, please," Soobin mumbled, his dimples peeking out despite his best efforts to maintain a straight face. He felt a strange, fluttering sensation in his chest. The thought of the quiet, pretty girl from the bookshop navigating the crowded, chaotic subways of Seoul felt completely surreal.

"She told me I could pay the overdue fee tomorrow," Soobin said softly, trying to steer the conversation back to logistics, his deep voice almost lost beneath the steady, rhythmic chirping of the evening cicadas. "Since I didn't have any cash on me."

"Well, then you'd better not be late tomorrow, Choi Soobin," his grandmother warned, though her voice was entirely fond as she reached over to pat his knee. "And wear a nicer shirt this time. Don't go down there looking like a wet noodle. You have a reputation to uphold!"

Soobin let out a soft, embarrassed laugh, letting his head drop as the two women laughed at his expense. He looked out past the courtyard wall, where the very last string of golden sunlight was dipping below the ocean horizon, leaving behind a deep, star-speckled indigo. For the first time since he had arrived on the island, the thought of tomorrow didn't feel like a chore.

The morning heat arrived early and heavy, baking the volcanic earth until the air smelled faintly of hot pine and dried sea salt. Soobin stood in front of the small vanity mirror in his room, pulling a crisp, short-sleeved cotton button-down over his shoulders. He hesitated for a second before smoothing down the collar, his grandmother’s playful scolding from the night before echoing in his ears.

With crisps, seven 1,000-won bills tucked securely into his front pocket alongside his grandmother’s neat library card, he stepped out onto the sun-bleached main road.

The walk down to the book rental shop felt different today. Yesterday, he had been dragging his feet under the oppressive weight of the sun, desperate to just finish an errand. Today, despite the sweat already beginning to bead at his temples, his pace was light. The rhythmic, buzzing drone of the cicadas didn’t sound quite as grating.

When he reached the weathered wooden storefront, the heavy glass door was propped open a few inches with a smooth black basalt rock to catch whatever stray breeze rolled off the ocean. The old, boxy air conditioning unit was already chugging away, its steady, rhythmic rattle acting as a low bassline to the quiet morning.

Soobin pushed the door open, the small brass bell above him chiming softly.

The transition into the dim, paper-scented sanctuary immediately washed over him. Standing behind the dark wooden counter was Y/N. She was in the middle of stacking a fresh delivery of comic books, her hair pinned up today with a tortoiseshell claw clip that let a few soft, dark strands fall around her jawline. She wore a simple, light linen blouse that made her look perfectly suited for the coastal summer.

As the bell rang, she blinked up from the stack, her eyes landing on him. A slow, genuine smile broke across her face, her signature dimple making an immediate appearance.

"Oh," she said, her voice carrying that light, melodic Jeju lilt. "You actually came back. And you’re early."

"I promised I would," Soobin said. He stepped closer to the counter, suddenly hyper-aware of how tall he was in the low-ceilinged room. He slipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out the folded bills and the card, sliding them carefully across the polished wood toward her. "The 7,000 won for the late fee. And my grandmother’s card."

Y/N looked down at the crisp cash, then up at him, her eyes dancing with amusement. "You even flattened the bills. How diligent." She picked them up, her fingertips brushing lightly against his palm for a fraction of a second. The contact was brief, but it sent a quiet, electric warmth straight up his arm.

She opened the heavy, black-taped ledger, neatly scratching out the red ink beside his grandmother’s name with a fluid stroke of her pen.

"My grandmother told me last night that your name is Y/N," Soobin said softly, his deep voice sounding incredibly resonant in the quiet, empty shop. He rubbed the back of his neck, a faint pink hue touching the tips of his ears. "She... she speaks very highly of you."

Y/N’s pen paused for a second before she closed the ledger with a soft thud. She leaned her elbows on the counter, resting her chin in her hands as she looked up at him, her smile turning a bit mischievous. "Your Halmeoni is my favorite customer."

"Oh by the way, my dad told me this morning that your grandfather was bragging at the community center about his 'genius Seoul grandson' who goes to Korea University." she laughed, the sound bright and clear. 

She straightened up, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "August is coming up fast. I'm actually moving up to Seoul myself for university. It’s... a bit intimidating, honestly. It looks so massive on maps."

Soobin looked at her, seeing a flicker of genuine, quiet vulnerability behind her bright eyes. The confident, grounded girl who commanded this ancient bookshop suddenly looked a little small at the prospect of leaving her island behind.

"It is big," Soobin said gently, his tone shifting into something steady and reassuring. He leaned against the edge of the counter, dropping his shoulder to meet her eye level. "And it’s really loud. But... it’s not so bad once you find your own corner. If you ever get lost, or if you just need someone to show you where the good, quiet places are."

Y/N tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, her cheeks flushing a soft, delicate pink that rivaled the Jeju sunset from the night before. She looked down at the counter, a small, private smile playing on her lips.

"I might just take you up on that," she murmured, looking back up to meet his gaze. 

The quiet, paper-scented sanctuary of the book rental shop was entirely replaced by the chaotic, sun-drenched noise of the local morning market.

The village square was a maze of brightly colored plastic tarps, wooden crates, and umbrellas flapping in the salt-heavy sea breeze. The air was a thick, sensory assault—the sharp tang of fresh-cut hairtail fish, the earthy scent of wet garlic bulbs, and the sweet, heavy perfume of summer fruits ripening under the July sun.

Y/N sat on a low plastic stool next to her mother behind a mountain of wooden crates filled with summer Hallabong oranges, her hair pulled back into a quick, practical braid to keep it off her neck in the thirty-four-degree heat.

"Smile a bit more, Y/N-ah," her mother scolded gently, sorting the fruits into neat, small pyramids. "People won't buy oranges from a girl who looks like she’s auditing a tax ledger."

"Mom, it's scorching, and we've been here since five in the morning," Y/N murmured, though a soft, dutiful smile tugged at her lips anyway. She picked up a small mesh bag, ready to pack the next order.

"Aigoo, look who it is! Seon-young’s boy!"

The loud, unmistakable voice of Halmeoni Choi pierced through the market chatter from just a few yards away.

Y/N’s shoulders stiffened slightly. She tilted her head up, her eyes scanning the crowd until they landed on a familiar, towering figure.

Soobin was navigating the narrow aisle between a vegetable stall and a dried-squid vendor, looking spectacularly out of place. He was practically a lighthouse in the middle of the crowded square, his tall height forcing him to duck under the low-hanging canvas tarps of the stalls. Today, he wore a simple, clean white t-shirt and loose navy shorts, carrying a woven grocery basket on his forearm like a clumsy armor shield. His grandmother was marching ahead of him, gripping his elbow tightly as if she were parading him through the village.

"Halmeoni, please, everyone is looking," Soobin muttered, his deep voice carrying over the noise, his cheeks already flushed a deep pink as he tried to pull his baseball cap lower.

"Let them look! A handsome boy helping his old grandmother carry radishes—there's no better advertisement for a good upbringing," His Halmeoni declared proudly, stopping right in front of the fruit stall.

Soobin officially looked up from his sneakers, his eyes instantly locking onto Y/N sitting behind the mountain of oranges. He froze, his hand tightening on the handle of the woven basket.

Y/N looked up at him from her low stool, her eyes widening slightly in surprise before a soft, amused expression washed over her face. Seeing the cool, logical engineering student from Seoul looking entirely helpless at the mercy of his grandmother was a view she hadn't expected.

"Oh, Sun-ja-ya!" Y/N’s mother greeted warmly, standing up from her crate. "Is this the famous grandson from the city? My goodness, he’s grown so tall! He looks like a movie star."

"Doesn't he?" Halmeoni Kim beamed, giving Soobin’s broad back a firm, proprietary swat that made him wince. "Soobin-ah, say hello. This is Y/N's mother, and this is Y/N. You returned my books to her the other day, didn't you?"

Soobin cleared his throat, his dimples flashing briefly out of sheer, panicked politeness as he bowed low, nearly knocking his cap against a stack of oranges. "Hello. I’m Choi Soobin."

"Hello, Soobin-ah," Y/N’s mother smiled warmly, then nudged her daughter's shoulder. "Y/N, give them the best oranges we have. Don't weigh them on the scale, just fill the bag."

Y/N stood up from her stool, her eyes meeting Soobin's as she reached for a yellow plastic bag. Up close, without the dark wooden counter of the rental shop separating them, he felt entirely too tall, his shadow completely blocking out the harsh morning sun above her.

"Hi," she said softly, her melodic Jeju lilt slipping out naturally. Her dark eyes sparkled with a quiet, shared amusement as she looked at his crimson ears. "I didn't expect to see you out here. I thought you'd be hiding from the heat today."

Soobin’s eyes shifted frantically to his grandmother, who was already deep in a passionate conversation with Y/N’s mother about the quality of the summer radish crop, then back to Y/N. He let out a quiet, flustered breath, adjusting the strap of the heavy grocery basket on his arm.

"My grandmother dragged me out at six in the morning," he whispered back, leaning down slightly so his deep voice wouldn't carry over the market roar. "She said if I stayed in bed any longer, my brain would turn into mush from my lifestyle."

Y/N let out a small, breathless laugh, a sound he had been thinking about for the past forty-eight hours. She began picking the largest, brightest oranges from the crate, her slender, fruit-stained fingers moving deliberately as she dropped them into the plastic.

"Well, you don't look completely melted yet," she murmured, leaning slightly over the crate, her eyes slanting into a teasing line. "Though I have to admit, seeing the city boy carrying a basket of radishes is a pretty good view."

Soobin rubbed the back of his neck, his dimples flashing briefly as his blush deepened. "Don't look too closely. I already dropped a bunch of green onions two stalls back."

Y/N smiled, folding the top of the heavy paper bag neatly before handing it across the crate to him. "Here. Tell your Halmeoni these are on us. And... since you're already out, are you coming by the shop later? A new batch of comic books actually came in this morning."

Before Soobin could answer her question about the comic books, Y/N’s mother cleanly cut back into the conversation. She patted his grandmother’s arm, but her keen, bright eyes were locked straight onto Soobin.

"Don't let him spend all his time locked up in that stuffy house, Sun-ja-ya," Y/N’s mother said, her voice easily carrying over the rumbling engine of a nearby delivery truck. She looked back at Soobin, her smile warm and completely open. "You know, our Y/N is moving up to Seoul this August for her first year of university. She doesn't know a single soul up there, and she’s already a bit nervous about navigating those massive subway lines."

"Mom," Y/N mumbled under her breath, her face instantly heating up to match the bright orange color of the Hallabongs in front of her. She gave her mother's apron a sharp, desperate tug. "He doesn't need to hear about that."

"What? It's true! It's a huge city," her mother declared playfully, waving a hand dismissively. She looked back at Soobin, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "Since you're already up there and you know the layout, you two should exchange numbers before the summer ends. Look after her a bit when she gets to Seoul, okay? Show her where the safe streets are."

Soobin’s entire face flushed a brilliant, undeniable crimson that traveled straight down to the collar of his white t-shirt. He rubbed the back of his neck, his dimples flashing out of sheer, suffocating embarrassment as his grandmother proudly nodded along in total agreement next to him.

"I... I can definitely do that," Soobin mumbled, his deep voice dropping an octave as his eyes flicked shyly toward Y/N. "I'm usually on campus anyway."

Y/N quickly pushed the heavy plastic bag of oranges directly into his large hands to stop her mother from saying anything else, though she couldn't hide the soft, helpless smile pulling at her lips.

The afternoon heat had been thick enough to breathe, a heavy, static weight that hung over the coastal road as Soobin took his stroll. He had ventured further than usual, his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, his eyes tracked on the horizon where the open sea met a line of dark, bruised clouds.

He didn't notice the sudden shift until the wind changed. A sharp, cool gust swept in from the water, smelling heavily of ozone and salt. Before he could even look for a sky to read, the heavens simply cracked open.

It wasn't a gentle drizzle; it was a violent Jeju summer downpour.

Soobin ducked his head, his long legs eating up the asphalt as he bolted toward the only structure on this stretch of the road—a small, weathered concrete bus stop jutting out against the rocky edge of the coast. He burst under the rusted tin roof, panting, his white t-shirt already dotted with heavy, dark circles of rainwater.

He wiped the spray from his eyes, shaking his head like a dog, only to freeze when a soft, clearing throat echoed from the corner of the small shelter.

"You're going to catch a cold if you stand right in the splash zone like that."

Soobin blinked, pushing a wet strand of hair from his forehead.

Y/N was sitting on the narrow, faded wooden bench built into the concrete wall. She sat up straight, her feet planted firmly on the ground and her hands resting neatly in her lap. She was wrapped in an oversized, lightweight cardigan, while her small canvas tote bag sat securely beside her.

"Y/N," Soobin said, his deep voice caught in his throat as he stepped further under the awning. "You're here too."

"I was on my way back from delivering a box of historical novels to Mrs. Jeon up the hill," she explained, shifting her legs to the side to make room on the bench. She patted the worn wood. "Sit. The wind is kicking the rain sideways. If you stand there, you'll be soaked in five minutes."

Soobin hesitated, suddenly hyper-aware of how small the bus stop was. When he sat down, the wooden bench creaked under his weight, his tall frame naturally forcing him to slouch so his head wouldn't hit the low tin roof. Their shoulders didn't touch, but the space between them was close enough that he could feel the faint, radiating warmth of her skin against the damp chill of the storm.

In front of them, the view was entirely open to the sea. The horizon had completely vanished, swallowed by a massive, gray wall of falling water that violently churned the dark blue waves below. The rhythmic, deafening roar of the rain hitting the tin roof above them created a strange, isolated pocket of absolute privacy. It felt like the rest of the island had been completely erased.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. They just watched the storm.

"Do you get rains like this in Seoul?" Y/N asked softly, her voice low but clear over the steady drumbeat of the roof. She didn't look at him, her eyes fixed on the white foam crashing against the black basalt rocks below.

Soobin turned his head slightly, watching the side of her face. The gray, muted light of the storm caught the delicate slope of her jaw and the dark, wet lashes of her eyes.

"Sometimes," Soobin replied, his voice dropping into that steady, grounding register. "But it feels different up there. In the city, when it rains like this, everyone runs into subways or department stores. You just see a sea of umbrellas and people looking irritated because their shoes are ruined. It feels... claustrophobic."

He looked back out at the vast, roaring ocean. "Here, it just feels like the island is taking a breath."

Y/N turned her head, a soft, thoughtful expression in her eyes as she looked at him. "You say very beautiful and poetic things, Choi Soobin."

Soobin’s dimples flashed briefly, a faint, flustered pink touching his ears despite the cool breeze. He idly rubbed his palms against his knees. "It's just logic. Everything has a rhythm. You just notice it more when there aren't any buildings blocking the view."

Y/N let out a small, breathless laugh, her shoulders relaxing as she swayed her legs. "I used to hate the rain here when I was little. It meant the bookshop smelled like damp paper, and nobody would come down the road for hours. It felt so lonely."

She paused, her fingers idly tracing a knot in the wooden bench between them. "But sitting here now... with you... it doesn't feel quite as empty."

The admission was quiet, slipping out so naturally into the roar of the storm that it took Soobin a beat to process it. He looked down at her hand on the bench, just inches from his own. His heart gave a distinct, heavy thud against his ribs, a sudden spike of warmth rushing through him that had nothing to do with the summer heat.

"I'm glad I took a stroll today then," Soobin murmured, his voice incredibly gentle, his dark eyes locking onto hers as she looked up.

Y/N’s cheeks flushed a soft, delicate pink, her gaze holding his for a long, breathless moment while the rain continued to wall them in from the rest of the world. A small, private smile played on her lips, and for the first time, the upcoming month of August didn't feel like a hard boundary—it felt like a continuation.

The sheet of rain grew even denser, transforming the sea into a blurred slate of charcoal and frothing white. The heavy droplets didn’t just fall; they slapped against the asphalt road, creating a low, dancing mist that hovered a few inches above the ground. The sharp, metallic scent of the rusted tin roof mixed with the deep, earthy perfume of the wet soil from the sweet potato patches behind them. Every few seconds, a particularly fierce gust of wind would drive a spray of fine, icy mist under the awning, speckling Soobin’s bare shins and the hem of Y/N’s oversized cardigan with cold beads of water.

Y/N shivered slightly, pulling the sleeves of the cardigan down completely until only her fingertips peeked out.

"Are you cold?" Soobin asked immediately, his eyes shifting down to her tucked-in frame. He instinctively shifted closer to the edge of the bench, using his broad shoulders to block the open side of the shelter where the mist was blowing in.

"Just a little," she said, looking up at him through her lashes. The sudden shift in his position brought him so close that she could smell the clean, laundry-detergent scent of his t-shirt beneath the heavy smell of the rain. "But it's a good kind of cold. It makes you feel awake."

Soobin rested his elbows on his knees, his large hands loosely clasped together as he stared at the puddles forming at their feet. Y/N watched the way his long frame seemed to take up almost the entire shelter, his presence grounding the small space against the roaring storm outside.

"How long have you actually been coming down to Jeju?" she asked suddenly, her voice cutting through the steady thrum-thrum of the rain above their heads. "I mean, I know your grandparents live here, but did you use to visit a lot when you were younger?"

Soobin turned his head slightly, a small, nostalgic smile lifting the corner of his lips. "Since I was a kid. My parents used to drop me off here every single summer vacation. I’d spend two whole months running around the docks, getting sunburned, and helping my grandfather sort his fishing nets."

Y/N tilted her head, a thoughtful expression in her eyes as she did the mental math. With him being twenty-two and a senior in university, and her turning nineteen and preparing for her freshman year, their paths felt like they should have crossed at some point on this tiny island.

"That's funny," she murmured, her dark eyes reflecting the cool, gray light of the afternoon. "If you've been coming here that long, we must have been running around the same square. But I don't remember seeing you at all until this week."

"Well, think about it," Soobin said, his deep voice carrying a soft, amused rumble. "When I was fourteen and trying to look cool riding my grandfather's rusty bicycle down by the pier, you were probably an eleven-year-old running around the elementary school playground with ice cream all over your face."

Y/N let out a bright, indignant laugh—that clear, wind-chime sound that temporarily erased the damp chill of the storm. She reached out from her long sleeve and lightly nudged his arm with her elbow. "Hey! I was a very dignified eleven-year-old, thank you very much. I was already helping my dad alphabetize the fiction section by then."

"See? We were in completely different worlds," Soobin smiled, his dimples cutting deep into his cheeks as he accepted the playful nudge. "By the time you were old enough to actually hang out at the pier, I was already in high school up in Seoul, preparing for university exams and spending my summers trapped in academy classrooms."

Y/N’s smile softened a bit, her chin drifting back down to rest on her knees as she looked back out at the churning gray waves. "I guess three years feels like a big gap when you're younger. You probably would have thought I was just an annoying kid back then."

"Probably," Soobin teased gently, though his eyes were warm as he looked at her. He shifted slightly on the bench, his shoulder brushing against hers for a fleeting second. "But we're both heading to Seoul in August now. The gap doesn't really matter anymore, does it?"

Y/N turned her head back to meet his gaze, her cheeks warming with a soft, delicate pink that had nothing to do with the cool mist of the rain. A small, private smile played on her lips, the steady rhythm of the storm creating a quiet world where it was just the two of them, finally catching up on the time they'd missed.

"Though," Y/N murmured, her voice dropping into a softer, more reflective tone as she watched a heavy droplet trace a jagged path down the concrete wall, "it's weird to think that while you were up there getting used to the massive crowds and the tall buildings, I was still right here. Watching the same tide come in and out."

Soobin followed her gaze out to the water. "Do you think you'll miss it too much?"

"I think I'll miss the quiet," she admitted honestly. She uncurled her legs slightly, letting her sneakers tap against the damp floor. "Here, if I want to think, I just walk until I hit the sand. In Seoul, where do you go when your head gets too loud?"

Soobin leaned back against the concrete wall, his head tilting up toward the dark tin roof. "You find small pockets. A quiet corner in the university library after 9 PM. A bench by the Han River when it's freezing cold and no one else wants to sit outside. Or..." He paused, turning his head to look at her profile. "You find a person who feels like home."

The words hung in the space between them, weighted and clear against the roaring backdrop of the heavy rain shower.

Y/N’s fingers stilled against the rough wood of the bench. She turned her head slowly, her dark eyes locking onto his. The playful banter from a few moments ago had entirely evaporated, replaced by a thick, magnetic stillness.

"And did you?" she asked softly, her breath catching slightly. "Did you find a person like that up there?"

Soobin looked at her—at the damp tendrils of hair framing her face, the oversized cardigan that swallowed her frame, and the steady, unblinking gravity of her gaze. His heart gave a sharp, heavy thud against his ribs.

"No," he said, his voice dropping into a low, completely honest register. "Not yet."

A sudden, fierce gust of wind rattled the tin roof violently, throwing a heavy spray of cold ocean mist right across the open front of the shelter. Y/N blinked, instinctively shrinking back from the wet chill.

Instead of reaching out to touch her, Soobin simply shifted his weight. He planted his sneakers firmly on the concrete floor and leaned forward, his broad back and shoulders acting as a physical wall against the open side of the bus stop. He caught the brunt of the cold mist across his own arm and t-shirt, completely blocking it from hitting her side of the bench.

Y/N looked up, realizing what he was doing. She looked at his damp shoulder, just inches away from her face, and then up at his jawline, which was tight with a sudden, nervous tension.

"You're going to get soaked if you keep doing that," she murmured, though her voice carried a soft, undeniable warmth.

"I'm bigger," Soobin muttered, his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead as his ears turned a bright, furious pink. "I can take the hit."

Y/N looked down at her lap, a small, genuine smile pulling at her lips. She didn't say anything else, but she didn't shift away from his shadow, either.

Outside, the heavy bounces of the droplets were finally beginning to thin out, the violent drumming on the tin roof slowing down into a quiet, rhythmic patter. A faint, pale streak of silver light broke through the edge of the charcoal clouds, casting a glassy reflection across the wet asphalt.

"The rain is stopping," Y/N whispered, breaking the quiet space between them.

Soobin looked out at the breaking sky, his shoulders relaxing just a fraction as the wind died down. For the first time all week, he found himself genuinely wishing a Jeju storm would last just a little bit longer.

"Yeah," Soobin murmured, his deep voice carrying a quiet note of regret as he looked back down at her. "It is."

The next afternoon, the book rental shop was quiet, trapped in the lazy, thick lull of a mid-July heatwave. The heavy glass door was propped open with a brick to let in the faint, salt-tinged breeze, but the air inside still smelled deeply of aged paper, old glue, and the faint, sweet scent of the barley tea Y/N’s father had brewed that morning.

Y/N sat behind the high wooden counter, the slow whir-clunk of an old green electric fan oscillating back and forth across her face. She was idly running a stamp over a fresh stack of library cards, the rhythmic thud-thud of the rubber against ink the only sound in the room. Her hair was pulled back into a loose bun today, a few stray hairs curling at the nape of her neck from the humidity.

The shadow that suddenly blocked out the bright afternoon sun in the doorway was too tall to belong to any of the neighborhood kids.

The small brass bell above the door gave a light, familiar chime.

Y/N looked up, her hand pausing mid-stamp.

Soobin stepped into the shop, letting out a long breath as the cold air hit him. Today, he looked thoroughly dressed for the coastal heat—wearing a baggy, short-sleeved linen button-up shirt in a soft cream color, left open over a plain white tank top, paired with loose khaki shorts that hit just below his knees. 

When his gaze landed on Y/N behind the counter, a small, involuntary smile pulled at his lips, his dimples flashing briefly in the dim light of the shop.

"Hi," he said, his deep voice sounding incredibly soft in the quiet sanctuary of the room. He let the door close gently behind him, stepping onto the worn wooden floor.

"Look who it is," Y/N murmured, setting the rubber stamp down on the desk. A slow, teasing smile crept onto her face as her dark eyes locked onto his. "Hey city boy, I see your shoes aren’t muddy anymore."

Soobin rubbed the back of his neck, his ears instantly warming with a faint pink tint as he walked closer to the counter. "I scrubbed the clay off my sneakers last night. My grandmother threatened to make me sleep on the porch if I brought the hill mud into her living room."

Y/N let out a small, breathless laugh as she leaned her elbows on the dark wood of the counter, propping her chin in her hands as she looked up at him.

"Well, thank Halmeoni for saving your shoes," she said, her voice dropping into a softer, playful register. "So, did you actually come to browse, or are you just hiding from the sun again?"

"I came for the new comic books," he said softly, his dark eyes holding hers, a quiet, steady confidence behind them. 

Y/N’s lips parted slightly, her heart giving a small, unexpected skip before she quickly recovered her usual playful demeanor. She slid her chin out of her hands and stood up straight, turning toward the small rolling metal cart parked right behind the counter.

"Well, you're in luck," she said, her voice carrying a light, proud note as she lifted a thick, glossy graphic novel from the very top of the stack. "They arrived in the morning crate. I haven't even had the chance to put the plastic protective sleeves on them yet, but I figured I'd save the first read for our VIP customer."

She turned back around and set the book down on the counter between them. The cover was bright and colorful, a stark contrast to the old, sun-faded romance novels lining the walls of the shop.

"Volume four," Y/N murmured, tapping the glossy cover with her index finger, her eyes slanting into a teasing line as she looked up at him.

Soobin looked down at the book, but his eyes quickly drifted back up to her face, a warm, helpless smile breaking across his features. His deep dimples cut into his cheeks as he leaned his forearms against the cool wood of the counter, bringing himself a little closer to her eye level.

Soobin looked down at the book, but his eyes quickly drifted back up to her face, a warm, helpless smile breaking across his features. His deep dimples cut into his cheeks as he leaned his forearms against the cool wood of the counter, bringing himself a little closer to her eye level.

"Don't just stand there blocking the aisle," Y/N murmured, a playful glint in her eyes as she patted the empty space on the counter right next to her ink pad. "Pull up that stool from the corner. You can read right here while I go over the overdue member cards. I need someone to keep me awake anyway."

Soobin’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, but he didn't hesitate. He grabbed the high plastic stool and settled in right beside her, his long legs tucked under the ledge.

For the next hour, the shop fell into a comfortable, easy silence, completely sealed away from the humid June heat outside. Under the steady, cool flow of the air conditioner, the only sounds were the crisp slip of Soobin turning the pages of volume four and the soft rustle of Y/N sorting through the thick yellow index cards.

Slowly, the rhythmic sorting of the cards began to drag. The cool air hitting Y/N's face felt a little too comfortable, and her eyelids grew heavier with every passing minute. Eventually, her head began to droop. Giving in to the afternoon slump, she crossed her arms over the cool wooden counter and let her head rest sideways on them, drifting into a deep, peaceful sleep.

Soobin reached the end of a chapter and went to turn the page, but the sudden, total absence of any shuffling cards beside him made him pause.

He glanced over.

Y/N was fast asleep, her face nestled into the crook of her elbow. The gentle breeze from the AC vent above was catching a few loose strands of hair that had escaped her bun, blowing them softly across her cheek.

Soobin froze, his hand hovering over the edge of the comic book page. He stared at her for a long moment, his chest tightening with a sudden, hyper-aware nervousness. The shop felt entirely too quiet now. A slow, helpless smile tugged at his lips, his deep dimples appearing as he looked at how soft and relaxed she looked.

Careful not to make a sound, he gently reached out and picked up the heavy ink pad she’d left open, snapping the lid shut so it wouldn't dry out. He then slid the stack of overdue cards a few inches away from her arm so she wouldn't accidentally wrinkle them in her sleep. He didn't want to wake her, but he also didn't want to stop looking at her.

Yielding to the heavy, lazy atmosphere of the room, Soobin carefully folded his own arms on the counter, mirroring her position. He lowered his head onto his sleeves, turning his face toward her so he could quietly watch her sleep while the afternoon hours drifted away.

But the rhythmic, quiet sound of her breathing and the cool air of the shop were too comforting. Within twenty minutes, Soobin’s own eyelids grew heavy, and he drifted off right beside her.

Another hour slipped away in the quiet sanctuary of the shop.

When Y/N’s eyelids finally fluttered, she let out a long, groggy breath. Her mind was still trapped in a thick fog, her cheek pressed warm against the soft knit of her cardigan sleeve. She slowly blinked her eyes open, her vision blurry as she adjusted to the soft, shadowed light of the room.

As the blurry shapes sharpened, her breath caught entirely in her throat.

She was looking directly into Soobin’s face.

Because they were both laying flat on the wood, they were completely face-to-face, barely a few inches of space separating them.

Soobin was still fast asleep. His eyelashes were completely still against his cheeks, and a few loose, dark strands of hair had fallen over his forehead, shifting gently with the steady rhythm of his breathing. Without the nervous, shy tension he usually carried around his broad shoulders, his face looked incredibly soft and boyish.

Y/N didn't move an inch. She stayed completely frozen, her heart suddenly executing a loud, erratic thud against her ribs that felt loud enough to wake him. She just stared at him in the quiet, air-conditioned bubble, taking in the sharp line of his nose and the faint, relaxed curve of his lips.

The sharp shriek of the stool never happened. Instead, the quiet of the shop remained entirely unbroken.

When Soobin’s eyes slowly blinked open, he didn't instantly scramble back. He couldn't. His brain was still heavy with sleep, and the view directly in front of him—Y/N looking right back at him with her soft eyes—felt less like reality and more like the tail end of a very good dream.

Neither of them moved.

The space between them was so small that Y/N could feel the soft, cool puff of his breath against her cheek every time he exhaled. She stayed perfectly still, her hands tucked securely under her arms on the wooden counter, her heart hammering a fierce, loud rhythm against her ribs. She braced herself for him to jump up, to turn bright red, to apologize—but he just stayed there.

Soobin’s gaze drifted lazily from her eyes down to the small, to the tip of her nose, then down to her lips, before rising back up to hold her gaze. The shy, nervous wall he usually kept up during the day was completely gone, melted away by the deep afternoon slumber. There was only a heavy, magnetic stillness left in its place.

Slowly, the sleep began to clear from the edges of his eyes, but he still didn't pull away. A tiny, almost imperceptible smile tugged at the corner of his plush lips, his left dimple making a faint, shallow appearance against the dark wood of the counter.

"Hi," he whispered, his deep voice carrying a thick, incredibly low rasp that vibrated right through the wood between them.

Y/N’s fingers curled slightly into the fabric of her sleeves. A delicate, warm flush crept up her neck, but she didn't look away either.

"Hi," she whispered back, her voice barely louder than the hum of the air conditioner above them.

They stayed like that for a long, suspended moment—just two people level with each other on a worn wooden counter, quietly sharing the cool, shadowed air while the rest of the island baked in the June sun outside.

The heavy ticking of the wall clock seemed to slow down, marking the seconds in the quiet room.

Soobin didn't break eye contact. Slowly, carefully, as if testing whether he was allowed to, he shifted his arm forward just a fraction of an inch on the smooth counter. His large knuckles grazed the edge of her father's oversized cardigan sleeve. It was a tiny, tentative point of contact, but it sent a sharp, electric jolt straight through the sleepy haze between them.

Y/N’s breath hitched, her eyes widening slightly as she looked down at where his hand met her sleeve, then back up to his face.

The silence stretched, shifting from comfortable to a sudden, thick tension that made the cool air in the shop feel entirely too warm. Soobin’s ears began to catch up to his quiet confidence, a slow, deep pink spreading across the edges of them, but his gaze remained steady, anchored completely to hers.

Finally, the brass bell above the front door let out a loud, sudden chime as the glass door swung open.

"Y/N-ah! Are the morning newspapers still—"

The booming voice of Mr. Lee from the hardware store next door cut through the sanctuary like a thunderclap.

Soobin sat up so fast his head nearly clipped the low-hanging menu board above the register. His chair scraped back with a loud, awkward thud, his large hands immediately flying to his face to rub at his eyes, trying desperately to look like he hadn't just spent the last two hours napping.

Y/N scrambled to her feet, her face burning a brilliant, undeniable crimson as she smoothed down her skirt with trembling hands. "M-Mr. Lee! Yes! They're right here!" she called out, her voice a full octave higher than usual as she reached blindly for the stack of papers on the side desk.

Mr. Lee walked into the air-conditioned room, wiping his brow with a handkerchief, completely oblivious to the thick, breathless atmosphere he had just walked into. He looked between Y/N’s bright red face and Soobin, who was currently staring intensely at the cover of the comic book as if it held the secrets to the universe, his entire neck flushed dark red.

"Whew, it's freezing in here," Mr. Lee muttered, tossing a few coins onto the counter. "You kids look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong, is the AC too strong?"

"No!" Y/N and Soobin blurted out at the exact same time.

Y/N quickly handed over the paper, her eyes darting sideways to Soobin, who finally chanced a look back up at her through his dark fringe. As Mr. Lee took his papers and walked back out into the July heat, the bell chiming behind him, a small, helpless laugh bubbled up in Y/N’s throat.

She looked at Soobin, whose shoulders had finally slumped in total, flustered defeat.

"Well," Y/N murmured, her dimple peeking out through the blush still lingering on her cheeks. "Did you... actually finish the book? Or did you just use volume four as a pillow?"

Soobin let out a low, embarrassed groan, burying his face in his large hands for a brief second before looking up at her through his fingers. The tips of his ears were still entirely crimson, but a shy, helpless smile broke through his flustered expression.

"I finished it," he promised, his deep voice still holding a bit of that thick, raspy edge from sleep. He cleared his throat and carefully pushed the graphic novel a few inches closer to her, his long fingers tapping the glossy cover. "Every single page. Right up until the main character got to the city."

Y/N leaned her hip against the counter, crossing her arms to try and steady the lingering flutter in her chest. "And? What did you think?"

Soobin looked up at her, his dark eyes softening as the initial panic of being caught by Mr. Lee finally began to fade. He rested his chin in his hand, looking up at her from his stool with a quiet, steady warmth that made the cool air of the shop feel incredibly still again.

"It was good," he murmured softly. "But I still think the author made a mistake."

Y/N tilted her head, her eyes slanting into a curious, playful line. "A mistake? Why?"

"Because," Soobin said, his deep voice dropping into that quiet, grounding register that always made her heart skip a beat. "He spent three whole chapters showing how terrifying and lonely the city is. But he forgot to mention that if you have the right person going up there with you... it doesn't really matter how big or loud the place is."

Y/N’s chest tightened, a familiar, bright warmth blooming all the way to her cheeks. She bit her lower lip to suppress a smile, leaning back slightly against the counter and tilting her head to look down at him.

"Is that so?" she teased softly, her voice carrying a playful, skeptical lilt despite the erratic fluttering of her heart. She tapped her lip thoughtfully with an index finger. "I didn't realize you could be such a romantic, Choi Soobin. Are you sure you weren't reading from the romance section while I was asleep?"

Soobin’s eyes widened slightly, and he instantly looked down at the counter, a helpless, bashful chuckle vibrating in his chest. His deep dimples cut hard into his cheeks as he rubbed the back of his neck, his ears flaring that beautiful, telltale pink again.

"I'm just stating a logical fact," he mumbled into his shoulder, though the soft, affectionate look he shot at her through his dark fringe entirely gave him away. "It's simple logic—"

Ring-ring!

The sharp, loud jangle of the old plastic landline telephone on the wall behind the counter cut him off completely.

Both of them jumped slightly, the sudden noise breaking the quiet, heavy tension that had settled between them once more. Y/N blinked, shaking off the spell of his gaze, and quickly turned around to grab the heavy green receiver off the hook.

"Hello? Dongbaek Book Rental," she said into the mouthpiece, smoothing down her skirt with her free hand as she tried to make her voice sound completely professional.

Soobin stayed on his stool, his shoulders relaxing as he quietly watched her back. He traced a slow, idle circle on the glossy cover of the comic book, his mind still entirely replaying the way she had looked at him just seconds before, a soft, permanent smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

A little while later, after the shop duties were wrapped up, Soobin was finally about to leave.

Y/N stepped out onto the narrow wooden porch with him, instantly greeted by the thick, heavy blanket of the evening July humidity. The village was quiet, bathed in a deep, bleeding orange sunset that cast a warm glow over the coastal road. The breeze blowing off the nearby coast carried the faint, salty tang of the sea, rustling the low leaves of the trees bordering the gravel path.

They stood near the steps, giggling and smiling softly at each other over a silly inside joke about his long afternoon nap, completely lost in their own little bubble.

"Oh, Soobin-ah! You're still here?"

The warm, familiar voice broke their bubble. Y/N’s mother was walking up the narrow path, holding a heavy plastic grocery bag in each hand. Having already met him at the bustling market yesterday, she offered him a bright, instant smile.

"Hello, Mrs. Liu," Soobin blurted out, his laughter cutting off as he quickly dropped into a rigid, perfectly respectful ninety-degree bow that nearly sent his graphic novel flying from under his arm.

Mrs. Liu set the heavy plastic grocery bags down on the bottom step with a soft, tired exhale, the crinkling sound loud in the quiet evening air. She looked between the two kids, her sharp eyes instantly catching the soft, lingering curve of Y/N’s smile and the sheer, deer-in-headlights panic that had taken over Soobin’s towering frame. A deeply pleased, knowing smile crinkled the corners of her eyes.

"I just came back from the market with three massive crates of summer radish and napa cabbage," Mrs. Liu continued, lifting a hand to wipe the sheen of sweat from her brow. "Halmeoni and I are planning to spend the entire morning putting together a big batch of summer kimchi. My back is already aching just thinking about wrestling those heavy earthenware jars around the yard."

She turned her gaze fully onto Soobin, her eyes twinkling with a thoroughly transparent, matchmaking energy.

"You have such good strength, Soobin-ah," Mrs. Liu said smoothly, her tone a perfect blend of maternal warmth and subtle calculation. "Why don't you come over around one tomorrow afternoon? Help us move the heavy jars, and you can stay for dinner. I'll make sure you get a massive plate of fresh, bossam and warm kimchi. What do you say?"

Soobin blinked, his brain momentarily short-circuiting under the sudden invitation. His heart gave a nervous, erratic flutter against his ribs—not just from the pressure of wanting to be helpful to Y/N’s mother, but at the thrilling, terrifying prospect of spending an entire day at her house. His dark eyes darted frantically past Mrs. Liu’s shoulder, silently begging Y/N for a lifeline.

Y/N stood a step behind her mother, her face burning a brilliant, undeniable crimson that rivaled the sunset. Her heart was hammering a furious rhythm against her chest as she frantically shook her head, her hands making small, desperate chopping motions in the air. You don't have to say yes! she mouthed silently, terrified her mother was going to tease them to death.

But Soobin, ever the polite, eager-to-please boy from the city, couldn't possibly bring himself to refuse. Looking down at Mrs. Liu, a helpless, incredibly endearing smile broke across his handsome features, his deep dimples cutting sharp lines into his cheeks. The tips of his ears flared a bright, telltale pink against his dark fringe.

"I would love to help, Mrs. Liu," Soobin said softly, his deep voice dropping into a respectful, gentle register. He bowed his head low, the glossy comic book still securely clamped under his arm. "Thank you for inviting me. I'll be here at one sharp."

Y/n’s mother beamed, highly satisfied with her recruitment, while Y/N let out a quiet, defeated groan, covering her burning face with both hands as the warm June evening swallowed up the last traces of the sun.

Mrs. Liu’s smile widened, her eyes crinkling into small, triumphant crescents as she picked up the crinkling grocery bags from the step.

"Wonderful," she declared, her tone thoroughly satisfied. "Make sure you come with an empty stomach, Soobin-ah. I don't tolerate light eaters in my house, especially not boys who are working hard."

"I have a great appetite, Mrs. Liu, I won't disappoint you," Soobin promised quickly. He gave another small, polite nod, his posture still impossibly straight, though a soft, boyish chuckle escaped him.

Mrs. Liu shifted the bags to one hand and gave his broad shoulder an affectionate, firm pat as she stepped past him onto the porch. "I’m holding you to that. Now, go home before it gets entirely dark. Y/N, come inside and help me unload these before the ice cream melts."

"Coming, Eomma," Y/N murmured.

As her mother disappeared inside the shop, the screen door bouncing shut with a soft clack, the heavy twilight silence settled over the porch once more.

Y/N lowered her hands from her face, her cheeks still radiating a deep, stubborn heat. She looked up at Soobin, who was standing at the bottom of the steps now, looking up at her through his messy dark bangs. The deep orange of the sunset had completely bled into a soft, dusky purple, making the shadows around his sharp jawline look incredibly soft.

"You really didn't have to say yes," Y/N said, a helpless, quiet laugh bubbling up in her throat. "My mom is going to put you to work like a rented mule, and Halmeoni will probably make you chop garlic until your fingers turn numb."

Soobin let out a low, grounding chuckle, his shoulders relaxing completely now that Mrs. Liu was out of sight. He took a half-step backward down the gravel path, but his dark eyes remained fixed on hers, holding that same warm, magnetic stillness from the counter earlier.

"I wanted to say yes," he confessed softly. His deep voice carried a gentle, honest weight that made Y/N’s heart skip a beat all over again. He lifted the graphic novel slightly, a shy, dimpled smile playing on his lips.

Y/N bit her inner cheek to hide how fiercely her heart was reacting to his words. She leaned against the wooden railing, looking down at him. "Alright. Just don't say I didn't warn you when you're carrying fifty-pound stoneware jars across the yard tomorrow."

"I think I can handle it," he teased, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He gave her one last, lingering look, his thumb tracing the edge of the book cover. "Goodnight, Y/N."

"Goodnight, Soobin. See you tomorrow."

She watched him turn and walk down the quiet coastal road, his tall, broad-shouldered silhouette slowly blending into the summer shadows. Only when he disappeared around the bend did Y/N finally turn around to head inside, a permanent, breathless smile tugging at her lips.

The sticky heat of mid-June didn't ease up even after the sun dipped below the horizon. Outside the Liu household, the cicadas kept up their relentless, buzzing chorus, while inside, the old electric fan in the corner of the dining room turned its head from side to side with a rhythmic, familiar rattle.

It was later that same evening, just an hour or so after Mrs. Liu had extended her vibrant invitation to Soobin on the porch. Now, the house was quiet again, the front door locked for the night. The family had gathered around the heavy oak table for dinner—just Y/N, her mother Meiling, her father Min-jun, and her grandmother Halmeoni.

The table was filled with a comforting, familiar spread. At the center sat a steaming platter of boiled pork belly alongside a bowl of well-fermented kimchi from their previous batch, its spicy, garlic-heavy aroma filling the warm room.

"Eat more, Y/N-ah," Her halmeoni commanded, plopping a succulent piece of pork directly onto Y/N’s rice bowl. Her sharp eyes blinked behind her reading glasses. "You’ve been looking so thin lately and you were sweating all afternoon in that shop."

"I'm eating, Halmeoni," Y/N murmured, lifting her chopsticks. Her mind was still completely preoccupied, her cheeks still holding a faint, residual warmth from the way Soobin had looked at her on the porch just an hour ago.

Meiling beamed from her seat, pouring a glass of cold barley tea for her mother. "That city boy, Soobin, really has wonderful manners, doesn't he? He didn't hesitate for a second when I asked him to help with the earthenware jars tomorrow. He's got a good heart."

Y/N kept her eyes glued to her rice bowl, biting her inner cheek to hide a rising smile. "He was just being polite, Eomma."

Meiling smiled gently, leaning forward a bit as she watched her daughter's flustered reaction. "When I saw the two of you out there on the steps... you were smiling a way I haven't seen you smile since your graduation. And that boy... heavens, I thought he was going to trip over his own feet because he couldn't take his eyes off you."

"Eomma, please," Y/N whispered, her cheeks flaring with a sudden, betraying heat as she tried to keep her voice down in front of her father and grandmother. "He’s just being nice."

"A city boy who didn't hesitate for a single second to spend his precious summer vacation moving heavy jars for an old woman, just because your mother asked him to," Meiling countered, her voice dropping into a tender, teasing register. "He has a good, pure heart, Y/N-ah. Anyone can see it. And he looks at you like you're the only quiet spot on this entire noisy island."

While the women talked, Y/N’s father, Min-jun, sat quietly at the end of the table. He smiled faintly at his wife's enthusiasm, but his eyes carried a heavy, lingering exhaustion that felt starkly out of place amid the cheerful clinking of dishes. He had been quiet all evening, merely picking at his rice, his mind clearly miles away.

Min-jun set his chopsticks down against the porcelain rest with a soft, deliberate click. The sudden, clean noise from his end of the table made the rest of the family gradually taper off their conversation.

He looked across the table at his wife, then turned his gaze gently toward Y/N.

"Meiling, Mother, Y/N-ah," Min-jun began, his voice low and raspy, carrying the gentle weight of a man who had spent his entire life surrounded by old books. He took a slow breath, his shoulders sagging slightly. "I think... after this summer, we’re going to be closing the book rental shop for good."

The room went completely still. Even the heavy clinking of Halmeoni’s side-dish bowls stopped mid-air.

Y/N’s breath hitched in her throat, a sudden, cold weight dropping straight into her stomach. She stared at her father, her fingers gripping her own chopsticks so hard her knuckles turned white. "Appa... what do you mean? Closing it? After summer?"

"We’ll stay open through June and July, Y/N-ah," Min-jun explained softly, his eyes filled with a mixture of guilt and profound exhaustion. "I want to honor the current lease until the end of the season, and it gives us time to catalog the inventory. But once the autumn hits... we won't be reopening the doors."

Meiling lowered her glass of tea, the cheerful energy completely draining from her face, replaced by a sudden, tense worry. "Min-jun, is it really that bad?"

Min-jun sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. "The rent is going up again in July, Meiling. And with the new digital reading apps everyone uses in the city now, the younger kids on the island just don't come in to rent paper copies anymore. We’ve been operating at a loss since the spring. It doesn't make sense to keep fighting it. It’s time to let it go."

Y/N felt a thick lump form in her throat, the cozy warmth of the dinner completely evaporating. Her mind instantly flashed back to the afternoon—to the quiet sanctuary of the shop, the comic book on the counter, and the deep, raspy sound of Soobin's voice telling her that the city wouldn't feel lonely if they went together.

But as the reality settled in, the ache in her chest grew even heavier. The rental shop wasn't just a place where she shared quiet, stolen moments with Soobin. It was the very backdrop of her entire life. She had literally grown up between those towering wooden shelves. She remembered hiding under the front counter as a toddler, listening to the chime above the door sound whenever a customer walked in. She remembered the specific smell of the aged paper that had comforted her through childhood fevers, and the pencil marks on the back room doorframe tracing her height over the years.

Losing the shop didn't just mean losing a summer job or a place to see Soobin; it felt like her entire childhood was being packed up into cardboard boxes. Just as she was finding her rhythm in that quiet little space, a final countdown clock had been initiated, ticking away the final days of the only world she had ever truly known.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" Meiling’s voice broke through the suffocating fog in Y/N’s mind. Her mother’s hand reached across the table, warm and laced with a deep, maternal worry that only made the stinging behind Y/N’s eyes worse.

Y/N swallowed hard, trying to force down the hot, thick lump in her throat. She looked at her father, whose shoulders seemed smaller than they ever had before, weighed down by the silent defeat of a man losing his life's work.

"I'm fine," Y/N lied softly, her voice trembling just enough to give her away. She forced a faint, watery smile, trying to comfort him instead. "August is... we still have the whole summer. We can make the most of it."

Min-jun’s eyes softened with a mixture of profound gratitude and guilt. He reached over, briefly squeezing her hand. "Thank you, Y/N-ah. I know how hard this is for you."

Halmeoni let out a quiet, rare sigh, setting her bowl down with a muted thud. For once, the sharp-tongued matriarch had no corrections, no stubborn retorts about how things used to be. She merely picked up her glass of barley tea, her gaze fixed out the window, staring into the dark June night as if mourning the loss of the neighborhood's anchor right alongside them.

Dinner wrapped up in a subdued, mechanical quiet. The clinking of porcelain felt heavy, almost sacrilegious in the silent house. Min-jun quietly retreated to the small living room, pulling out the worn leather-bound ledgers to begin the grim task of cataloging, while Halmeoni slowly headed to her bedroom, leaving Y/N and her mother alone in the kitchen to handle the dishes.

The heavy, rhythmic splash of cool water and the scrape of the sponge filled the space. Y/N stood by the old stainless-steel sink, mechanically scrubbing a ceramic side dish, her eyes staring blankly at the swirling white suds. Her mind was a chaotic storm. She kept seeing the shop—not as it was today, but in fragments of a decade ago. She saw herself skinning her knee on the corner of the fiction aisle at age seven; she saw her father dusting the top shelves while humming an old folk song. It felt like a physical ache in her chest, a slow tearing away of her identity.

"You're going to scrub the glaze right off that plate if you keep going," Meiling said softly, breaking the silence.

Y/N blinked, realizing she had been rinsing the exact same small bowl for nearly five minutes. She quietly set it on the wire drying rack and wiped her damp hands on her apron, her shoulders slumping as a long, shaky exhale finally escaped her. "I just... I can't imagine the corner without the sign, Eomma. I can't imagine what the street will look like when it's dark."

Meiling stopped wiping down the heavy oak table. She walked over to the sink, leaning her hip against the counter and looking at her daughter with a gaze full of deep, intuitive tenderness. The kitchen light cast a soft, amber glow over her face, highlighting the worry lines that had etched themselves there during dinner.

"Your father has held onto that shop for as long as he could, mostly because he knew it was your sanctuary," Meiling murmured, reaching out to gently tuck a stray lock of hair behind Y/N’s ear. "But things change, Y/N-ah. The world outside this island gets bigger, louder, and faster. It’s hard for an old book rental to keep up with the digital age."

Y/N bit her lower lip, looking out the kitchen window into the pitch-black night. "I know. It just feels like everything is disappearing at once. I'm supposed to go to the city in autumn, and now... the shop won't even be here to come back to."

Meiling smiled gently, her expression shifting slightly as she remembered the flush on her daughter's cheeks from earlier that evening on the porch. "Not everything is disappearing, Y/N. Some things are just finding their footing."

Y/N looked up, her brow furrowing slightly. "What do you mean?"

"Soobin," Meiling said smoothly, a tiny, knowing glint returning to her eyes despite the somber mood of the house. "When I saw the two of you out there... you had a look on your face I haven't seen in a very long time. And him... heavens, he looked entirely captivated. He was practically vibrating with nerves trying to be polite."

Y/N’s cheeks instantly flared with a sudden, betraying heat, the heavy sadness in her chest momentarily eclipsed by a sharp, fluttering panic. "Eomma, please. We're just friends."

"A friend who didn't hesitate for a single second to spend his precious vacation making kimchi for an old woman, just because he wants to," Meiling countered, her voice dropping into a tender, teasing register. She leaned in a fraction closer, her hand resting over Y/N’s. "He has a good, pure heart, Y/N-ah. Anyone can see it. And he looks at you like you're the only quiet spot on this entire noisy island."

Y/N looked away, her heart hammering a fierce, chaotic rhythm against her ribs. She thought of Soobin’s deep, grounding voice from the afternoon—how he had said the city wouldn't feel terrifying or lonely if you had the right person going up there with you.

"The shop closing is going to be hard," Meiling whispered, her expression turning incredibly soft as she squeezed Y/N's hand. "But don't let the sadness of losing one room make you close your eyes to the person who is trying to stand right next to you in the next one. Make sure not to stay up late, I need your help early tomorrow morning to get the basins from the storage."

By one o'clock in the afternoon, the backyard had been transformed into a full-scale battleground of spice and salt. The thick, oppressive heat was at its absolute peak, baking the gravel yard, but nobody was paying attention to the thermometer anymore.

Soobin was currently sitting on a ridiculously small, blue plastic stool that Y/N had found for him in the shed. Because of his towering height, his knees were practically pushed up to his chest, making him look like a giant bunny. He had his oversized white sleeves rolled up past his elbows, revealing the tense muscles of his forearms, which were now completely stained bright red with chili paste.

"No, Soobin-ah! Not like that!" Halmeoni barked, leaning over from her own stool and swatting his forearm with a salted cabbage leaf. "You're just slapping the paste on the outside like you're painting a fence! You have to lift every single leaf and rub the spice mix deep into the core. Gently, but firmly!"

"Ah, I'm sorry, Halmeoni," Soobin blurted out, his eyes widening in pure panic. He quickly dropped into a flustered bow, nearly losing his balance on the tiny stool. A streak of red pepper paste immediately transferred from his gloved hand straight onto his cheek, right near his dimple.

Y/N, who was sitting across from him working on her own batch of cabbage, let out a loud, breathless laugh at the sight. "Hold still," she giggled, leaning across the giant stainless-steel basin separating them. She used the clean edge of her apron to gently wipe the spicy smudge off his face. "If you leave that there, your skin is going to burn all day."

Soobin froze completely under her touch, his breath catching in his throat. Up close, the tips of his ears were burning a vibrant, unmistakable crimson that had absolutely nothing to do with the red pepper flakes. He offered her a helpless, bashful smile, his deep dimples cutting sharp lines into his cheeks. "Thanks," he mumbled softly, his deep voice dropping into that quiet register that always made Y/N's chest flutter.

"Don't distract my worker, Y/N-ah!" Meiling teased from the outdoor sink, where she was rinsing the last batch of radishes. She shot her daughter with a highly amused, knowing look. "Soobin-ah, don't mind my mother. You're doing a wonderful job. Look at how well he moved those heavy jars earlier, Mother! Min-jun’s back would have broken in half."

From the shade of the porch, Min-jun chuckled, lifting a cold glass of cola in Soobin's direction. "She's right, son. You saved my life today."

"It was really no trouble at all, Mr. Liu," Soobin said quickly, sitting up as straight as his tiny stool would allow. He turned back to the massive basin of cabbage, his expression turning intensely focused. Determined to get it right this time, he carefully lifted a crisp leaf of napa cabbage, minding Halmeoni's instructions as he meticulously massaged the bright red, garlic-heavy paste into the very core.

Y/N watched him work, the heavy ache in her heart from last night's announcement about the shop closing at the end of August momentarily lifting. The scent of fresh ginger, fish sauce, and toasted sesame filled the heavy summer air. Looking at him right now, the future didn't feel quite as lonely.

By the time the final head of cabbage was packed tightly into the last massive earthenware jar and stored away, the fierce afternoon sun had finally dipped below the horizon. The sticky heat softened into a warm, heavy twilight, and the rhythmic, familiar rattle of the old electric fan in the corner of the dining room hummed to life.

Inside, the rich, savory aroma of boiled pork belly had been drifting from the stove for the last two hours, completely taking over the house.

"Everyone wash up! The bossam is ready!" Meiling announced from the kitchen.

Soobin tried to stand up from the porch steps where he had been resting, but his long legs had been worked so hard that his knees gave a loud, agonizing crack. He stumbled slightly, a low, embarrassed groan escaping his lips as he fought to find his balance on his numb feet.

Y/N quickly caught him by the elbow, stabilizing his towering frame. "I told you Halmeoni’s boot camp was no joke."

Soobin looked down at her, a helpless, dimpled smile broke through his exhaustion. "My legs feel like jelly," he whispered, his deep voice carrying a tired, raspy edge that vibrated right through Y/N’s hand. "But I think I passed the test. Halmeoni didn't hit me with a cabbage leaf for the last hour."

"That’s practically a gold medal in this house," Y/N teased, her heart doing a familiar, erratic little skip at how close he was standing before she reluctantly let go of his arm.

The indoor dining room felt like heaven. The heavy oak table was practically groaning under the weight of the night's feast. At the center sat a towering platter of the bossam—succulent, thick slices of pork belly boiled to a perfect tenderness with ginger and soybean paste. Next to it was a large earthen bowl filled with a sampling of the fresh summer kimchi they had just spent all afternoon making.

As they all sat down, Halmeoni immediately took the chopsticks and piled a mountain of the bright red kimchi right on top of Soobin's steaming bowl of rice.

"Eat," Halmeoni commanded, though her sharp eyes were noticeably softer than they had been that afternoon. "A boy who works like a horse needs to eat like one."

"Thank you, Halmeoni," Soobin said, bowing his head respectfully before taking a massive, perfectly constructed wrap of tender pork belly, fresh kimchi, and rice. He stuffed the entire thing into his mouth, his cheeks puffing out completely as he chewed, a look of pure, unadulterated bliss spreading across his handsome face.

Min-jun laughed warmly from the head of the table, pouring Soobin a tall glass of ice-cold cola. "Slow down, son, there’s plenty more in the kitchen."

Y/N watched the scene unfold, her chest tightening with a bittersweet ache. She looked at her father, whose face looked brighter and less burdened than it had last night, momentarily distracted from the impending closure of the shop by the joy of a full house. Then she looked across the table at Soobin, who was currently receiving an earful from Meiling about how he needed to take a massive container of kimchi home to his own family.

The shop that had anchored her childhood was still going to close at the end of the summer. That reality hadn't changed. But looking at the way Soobin seamlessly fit into the loud, chaotic, garlic-scented rhythm of her family, Y/N felt the heavy, suffocating fear of the future begin to ease. The sanctuary she grew up in was slipping away, but a new one was quietly being built right in front of her.

The initial clattering of chopsticks gradually slowed down to a comfortable, relaxed rhythm as the mountain of pork belly finally dwindled. Soobin was on his second bowl of rice, looking thoroughly content despite his aching muscles.

Min-jun leaned back in his chair, swirling the amber liquid of his barley tea. He looked over at Soobin, his eyes carrying a gentle, curious warmth. "Soobin-ah, your grandmother mentioned to me at the market last week that you’re studying at Korea University. Engineering, wasn't it?"

Soobin carefully swallowed his bite, setting his chopsticks down with his usual textbook politeness. "Civil engineering, yes, Mr. Liu. I’m actually about to start my fourth year this coming autumn."

"A senior already. That’s a heavy year," Min-jun nodded with deep, genuine respect. "The campus in Seoul must be beautiful, but I imagine the coursework keeps you incredibly busy. It’s an elite school afterall."

"It can be a bit overwhelming," Soobin admitted, rubbing the back of his neck, his ears tipping into a faint pink at the praise. "The pressure is quite high, and the city moves so fast. That's why my grandmother insisted I come down to the island for the summer before my final year starts. She said my brain was going to short-circuit."

Meiling smiled warmly, placing another piece of pork on his plate. "Your grandmother is a very wise woman. Seoul is no place to be trapped in during the heavy summer days anyway." She paused, a thoughtful look crossing her face as she looked at him. "You know, Soobin-ah... did you come down to visit Jeju at all last year? Because I swear, I haven't actually seen your face around the village since the summer festival back in 1999."

Soobin let out a soft laugh, his dimples catching the light. "No, Mrs. Liu, I couldn't make it down last year because of an internship. But you're right, 1999 was probably the last time I stayed for the whole summer."

"Ah, I remember," Meiling chuckled, shaking her head fondly. "You were always attached at the hip to that little pack of boys. What happened to them? Yeonjun was one of them, right? Heavens, he was one of the smartest students Jeju had ever seen. Everyone knew he'd go far."

Soobin offered a slightly wistful, candid smile. "To be honest, we haven't really kept in touch. I know Yeonjun went up to Seoul for college, and I think Taehyun did too, but we haven't actually spoken in years."

"And what about that other one?" Halmeoni chimed in, setting her teacup down with a sharp click. "The loud one. The one who nearly knocked over my radish bins on his bicycle."

"Beomgyu?" Soobin fielded the question with a soft chuckle. "I only know through my grandmother he’s staying in Daegu right now. But again, it’s been a long time since we ran in the same circles."

Meiling tapped her chin thoughtfully, looking over at him. "And what about the youngest one of your old group? Kai, right? He was always such a shy, sweet boy. Heavens, he’s grown up so handsome now, but he's still so quiet. I barely see him around the village anymore. Ever since his close friend... the Jiang's daughter... moved away, it feels like he hasn't gone out much at all."

Soobin paused, his chopsticks hovering just inches from his bowl. He looked up at Meiling, his eyes widening in genuine surprise. "Wait... really?" He blinked, a wave of sudden concern overtaking his face. "I had no idea. I knew his friend moved, but I didn't think... I just assumed he was busy with his own life. We haven't spoken since we were kids, so I'm completely out of the loop."

"Oh, it's quite sad, really," Meiling sighed softly, shaking her head. "He completely keeps to himself now."

"They all went up to the big city, or stayed locked away," Min-jun murmured softly, his eyes drifting toward the dark window for a brief moment. The quiet melancholy from earlier touched his features. "Everyone goes up to Seoul eventually, or things change. It's where the world moves now."

Y/N watched her father, her heart giving a quiet, painful throb. She knew exactly where his mind was wandering back to the reality that their quiet little paper-book rental couldn't compete with the fast-moving, digital world anymore. She bit her lower lip, keeping her eyes fixed on her plate, terrified that her face would give away the secret she was keeping locked tight in her chest. Soobin didn't know yet that the shop was closing in August.

And ironically, August was the exact same month Y/N was supposed to pack her bags and leave for the city herself, finally starting her first year as a fine arts major.

Soobin, still looking slightly troubled by the news about Kai, seemed to sense the sudden, heavy shift in the room's atmosphere. He looked from Min-jun’s distant expression to the way Y/N was suddenly staring intensely at her rice bowl. Though he was curious, he politely tucked his questions away, knowing it wasn't his place to pry into a family's private matters.

Instead, he turned back to Min-jun with an earnest smile, trying to lift the mood. "The island has been a wonderful break, Mr. Liu. Honestly, your book rental shop has been my favorite place since I got here. It’s so quiet, and it has a warmth that you just can't find in any library in Seoul."

Min-jun blinked, pulled out of his thoughts by the sincerity in the young man's voice. A genuine, touched smile finally broke through his tired expression. "Is that so? Well... I'm glad our little shop could offer you some peace."

"It really does," Soobin murmured softly, risking a quick glance across the table at Y/N.

As the tension melted away into the fan-cooled air of the dining room, Y/N let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She looked at Soobin, grateful for his quiet intuition, knowing that the heavy countdown to August was still ticking—but for tonight, the room was full of warmth.

After the final dishes were dried and tucked away into the cupboards, the heavy, garlic-scented warmth of the kitchen was replaced by the cool, salty breeze of the coastal night.

Y/N and Soobin slipped out the back door quietly, careful not to disturb her parents, who were already huddled in the living room over the store's massive ledgers, or Halmeoni, who had retired to her bedroom with a radio humming low.

They walked side by side down the narrow gravel path leading away from the house. The village was completely dark now, illuminated only by the occasional amber glow of a streetlamp and the brilliant, scattered stars overhead. The intense, oppressive heat of the afternoon had finally broken, leaving behind a soft, balmy air that smelled heavily of sea salt and wild grass.

For the first few minutes, neither of them spoke. The only sound was the synchronized crunching of their sneakers against the loose stones and the distant, rhythmic crash of the tide hitting the shoreline a few hundred meters away. Soobin walked with his hands jammed deep into his shorts pockets, his tall shoulders slightly hunched as he looked down at his feet.

"Are your legs holding up?" Y/N broke the silence, glancing up at him with a small, teasing smile. 

Soobin let out a soft, raspy laugh, his deep voice cutting cleanly through the quiet night air. He shook his head, the dark bangs that had been damp with sweat earlier now lifting slightly in the ocean breeze. "They’re still a little numb, honestly. Your grandmother really doesn't hold back. I think I used muscles today that I didn't even know existed."

He paused, looking out toward the dark horizon where the black sea met the star-lit sky.

"But it was nice. It’s been a really long time since I felt that kind of tired. In Seoul, you're just... tired from sitting at a desk or staring at school work."

Y/N nodded slowly, her fingers lightly tugged at the edge of her oversized cardigan. "My family can be a lot. Thanks for being so patient with them and for helping my dad with the jars. He really needed it."

"I liked it," Soobin said sincerely, stopping near an old wooden guardrail that overlooked the rocky shore. He leaned his forearms against the weathered wood, looking down at the white sea foam swirling below. "Your family is really warm, Y/N. At dinner, when your mother was talking about the old days... it made me realize how much I've missed since I left."

Y/N leaned against the rail next to him, keeping a comfortable, friendly distance between them, though her eyes remained fixed on the dark water. "You seemed really surprised about Kai."

Soobin sighed, a faint, troubled line forming between his brows. "I was. We really were just kids who played arcade games and threw rocks into the ocean back then. We didn't talk about our feelings or anything. When I went back to Seoul, we just... stopped calling. To hear that he's so isolated now... it feels weird. Like the village I remembered is changing, and I didn't even notice."

He turned his head to look down at her, his dark eyes searching her face in the dim light of a distant streetlamp. "Everything feels like it’s shifting. Your father looked so tired at dinner when we started talking about Seoul like the city was some kind of shadow."

Y/N felt a familiar, sharp pang in her chest. She looked away from his gaze, staring down at her own hands gripping the guardrail. The secret of the shop's closure in August felt heavier than ever, burning a hole right through her silence.

"The city is a shadow for him," Y/N whispered softly, her voice barely carrying over the sound of the waves. She took a slow, steadying breath, deciding maybe he would understand. "He's closing the rental shop, Soobin. At the end of August."

Soobin froze. He didn't say anything for a long moment, the news hanging in the dark space between them. "Closing it?" he asked quietly, his voice dropping into a lower, gentler register. "For good?"

"The rent is going up, and nobody buys paper books or rents comics anymore because of the digital apps in the city," Y/N explained, her throat tightening as she forced the words out. "We’ve been operating at a loss since spring. August is our last month."

She swallowed hard, looking up at the sky to keep the tears from spilling over. "I've lived in that shop my entire life and now... it's just going to be gone."

Soobin didn't offer any empty platitudes. He didn't tell her it would be fine, or that change was good. Instead, he slowly shifted his position, turning fully toward her. He kept his hands in his pockets, but his gaze was full of a deep, intuitive empathy.

"I'm sorry, Y/N," he said softly, his voice steady and grounding. "I know I've only been going there for a little while, but I can tell that place isn't just a store. It's... it's you. It has your peace in it."

Y/N let out a shaky, breathless laugh, looking down at her sneakers. "And the irony is, August is when I'm supposed to leave for Seoul too. For my first year of art school. It feels like everything I know is disappearing all at once, and I'm being pushed into this giant, loud city that I'm terrified of."

Soobin watched her, his expression softening until his deep dimples faintly showed in the shadows. He gave her a small, reassuring nudge with his shoulder—a familiar, comfortable gesture between friends.

"You don't have to be terrified," Soobin murmured, his raspy voice steady against the ocean breeze. "Seoul is loud, and it moves way too fast, yeah. But it's not a shadow if you have a place to anchor yourself."

He offered her a warm, genuine smile. "I'll be up there. I'm entering my final year, so I know the city pretty well by now. When August comes, and everything here closes down... you won't be entering that next chapter alone. I've got your back. I'll be right there."

Y/N looked up, meeting his eyes. The suffocating weight that had been pressing down on her chest since last night didn't completely vanish, but as she looked at Soobin the terrifying expanse of the future suddenly felt a little smaller and a little safer.

The walk back to his grandmother’s house felt longer than usual, his numb legs working on pure autopilot while his mind replayed the quiet conversation by the guardrail. The night air was peaceful, but his chest felt heavy with the realization of how fast the world was changing for everyone on the island.

As Soobin approached the front gate of the traditional courtyard house, the warm, amber light from the living room windows spilled onto the gravel. Even before he unlocked the heavy front door, the muffled sound of familiar voices and bright, collective laughter drifted outside. His parents, who had come down from Seoul to join his grandparents for a brief family visit, were clearly right in the middle of a lively late-night conversation.

He stepped inside the entryway, the cool linoleum floor a welcome relief.

He leaned against the wooden wall, sliding his feet out of his dusty sneakers. He carefully placed them on the bottom shelf of the shoe rack by the door, making sure they were aligned perfectly out of habit.

As he stood up, he fished his bulky folder phone out of his pocket. In the year 2001, getting a decent signal anywhere near the coastal cliffs of Jeju was a daily miracle. He flicked the phone open, the tiny green-lit screen casting a dim glow over his face. He held it up slightly, watching the signal indicator dance before it finally settled on a single, fragile bar.

A rapid succession of high-pitched electronic beeps suddenly pierced the quiet entryway.

Because he had been off the grid all afternoon doing manual labor, the backlog of SMS messages from his engineering friends up at Korea University had finally pushed through. His screen was flooded with a dozen unread texts—mostly his classmates panicking about upcoming registration dates for their fourth-year, or complaining about the stifling Seoul humidity while asking when he was coming back up to the city.

"Soobin-ah?" his mother called out, her voice cutting through the laughter as she poked her head into the hallway.

Seeing him standing there with his blinking phone, she smiled and waved him into the living room. "Come inside, why are you hovering out there in the dark? How was it?"

Soobin snapped his phone shut, the sharp clack echoing in the small space, and slipped it back into his pocket. He stepped fully into the warm light of the living room, offering his family a tired but genuine smile.

"It was good, Mom," his deep voice carried a soft, slightly raspy edge from the long day. "I helped move all the heavy onggi jars, and then we spent the whole afternoon making the kimchi. Y/n’s Halmeoni only swatted my arm a couple of times at the beginning, so I think I did okay."

"A couple of times?" his father teased, looking up from his newspaper with a grin. "That's a passing grade from Halmeoni Sun-hee, son. You survived."

"They even fed me a huge bossam feast for dinner," Soobin added, rubbing the back of his neck as his ears tipped into a faint pink. "They really took care of me."

His mother looked at him closely, her maternal instinct picking up on the quiet, lingering look in his eyes and the subtle exhaustion in his posture. "Well, that was very kind of them. You must be completely exhausted after all that lifting. Go wash up and get some rest, okay? Your shoulders look incredibly tight."

"I will," Soobin nodded respectfully.

He excused himself and headed down the quiet hallway toward his small room. After closing the door behind him, the distant sound of his family’s chatter faded into a soft hum, leaving him in the peaceful, cool stillness of the space.

Soobin didn't turn on the main light. Instead, he walked over to the bed and sat on the edge, staring out the window. The dark, rolling waves of the Jeju sea were visible under the starlight, and the rhythmic sound of the tide washed over the room, carrying the faint, clean scent of salt and wild grass.

He pulled his folder phone out once more, the green screen blinking with those urgent, demanding texts from Seoul about graduation, senior seminars, and the fast-approaching autumn. Up until yesterday, that had been his only trajectory—the expected, predictable path of a fourth-year engineering student.

But tonight, as he looked at those messages, a sudden, fierce ache tightened in his chest.

For the first time in his life, he found himself wishing he could grab the hands of the clock and hold them perfectly still. He didn't want the calendar to flip to August. He didn't want to pack his bags, leave his grandmother's quiet garden, or watch the paper-book rental shop close its doors for the last time. He just wanted to freeze time right here, where he was finally learning what it felt like to be a person again.

Soobin slowly closed the phone, letting the green light die out completely, and set it face-down on the desk. He leaned his elbows on the windowsill and rested his chin in his hands, watching the distant sea and silently wishing, with everything he had, that this summer would never have to end.

The heavy afternoon heat was at its peak when the little bell above the rental shop door let out a sharp, metallic jingle.

Y/N looked up from the wooden counter, where she had been using a damp cloth to wipe down a stack of old, sun-bleached romance novels. Soobin was standing in the doorway, the bright glare of the Jeju sun framing his towering figure. He looked distinctly out of place compared to his usual neat appearance.

In his right hand, he was clutching a round, translucent plastic container with a bright red lid. In his left arm, he tucked a stack of three thick comic books he’d pulled from his own bedroom shelves.

"Soobin-ah?" Y/N asked, setting the rag down. "Is everything okay? You look like you're on a mission."

Soobin closed the door behind him, the sudden silence of the fan-cooled room swallowing the distant cicadas outside. He walked over to the counter, his sneakers squeaking slightly on the wooden floor. He set the container down carefully, though his fingers lingered on the plastic lid.

"I... I wanted to ask you a favor," he said, his deep voice dropping into a hesitant, quiet register. He rubbed the back of his neck, his ears already tipping into a faint pink. "I’m going to check on Kai. My grandmother gave me his address this morning, and she practically ordered me to take this japchae over to his house."

Y/N nodded slowly, recalling the heavy, quiet look that had crossed Soobin’s face during dinner the night before when her mother mentioned the boy's isolation. "That’s really nice of you, Soobin. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it."

"The thing is..." Soobin paused, looking down at the stack of comics in his hand, his thumb tracing the worn edge of the spine. "I’m terrified of going alone. We haven't spoken in so long. If I just show up on his doorstep out of nowhere." He said letting out a helpless, self-deprecating chuckle. "I'm worried I'll scare him off. He was always so shy."

He looked back up at her, his dark eyes carrying a vulnerable, earnest appeal. "I know he doesn't know you, and it's a lot to ask... but I was wondering if you could come with me? Having someone else there might make it feel less like an interrogation and more like... a normal visit. You have this way of making spaces feel safe, Y/N. I could really use that right now."

Y/N stared at him, a warm, quiet flutter stirring in her chest at his words. It was the first time he had explicitly acknowledged the comfort she tried to provide, and seeing this tall guy look so genuinely nervous about facing a childhood friend made him feel incredibly real.

"Let me just tell my dad," Y/N said softly, a small smile breaking across her face. She stepped into the back room. 

"Let's go. Lead the way!"

The walk to the northern edge of the village was entirely different from their moonlit stroll the night before. The sun was blazing, turning the dirt paths into dusty, shimmering trails. Soobin kept a steady, protective pace beside her, holding the container flat against his chest to keep anything from spilling.

"I don't even know what I'm going to say," Soobin admitted as they turned down a particularly quiet, overgrown lane where the houses were spaced further apart. "What if he doesn't even want to see me? A sudden visit might just feel like an intrusion."

"It won't," Y/N reassured him, her voice a steady anchor against his anxiety. "Even if he's shocked at first, knowing that someone remembered him means something. Just breathe, Soobin."

He took a slow breath, nodding as they finally stopped in front of a rusted iron gate. Despite the weathered metal of the entrance, the yard inside was beautifully well-kept, overflowing with vibrant summer flowers. Neatly trimmed bushes framed rows of blooming hydrangeas and colorful wild lilies, their sweet fragrance cutting through the thick, salty afternoon air. The stone walkway was swept completely clean of dirt, creating a sharp contrast against the traditional house itself, which looked completely asleep—its heavy wooden doors and paper-screen windows firmly shut against the outside world.

Soobin swallowed hard, stepped through the creaking gate, and walked up to the low wooden porch. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before knocking firmly three times on the thick wood.

Y/N stood a few paces back near the edge of the porch, keeping her hands tucked into her cardigan pockets, intentionally giving Soobin the space to be the primary focus.

For a long, agonizing minute, there was nothing but the sound of the wind rustling the grass. Soobin looked back at Y/N, an anxious line forming between his brows, his shoulders tensing as if he was ready to turn around and apologize for wasting her time. But just as he shifted his feet, a soft click echoed from inside, and the heavy door creaked open a few inches.

Kai stood in the dim light of the entryway. Y/N’s mother hadn't been exaggerating—the boy had grown up incredibly handsome, with sharp, delicate, foreign-tinged features and large, expressive eyes. But he looked entirely fragile, his shoulders hunched inside an oversized, faded gray sweatshirt despite the summer heat. He blinked rapidly against the sudden, harsh glare of the afternoon sun, his gaze shifting from the wooden floor up to the towering frame in front of him.

Kai's eyes widened, a thick note of disbelief washing over his face. "Soobin-hyung?"

"Hey, Kai-ah," Soobin said. His voice instantly dropped into that warm, incredibly gentle register Y/N had heard him use with her grandmother—completely devoid of pressure. He offered a small, hesitant smile, his deep dimples popping out. "It's... it's been a really long time. My grandmother told me you were still here, and she made way too much japchae yesterday. I also remembered you used to read these specific comics when we were kids, so... I thought I’d bring them by."

Kai stared at the plastic container, then down at the books. His fingers gripped the edge of the wooden door so tightly his knuckles turned white. He looked completely overwhelmed, his eyes darting briefly over Soobin's shoulder to where Y/N was standing. He didn't know her, and the sight of a stranger made him instinctively shrink back into the shadows of the hallway.

Sensing his hesitation, Y/N gave Kai a small, incredibly polite nod from her spot on the gravel, keeping her expression entirely neutral and unthreatening, letting him know she was just there as a quiet observer.

Soobin noticed the shift and immediately stepped slightly into Kai’s line of sight, drawing the younger boy's attention back to him. "She’s a friend from the book rental shop down the road," Soobin explained softly, keeping his tone light. "You don't have to worry about us, Kai-ah. I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay."

The sincerity in Soobin's voice seemed to cut through the heavy, protective walls Kai had built around himself. Kai looked at the fresh kimchi, then back up at Soobin’s face—noticing the sweat on his forehead and the dirt on his shirt. Soobin had actually worked for this, just to see him.

Slowly, hesitatingly, Kai pushed the door open a few inches wider, the old hinges letting out a faint groan.

"Do you... do you want to come in?" Kai whispered, his voice small and raspy from disuse. "My mom is out, but... I can make some cold iced tea."

Soobin let out a quiet, invisible breath of relief, the tension melting from his broad shoulders. He risked a quick, grateful glance back at Y/N, a silent thank you shining in his eyes, before turning back to the younger boy. "We’d love to, Kai-ah. Lead the way."

Kai gave a small, hesitant nod and turned into the dim, cool hallway of the house. The interior smelled faintly of dried herbs and floor wax, a quiet, preserved space that felt entirely removed from the blistering mid-afternoon heat outside.

Soobin stepped over the threshold first, carefully sliding out of his sneakers at the entryway. He glanced back at Y/N, waiting an extra half-second to ensure she was following close behind, before leading the way into a modest, sunlit sitting room. The screen doors were slid back just enough to let in the scent of the hydrangeas, though the room itself remained entirely still.

"Please, sit," Kai whispered, gesturing vaguely toward a low wooden table surrounded by neatly placed floor cushions. He didn't wait for them to answer before disappearing into the adjacent kitchen, his oversized sweatshirt swallowing his frame as he moved.

Soobin took a seat on one of the cushions, his long legs folding awkwardly as he tried to find a comfortable position. He set the plastic container down neatly on the polished wood of the table. Y/N sat down a comfortable distance beside him, smoothing her cardigan over her knees.

"You did great out there," she murmured softly, leaning in just enough so her voice wouldn't carry into the kitchen.

Soobin let out a breathy, quiet laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. His ears were still a faint shade of pink. "My heart was beating so fast I thought he’d hear it. But... seeing him now, he really hasn't changed that much. He's just so quiet." He looked toward the kitchen doorway, a look of soft, brotherly concern returning to his eyes. "I’m glad I came. I’m glad you made me come."

Before Y/N could reply, the soft pad of footsteps announced Kai's return. He carried a small wooden tray holding three glasses filled with amber iced tea, condensation already pooling at the bases. He placed the tray down with meticulous care before sliding onto a cushion across from them.

For a moment, a heavy silence settled over the table. Kai kept his gaze fixed firmly on the condensation rolling down his glass, his fingers nervously picking at a loose thread on his sleeve.

Soobin, sensing the younger boy's stifling awkwardness, decided to handle the silence gently. He slid the plastic container forward a few inches.

"My grandmother wanted to make sure you got this while it was fresh," Soobin began, his deep voice incredibly soft and grounding in the quiet room. "And honestly... I wanted to come see how you were doing. I know it’s been years, Kai-ah. But when my mom told me you were still around the village, I kept thinking about how we all used to spend our summers down by the arcade."

Kai’s eyes shifted from his glass to the container, and then up to Soobin. A tiny, fragile look of recognition passed over his face. "The arcade," he murmured, his voice slightly stronger now. "The one with the broken joystick on the fighting game."

"Exactly," Soobin said, his dimples finally showing fully as he relaxed into a warm smile. " Yeonjun-hyung used to lose his mind when we ran out of coins, and Beomgyu would always try to shake the machine to get a free game until the owner chased us out. Taehyun was the only one smart enough to just sit back and watch us get in trouble."

A faint, incredibly brief smile tugged at the corner of Kai's lips. It was small, but it was there—a tiny fracture in the heavy walls he had spent the last few years building. He looked up from the table, his large eyes shifting from Soobin over to Y/N, no longer shrinking away quite as much.

"I remember," Kai whispered softly, looking back at Soobin with a quiet, lingering vulnerability. "Yeonjun-hyung always bought the melon popsicles afterward."

"Only because Beomgyu begged him until he gave in," Soobin replied gently, his broad shoulders relaxing as the ancient familiarity of their friendship began to spark back to life. He risked a quick, deeply grateful glance back at Y/N, a silent thank you shining in his eyes, before turning all his attention back to the younger boy.

The amber afternoon sun eventually dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in deep shades of purple and burnt orange as twilight settled over the quiet courtyard. The sliding doors remained open, letting in a cool evening breeze and the rhythmic, distant sound of the tide.

Over the course of the afternoon, the thick, suffocating awkwardness that had filled the room completely dissolved. As the hours slipped by, Y/N and Kai became well acquainted, the initial tension giving way to an incredibly easy, comfortable dynamic. Y/N was completely shocked to learn that Kai was actually studying marketing at a university in Busan, a choice that felt entirely unbelievable for someone so naturally shy. Kai explained that while the fast-paced energy of Busan forced him out of his shell during the semester, he usually flew straight back to Jeju during holidays, needing the absolute quiet of the island to recharge.

Listening to them talk, Soobin relaxed completely against the chair, a proud, brotherly warmth settling into his features as he watched his friend open up.

By the time the room grew dark, shadowed by the fading twilight, it was clear they had stayed far longer than intended. Realizing how late it had gotten, Soobin and Y/N reluctantly stood up to gather their things and say their goodbyes, promising not to let another long stretch of silence grow between them.

As they stepped back out through the rusted iron gate and onto the dark dirt path, a deep, peaceful contentment hung in the air. Soobin looked down at Y/N, the heavy anxiety that had locked his shoulders together that afternoon completely gone. He didn't say a word, but the soft, lingering curve of his dimples in the starlight told her everything.

They walked down the narrow, sloping path toward the shore, the sound of the ocean growing louder and heavier with every step. The sand was cool beneath their feet, slipping over the edges of their shoes as they navigated the dark beach until they found a flat, dry spot far away from the reach of the tide.

Soobin pulled his lightweight jacket off, laying it out over the sand for Y/N to sit on. Once she was settled, he sank down directly onto the sand beside her, pulling his long legs up and looping his arms loosely around his knees to mirror her posture.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. The sheer scale of the Jeju night sky was breathtaking; without the blinding neon of the city, the Milky Way was a faint, glowing ribbon of violet and silver cut right across the ink-black dome. Millions of stars flickered with a quiet, ancient intensity, casting a soft, pale light over the dark surface of the rolling sea.

"I forgot how many there were," Soobin whispered, his deep voice barely carrying over the steady roar of the waves. He looked completely mesmerized, his head tilted back as the starlight reflected beautifully in his wide, dark eyes. "In Seoul, if you look up at night, you're lucky if you see three. You forget that the rest of the universe is even up there."

Y/N rested her chin on her knees, watching him side-by-side. Sitting right next to him like this, she could feel the faint warmth radiating from his shoulder, his towering frame looking relaxed and small against the vast backdrop of the dark ocean. His expression was entirely soft, stripped of the heavy academic pressure and expectation that usually followed him.

"My dad says the stars here don't change," Y/N said quietly, turning her gaze back to the sky. "No matter how many shops close or how many people leave for the city, they stay exactly like this. I think that's why I like coming down here when I'm overwhelmed. It feels like a promise."

Soobin turned his head to look at her, his dark eyes dropping to the way the starlight caught the edges of her hair and the soft cotton of her cardigan.

"A promise of what?" he asked softly.

"That some things will always be waiting for you," she replied, turning her head to meet his eyes. "No matter how far away you go."

The space between them felt entirely charged with a quiet, heavy sincerity. Soobin didn't break eye contact. The distant, urgent texts waiting on his folder phone in his pocket felt a million miles away, completely powerless against the slow, steady rhythm of the Jeju tide and the girl sitting right beside him.

Slowly, almost unconsciously, Soobin shifted his hand on his knee, his fingers dropping onto the sand, just inches away from where her hand rested on the edge of his jacket.

"I don't think I'm going to look at the sky in Seoul the same way after this," he murmured, his voice dropping into a rare, vulnerable whisper that made her heart skip a beat. "I'll just be looking for this view. Every single night."

The silence that followed his words wasn't heavy; it was thick with a sudden, breathless weight that seemed to push the sound of the crashing waves into the far background.

Y/N didn't pull away. Instead, she kept her eyes locked on his, her breath catching in her throat as she felt the absolute sincerity radiating from him. The space between them suddenly felt entirely too small, yet agonizingly wide. Every small detail seemed magnified in the dark—the faint, steady rise and fall of his broad chest, the way his dark bangs brushed just above his eyes, and the quiet warmth radiating from his shoulder where it nearly touched hers.

Soobin’s gaze flicked down to her lips. It was a brief, fleeting look, but it stayed there a beat too long before rising back to her eyes, carrying a silent, hesitant question. He was an overthinker by nature, always analyzing, always keeping his composure, but right now, his throat visibly swallowed. The steady, predictable rhythm he usually relied on was completely gone, replaced by a restless, heavy gravity pulling him closer.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the distance began to shrink.

Soobin unlooped his arms from his knees, his movements deliberately slow, as if he was afraid a sudden breath might shatter the fragile glass of the moment. He shifted his weight, his large frame angling toward her on the sand, effectively blocking out the cool ocean breeze and trapping her in the sudden, concentrated warmth of his shadow.

He didn't rush. He leaned in an inch, then paused, his dark eyes searching hers in the starlight, giving her every opportunity to blink, to laugh it off, or to turn away. The scent of the salty tide mixed with his familiar, clean scent, filling the tiny space left between them.

Y/N’s fingers twitched against the sand, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She didn't move back. If anything, she tilted her face up just a fraction, a silent invitation that broke through the last of his carefully held restraint.

A soft, shaky exhale escaped Soobin's lips, his gaze locking completely onto hers as his head tilted slightly, his shadow finally falling over her face entirely.

He closed the final remaining inch, his lips brushing against hers with a gentle, agonizingly slow hesitation.

The kiss was entirely low-key and quiet, yet it carried the immense weight of every unspoken thought he’d held back since arriving on the island. It was a soft, tentative pressure that gradually deepened as the initial nervousness melted away, filling the space between them with a profound, consuming warmth.

Slowly, lifting his hand from his knee, Soobin reached up. His long, slightly trembling fingers brushed carefully against her jawline before his palm came to rest against her cheek. His skin was warm, a stark and comforting contrast to the cool night breeze. His thumb swept across her cheekbone in a feather-light, reverent caress, a gesture so tender it made the rest of the world completely fade away. It was their very first kiss, and the gentle touch of his hand seemed to anchor her to him, letting her feel just how much he was treasuring the moment.

The world around them completely dissolved—there were no distant city pressures, no looming expectations, just the steady rhythm of the Jeju tide, the soft stroke of his thumb, and the solid, reassuring reality of his presence.

When Soobin finally pulled back, he didn't move far. He stayed close, his forehead resting gently against hers for a fleeting second, his breath hitching as he tried to catch it.

As he slowly sat up and the starlight hit his face, Y/N could see the sudden, frantic rush of crimson flooding his cheeks and tipping the tops of his ears. The composed, towering boy who had calmly navigated the afternoon was completely gone, replaced by someone entirely flustered. He let out a breathless, incredibly shy chuckle, his hand dropping from her cheek to rub the back of his neck as a deep, helpless dimple carved into his cheek.

"I... I've been wanting to do that day we got stuck at the bus stop because of the rain," he whispered, his deep voice carrying a sweet, sheepish note. He looked down at his lap, his fingers nervously tracing a pattern on his knee, before looking back up through his dark bangs with a quiet, happy vulnerability. "I hope that was okay."

Y/N let out a breath she didn't realize she’d been holding, a soft smile breaking across her face. "It was more than okay, Soobin-ah."

In her words, the tension completely melted from his broad shoulders. He let out a quiet, relieved laugh, his hand finally dropping from the back of his neck. Still a bit flustered, he reached down and carefully slid his hand over the sand until his fingers found hers, tentatively weaving them together. His grip was warm and firm, his thumb immediately starting a slow, rhythmic sweep across the back of her hand.

He shifted his posture, pulling his knees back up toward his chest but staying close enough that his shoulder remained firmly pressed against hers. He looked back out at the vast, ink-black ocean, the steady roar of the crashing waves filling the silence between them.

"I was really anxious about coming back here," Soobin admitted softly, his deep voice dropping into that quiet, grounding register. "I thought everything would feel too different, or that I’d just feel like a ghost walking around my old life. But today... with Kai, and now out here..."

He paused, turning his head to look down at her. In the pale starlight, his dark eyes were incredibly soft, stripped entirely of the exhaustion and academic pressure he usually carried around.

"It’s the first time in a really long time that I’ve felt like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be."

Y/N leaned her head lightly against his shoulder, feeling the solid, comforting weight of him bracing against her. "Jeju has a way of doing that," she murmured, watching the stars flicker above the horizon. "It waits for you to realize what actually matters."

Soobin let out a soft chuckle, the low vibration rattling pleasantly against her head. "Then I guess I should thank my grandmother for making too much kimchi. And for making me walk down to that book rental shop."

They sat together on the cool sand for a long time after that, their intertwined hands resting between them. The cool night air swirled around the empty beach, but wrapped in the quiet warmth of his presence, Y/N had never felt more grounded.

The night deepened around them, the temperature dropping just enough to make the warmth of Soobin's shoulder against hers feel like a shield against the chill. Neither of them seemed to notice the time passing, completely content to let the steady, rhythmic crash of the tide dictate the pace of the evening.

Slowly, Soobin lifted their joined hands, his eyes tracing the contrast between their fingers before he gently brought the back of her hand up to his lips, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to her knuckles. The gesture was so quiet and natural that it sent a fresh wave of warmth straight to Y/N's chest.

"We should probably start heading back before my grandmother sends out a search party," he murmured, though his voice held a distinct reluctance. He didn't make a move to get up, his thumb still tracing slow circles against her skin.

Y/N let out a soft laugh, shifting her head from his shoulder to look up at him. "Is the formidable village elder really going to come looking for you?"

"Oh, absolutely," Soobin said, his dimples peeking out in the starlight as he smiled sheepishly. "She still treats me like I’m ten years old. If I’m out past nine, she starts pacing the porch. And if she finds out I stayed out late because of you, she’ll never let me hear the end of it."

"In a bad way?"

"No," Soobin chuckled, his eyes softening completely as he looked down at her. "In a 'when are you bringing her over for dinner' kind of way. She already likes you more than me, I think."

With a soft, collective sigh, they finally moved. Soobin stood up first, his towering frame stretching out before he reached back down to offer Y/N his hand, effortlessly pulling her to her feet. He picked up his lightweight jacket from the sand, giving it a quick shake to clear the loose grains before draping it over one arm.

As they turned back toward the sloping path that led away from the shore, Soobin didn't let go of her hand. He kept his fingers securely locked with hers, guiding her through the dark, uneven terrain with a quiet, protective focus.

Leaving the beach behind, the vast canopy of stars seemed to follow them, casting a pale glow over the quiet village streets. The heavy, lingering doubts Soobin had carried with him from Seoul seemed to have been washed away by the tide, replaced by a simple, grounding certainty. As they walked side-by-side into the quiet night, the future felt less like an impending weight and more like an open horizon.

Four days slipped by like a quiet, sun-drenched dream, the fast-paced rush of the outside world completely fading into the background of the island.

It was a brilliant, warm afternoon. High up on a grassy hilltop overlooking the sparkling expanse of the Jeju sea, a massive, ancient tree spread its thick canopy wide, casting a perfect, dappled shadow over the ground. The gentle afternoon breeze swept up the hillside, rustling the leaves overhead and carrying the crisp, salty scent of the ocean below.

Spread out over the grass beneath the shade was a soft, oversized blanket. Underneath the canopy, Soobin was completely relaxed. He was laying down with his long frame stretched out across the fabric, his head resting comfortably right in Y/N’s lap. In his hands, he held an old comic book he’d borrowed from the rental shop, his eyes scanning the pages with an easy, unbothered focus. Every now and then, his lips would twitch into a faint smile, completely at peace.

Y/N sat propped against the sturdy trunk of the tree at the edge of the blanket, a sketchbook resting against her knees. She was wearing a light, flowing sundress that bunched up softly beneath him, the fabric cool and soft under his head. With a charcoal pencil held lightly between her fingers, she was intently focused on the boy in her lap, trying her best to sketch his profile.

She leaned forward slightly, her eyes darting from the sharp line of his jaw to the page, carefully trying to capture the soft, relaxed way his dark bangs fell across his forehead.

"Stop moving your face," Y/N murmured softly, tapping the top of her pencil against the edge of the sketchbook. "Every time you turn the page, your facial expression shifts."

Soobin didn't look up from his comic, but a deep, helpless dimple immediately carved into his cheek. "I'm barely moving. You’re just taking too long because you’re distracted by how handsome your model is."

"Keep talking and I'll draw you with giant cartoon ears," she teased, though a small smile broke across her own face as she leaned back, squinting at the paper to smooth out the shading around his eyes.

Soobin let out a soft, low chuckle that vibrated right against her legs. He finally lowered the comic book slightly, tilting his head back just enough to look up at her upside down. The pale afternoon light filtered through the leaves, catching the warm, affectionate glint in his dark eyes.

Slowly, he reached up, his long fingers gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face before his hand dropped back down to rest against his stomach.

"Fine, I'll be perfectly still," he whispered, his voice warm and incredibly sweet as he held her gaze. "Capture my best side."

Y/N couldn't help but laugh, the sound bright and light in the quiet afternoon air. "I'm trying, but my model keeps making faces at me."

She went back to her sketch, the soft scratch of the charcoal pencil filling the space between them. For a few minutes, Soobin actually kept his promise, remaining perfectly still as he stared back up at the comic book. The gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the ancient tree above them, sending a dance of light and shadow across the soft fabric of her dress and his stripes shirt .

But Soobin’s attention span for the comic was clearly waning. His gaze kept drifting upwards, tracking the subtle movements of her wrist, the focused knit of her brows, and the way her lips slightly parted whenever she was working on a difficult detail.

Without warning, he closed the comic book with a soft thud and set it face down on the blanket beside him.

"Okay, I'm done reading," he announced, shifting his head slightly on her lap to get more comfortable. He reached up, his large hand gently wrapping around her left wrist—the one not holding the pencil—and tugging it down until her hand rested against his chest. He loosely interlaced his fingers with hers, his thumb tracing the back of her knuckles. "Show me."

Y/N defensively tilted the sketchbook toward her chest, a playful, protective look in her eyes. "No way. It’s not finished yet."

"Come on," Soobin pleaded, his voice dropping into that soft, whiny tone he only used when they were completely alone. He looked up at her through his dark bangs, his big, puppy-like eyes practically begging. "Just a sneak peek. Let me see how the ears look."

"They're absolutely huge," she teased, but she slowly relented, angling the sketchbook down so he could look at it upside down from her lap.

Soobin quieted, his eyes scanning the rough charcoal lines. Y/N had captured him perfectly—the soft curve of his nose, the relaxed set of his mouth, and the exact way he looked when he was completely at ease, far away from the rigid structure of his life in Seoul. A genuine, incredibly tender smile spread across his face, his dimples cutting deep into his cheeks.

"Wow," he whispered, his tone shifting from playful to entirely sincere. He looked up from the paper to meet her eyes, his gaze heavy with an affection that made her heart do a sudden flip. "You're really good at this. It actually looks like me."

"Of course it does," Y/N said softly, setting the sketchbook down on the blanket next to them. She reached down with her free hand, her fingers gently combing through his soft, dark hair, brushing it away from his forehead. "I had a pretty good view."

Soobin's smile softened, his eyes locking onto hers as he enjoyed the quiet sensation of her fingers in his hair. The glittering Jeju sea stretched out endlessly beneath their hilltop, but right here under the shade of the tree, neither of them was looking at the horizon.

He leaned into the touch of her hand, closing his eyes for a brief, content moment as her fingers moved through his hair. The warmth of the sun and the steady, rhythmic rustle of the leaves overhead made the entire world feel incredibly slow.

"I don't want to go back to Seoul," Soobin murmured softly, his eyes opening just a fraction to look up at her. The playful teasing from earlier had completely melted away, replaced by that raw, quiet vulnerability he only showed her. "A few days ago, I was counting down the hours until I could leave this island. Now, I feel like I'm going to leave a piece of myself behind if I go."

Y/N paused her hand in his hair, her thumb resting gently against his temple. "You aren't leaving it behind, Soobin. You're just taking a different piece of it back with you."

Soobin let out a breathy, quiet chuckle, shifting on her lap so he could look at her fully. He reached up, his large, warm hand coming to cup the side of her neck, his thumb resting right along her jawline. The contrast of his cool fingers against her sun-warmed skin made her breath hitch slightly.

"I think the piece I'm taking back is you," he whispered, his voice dropping into a deeper, lower register that felt entirely intimate.

He didn't wait for her to answer. Sliding his hand up slightly to anchor his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck, Soobin pulled himself up just enough to close the distance.

The kiss was slow, tasting faintly of the sweet mandarin juice they’d shared earlier and completely filled with the lazy, golden warmth of the afternoon. It wasn't the hesitant, trembling first kiss they had shared on the dark beach four days ago. This one felt certain, grounded, and deeply affectionate—a quiet promise spoken in the shade of the ancient tree. His other hand found her waist, his palm pressing against the soft, flowing fabric of her dress, pulling her just a fraction closer.

When he finally pulled back, he didn't move his hand from her neck. He just rested his forehead against hers, their breaths mingling as a soft, helpless smile broke across his lips.

He let his head sink back down into her lap with a soft, contented sigh, his long frame stretching out completely across the blanket. His fingers lazily intertwined with hers, his thumb tracing the back of her hand in a slow, comforting rhythm.

"Since we're both going to be in the city soon..." Soobin began, his voice dropping into a warm, curious murmur as he looked up at her through his bangs. "I realized we've been so wrapped up in the island that I still don't know the exact specifics. Which university are you attending?"

Y/N smiled down at him, her free hand coming up to gently comb through his soft, dark hair, brushing it away from his eyes. "Seoul National University," she said softly.

Soobin’s eyes widened, his thumb freezing against her knuckles. A sudden, brilliant look of genuine surprise and pride broke across his face, his deep dimples instantly popping into his cheeks.

"SNU?" he echoed, his voice lifting with an incredibly proud, impressed tone. He shifted his weight, turning fully onto his side in her lap so he could look at her face properly. "Wow, Y/N-ah. That's incredible. Do you know how hard it is to get into the transfer program there? You're a genius."

Y/N felt a sudden flush of warmth hit her cheeks at his unreserved praise. "It took a lot of sleepless nights and way too many iced Americanos," she admitted, laughing softly as she nudged his shoulder. "But the paperwork finally cleared last week."

"This is amazing," Soobin murmured, his eyes shining as he stared up at her. The daunting weight of returning to his own chaotic university schedule suddenly felt entirely manageable. "My campus is at Konkuk, so we’re not even that far apart. On weekends, or even after classes, I can just hop on the subway and meet you. We can study together. Or, well..." He smiled sheepishly, his cheeks turning a faint shade of pink. "I can just distract you while you try to study."

"I think you're already doing a pretty good job of that," Y/N teased, gesturing down at the sketchbook lying abandoned on the blanket beside them.

Soobin chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that vibrated pleasantly against her legs. He reached up, his large palm resting gently over her knee, the soft fabric of her dress moving slightly under his touch. "I'm serious, though. Seoul can feel really big and overwhelming, especially when you first move there. It gets so loud, and everyone is always rushing. I was genuinely dreading going back to that rhythm."

He paused, his gaze softening completely as he held her eyes, his thumb gently smoothing over the fabric of her dress.

"But knowing you're going to be there... knowing I can just call you up when the city gets too loud... it changes everything."

It was the last week of June, and the heat of the Jeju summer had settled in completely—thick, hazy, and smelling of salt and sun-warmed grass. Over the past few days, Y/N and Soobin had become completely inseparable. Every morning started with a text, every afternoon was spent exploring hidden corners of the island, and every night ended with lazy walks under the stars. It felt as if they were trying to stretch every single second of June, knowing that the real world was waiting for them once summer ended.

Today, they had claimed a completely secluded, rocky cove that Soobin knew about.

They spread their oversized blanket across a patch of smooth, dry sand nestled between the tall coastal rocks, just out of reach of the rising tide. The summer sun was blazing, making the crystal-clear, turquoise water look irresistible.

Soobin stood at the edge of the blanket, pulling his oversized cotton t-shirt over his head and tossing it onto the sand, leaving him in just his dark swim trunks. His pale skin caught the bright sunlight, and he looked out at the rolling waves with a bright, boyish grin that Y/N had come to love more than anything else over the past week.

"The last one has to buy the spicy rice cakes tonight!" Soobin shouted, turning back to flash her a mischievous look. Without giving her a chance to protest, his long legs carried him in a dead sprint across the sand, splashing fearlessly straight into the surf.

"Soobin! You always start running before you even finish talking!" Y/N laughed, quickly unbuttoning the light sundress she wore over her swimsuit. She kicked off her sandals and chased after him, the cool, shocking shock of the Jeju sea hitting her skin and instantly erasing the thick summer heat.

By the time she waded out, the water was up to her waist. Soobin was already completely drenched, his dark bangs slicked back from his forehead as he shook water from his eyes like a giant puppy. The moment Y/N got close enough, she lunged forward, using both hands to send a massive wave of water straight at him.

Soobin gasped, laughing loudly as the water hit his face. "Oh, so it's a war now?"

He didn't hold back, using his massive hands to scoop up walls of water, sending them splashing right back at her. The cove echoed with their breathless laughter and the crashing of the waves. They swam until their limbs felt heavy, floating on their backs side-by-side, watching the occasional white cloud drift across the vast blue June sky.

At one point, a sudden, larger swell caught Y/N off guard, making her lose her footing on the sandy floor. Before she could go under, Soobin’s long arms securely wrapped around her waist. With an easy, effortless tilt of his strength, he lifted her up over the crest of the wave.

He kept his hands locked on her waist even after the wave passed, holding her steady against him. The water swirled around their waist. Y/N rested her hands flat against his damped, warm shoulders, catching her breath. Soobin looked down at her, his eyelashes sparkling with sea droplets, a soft, incredibly tender smile resting on his lips. In the bright afternoon light, with the ocean breeze blowing her damp hair across her face, he looked at her like she was the only thing on the entire island.

Eventually, shivering slightly as the late afternoon breeze began to pick up, they waded back to the shore.

They collapsed onto the blanket, wrapping themselves in big, fluffy towels. Soobin dragged the picnic basket closer, his damp skin glowing in the light. He popped open a chilled container of sweet, freshly cut watermelon that they'd brought along.

Picking up a dripping piece, he held it right to her lips, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. "Here. Fuel for the person who lost the race and the water war."

Y/N leaned in and took a bite, the sweet, icy juice a perfect contrast to the salty air. "I only lost because you have an unfair height advantage in the water," she mumbled around the fruit, making him let out a deep, rumbling chuckle.

Soobin ate the rest of the piece, leaning back on his hands as he looked out at the glittering sea, his shoulder pressed warmly against hers. "Maybe," he murmured, turning his head to look at her, his dimple cutting deep into his cheek. "But I think this whole week has been a win."

When Soobin slipped off his shoes at the entryway of his grandmother’s traditional house, the rich, savory scent of a freshly finished dinner—garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil—still lingered heavily in the air.

He stepped inside, the dark wooden floorboards cool under his bare feet. Walking into the living room, he found his grandmother and his mother sitting together on the floor around the low wooden table, chatting comfortably. The dinner dishes had already been cleared away, replaced by a simple pitcher of ice cold water and a small plate of peeled fruit.

His mother, who had arrived from Seoul earlier that evening to help with his grandmother’s summer arrangements, paused mid-sentence. Both women turned their heads simultaneously to look at him.

"Look who finally decided to come home," his mother said, her tone a mix of mild exasperation and fondness. She scanned him from head to toe—his messy, damp hair, the slight sunburn dusting the bridge of his nose, and his oversized cotton t-shirt that smelled faintly of the sea. "We waited to eat, but your grandmother said you'd probably be out until the sun went down completely. Where have you been all day, Soobin?"

Before he could offer a carefully rehearsed, casual answer, his grandmother let out a soft, knowing chuckle. Her wrinkled eyes crinkled into wise little crescents as she poured herself a cup of tea.

"Oh, let the boy breathe," his grandmother murmured, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "He was out making the most of his summer. Though, looking at how pink his ears are, I don't think it was just the sun that kept him out so late."

Soobin’s ears instantly turned an even brighter, betraying shade of crimson. He rubbed the back of his neck, shifting his weight as he tried to look completely unbothered, though a helpless, faint dimple threatened to poke through his cheek.

"I was just... down at the cove with Y/N," he mumbled, his voice dropping an octave into that deep, shy register he used whenever he was flustered.

"We know, honey. We know," his grandmother teased, leaning forward on her elbows with a giant, satisfied smile. "You two have been practically attached at the hip all week. Since she's moving to Seoul soon too, you really should bring Y/N over for dinner. Let me cook something proper for her."

Soobin’s mother raised an eyebrow, a small, knowing smile breaking across her face as she looked at her son's utterly flustered expression. "I'd love to finally meet her, too. Your grandmother hasn't stopped talking about how sweet she is."

"She is sweet," Soobin muttered softly, looking down at his toes to hide the massive, proud smile that was currently taking over his entire face. He cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure. "I'll... I'll ask her tomorrow if she wants to come over."

Two days later—the very first day of July—the heavy summer heat had mellowed into a breezy, golden evening. Y/N stood in front of the familiar wooden gate of Soobin’s grandparents' house, her heart doing a nervous little flutter against her ribs. In her hands, she carefully held a heavy, neatly wrapped basket of fresh, plump Jeju melons and sweet mandarins—a strict mandate from her own grandmother, who insisted she couldn't dare show up for dinner empty-handed.

Taking a small breath to steady her nerves, Y/N knocked on the gate.

Almost instantly, she heard the frantic, heavy thud of familiar, long footsteps rushing across the courtyard. The wooden gate swung open, and there stood Soobin. He was wearing a soft, oversized cream cardigan over a plain tee, looking incredibly handsome, though his dark hair was slightly tousled. The moment his eyes landed on her, a massive, instantly relieved smile broke across his face, his deep dimples cutting into his cheeks.

"You're here," he breathed, his deep voice carrying a wave of nervous excitement. Before he could even step aside to let her in, his eyes dropped to the heavy basket in her arms. "Oh, what is all this? You didn't have to bring anything, Y/N-ah. I told you my grandma was cooking everything."

"My grandma would have skinned me alive if I walked in empty-handed," Y/N laughed softly, the tension instantly melting from her shoulders at the familiar sight of him. "They're fresh melons and mandarins."

"Here, let me take it," Soobin said quickly, his large hands carefully wrapping around the handle of the basket, his fingers brushing against hers with a reassuring warmth. He leaned in just a fraction closer, his eyes soft. "Don't be nervous, okay? They're already obsessed with you."

He guided her through the quiet, traditional courtyard and out into the spacious backyard.

The scene that greeted them was the absolute definition of a cozy mid-summer night. A low, long wooden table had been set up on the grass, surrounded by soft cushions. In the center, a portable gas grill was already sizzling loudly, thick, marbled slabs of samgyeopsal (pork belly) rendering beautifully and filling the air with an incredibly savory, mouth-watering aroma.

Around the table sat Soobin's entire family. His grandfather was expertly flipping the meat with a pair of long tongs, while his grandmother and mother were busy arranging an endless sea of side dishes—crisp lettuce, seasoned green onion salad, pickled radishes, and homemade ssamjang. His dad was sitting back, happily pouring cold barley tea into cups.

"Look who's here!" Soobin’s grandmother called out the moment she spotted them, her wrinkled face lighting up with a radiant smile. She immediately stood up, dusting off her linen apron. "Oh, our Y/N-ah! Come in, come sit down!"

Y/N bowed politely, a warm smile on her face. "Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me. My grandmother sent these fruits for the family."

"Oh, look at that! Your grandmother is always so thoughtful," Soobin's mother said, stepping forward with a kind, elegant smile. She took the basket from Soobin, giving Y/N a warm, approving look that instantly made Y/N feel welcome. "It's so wonderful to finally meet you, Y/N. Soobin has told us so much about you."

"Mom," Soobin groaned softly, his ears instantly turning a bright shade of pink as he guided Y/N toward the empty cushions at the table.

"What? It's true," his dad chimed in with a booming, good-natured laugh, looking up from the grill. "The boy has been spacing out and smiling at his shoes for a week. Welcome to the family dinner, Y/N. Sit, eat before the meat gets too charred."

Soobin quickly pulled a cushion closer for Y/N, sitting down right beside her. His long frame practically shielded her from any overwhelming attention, but he couldn't hide the shy, incredibly proud smile on his face as he looked between her and his family.

"Here," Soobin whispered, immediately picking up his chopsticks the second his grandfather deposited a perfectly grilled, crispy piece of pork belly onto Y/N's plate. He expertly wrapped it in a fresh lettuce leaf with a bit of rice and ssamjang, holding the perfectly constructed ssam out to her with a proud, dimpled grin. 

Y/N felt her cheeks heat up under the gaze of his entire family, but she accepted the bite, the savory, smoky flavor absolutely perfect after a long day in the salt air.

"See how well he takes care of her?" his grandmother remarked to his mother, completely delighted. "At home, he just waits for the food to fall into his mouth, but look at him now."

"Hey, I help," Soobin protested, though his ears were burning a bright, betraying red. He quickly stuffed a piece of meat into his own mouth to hide his embarrassment, his shoulder pressing warmly against Y/N's as he sat protectively close to her.

His dad laughed, pouring a fresh glass of cold barley tea for Y/N. "Don't mind them, Y/N. They're just happy Soobin finally brought a guest over who doesn't just eat all our meat and run away like his school friends do."

"So, Y/N," his mother spoke up, her voice warm and genuinely curious as she leaned forward on her cushion. "Your grandmother mentioned you’re preparing for a big move up to Seoul later this month. How are you feeling about it? It’s quite a change from the island, but at least you still have the whole month of July to enjoy the peace here."

Y/N swallowed her food, smiling politely. "I'm a little nervous because it's so big, but I'm really looking forward to it. I'm glad I still have this month to mentally prepare, though."

"Well, you don't have to worry about a thing," his grandfather chimed in, pointing a pair of long metal tongs at Soobin. "This giant boy over here knows the city like the back of his hand. If he doesn't show you around and carry your bags when the time comes, you just call us and your grandma. We'll set him straight."

Soobin swallowed his food quickly, looking at his grandfather with wide, earnest eyes. "Grandpa, of course I'm going to take care of her. I already told her I'd meet her at her campus."

His mother chuckled softly at how defensive and serious he instantly got. She looked at Y/N, her expression incredibly gentle. "It really is a relief to know you two will have each other up there when summer ends. Seoul can feel lonely, but it’s much better when you have a piece of home with you."

Under the low wooden table, out of sight of his teasing parents and grandparents, Soobin’s large hand found Y/N's. He gently slid his fingers between hers, squeezing her hand with a steady, reassuring warmth that sent a thrill straight to her chest.

He didn't say anything out loud, but as he turned to look at her, the soft glow of the patio lights catching the deep indentation of his dimple, his eyes held a quiet, happy promise for the long July weeks ahead—and everything that would follow.

"He really means it, too," Soobin’s mother added, her eyes crinkling with a soft, deeply amused smile as she watched her son's face burn a fresh, dramatic shade of crimson. She set her chopsticks down and leaned forward slightly, resting her chin in her hand as she looked across the sizzling grill at Y/N.

"You know, Y/N, it is incredibly fascinating for us to see him like this," his mother continued, her tone dropping into a warm, conspiratorial murmur. "Before you came along, this boy practically treated women like they were a different species. He would barely look a girl in the eye, let alone talk to one. If a female classmate so much as asked him for a pencil at school, he’d turn into a statue, give a tiny nod, and look like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole."

"Mom! Please," Soobin choked out, his voice cracking slightly in sheer desperation. He nearly dropped his tongs back into the cabbage dish, his entire face, ears, and neck now a uniform, vibrant shade of pink. He looked at his mother with wide, pleading eyes, silently begging her to stop exposing his absolute lack of game.

His dad let out another booming laugh, clapping a hand on Soobin's rigid shoulder. "She's not lying, son! Remember your middle school graduation? That poor girl tried to give you a bouquet of flowers and you bowed so fast and so low you nearly cracked your forehead against hers, then ran away to the car."

"I was just... polite!" Soobin mumbled defensively, hiding his face behind his large palm as he looked down at his rice bowl, his shoulders slumping. A tiny, helpless dimple poked through his flushed cheek anyway, showing he was more flustered than actually upset.

Y/N couldn't help but laugh softly, looking over at Soobin shrinking into his seat 

"It's true, Y/N-ah," his grandmother chimed in, placing a beautifully grilled, juicy piece of pork belly directly onto Y/N's plate with a fond nod. "Our Soobin has always been a quiet, gentle soul. He keeps his heart tucked away safely. So we knew you must be someone incredibly special."

The brilliant July stars were completely out by the time they finally left the warmth of the backyard. The air had cooled down significantly, carrying a crisp, refreshing breeze that rustled through the dark leaves of the village trees.

Soobin walked a little slower than usual, matching his long strides to Y/N’s smaller ones. He had his hands buried deep in the pockets of his soft jacket, his shoulder brushing gently against hers with every few steps. For the first few minutes, they just walked in a comfortable, quiet rhythm, listening to the steady chorus of the summer cicadas.

But as they turned onto the narrow, stone-walled lane that led toward her house, Soobin noticed how quiet she had become. She was looking down at her sandals, her fingers nervously twisting the fabric of her dress.

He stopped walking, turning his body toward her. "Y/N-ah?"

Y/N paused, looking up at him. In the dim, warm glow of the yellow streetlights, Soobin’s dark eyes were full of a quiet, intense focus. He stepped a little closer, taking one hand out of his pocket to reach for hers. His fingers wrapped around her small hand, his thumb tracing a slow, soothing circle over her knuckles.

"You've been really quiet since we left the house," he murmured gently. "Are you okay? Did my family overwhelm you?"

Y/N let out a small, heavy breath, the cool night air suddenly making her feel incredibly small. She looked away from him, staring at the shadows on the stone wall, before finally pulling her hand away from his grip completely.

"Soobin... hearing your mom talk about Seoul, and your grandpa... it just made it all feel so real," she said, her voice tight with a sudden surge of anxiety. "The first day of July is already here. After this month, the summer is over."

Soobin blinked, caught off guard by her pulling away. "Yeah, but we'll be heading up there together. I'll be right there to help you settle into the campus—"

"What if I don't go?" Y/N interrupted, the words tumbling out of her before she could stop them.

The silence that followed was absolute. Soobin froze, his hand remaining suspended in the air for a second before dropping slowly to his side. His brow furrowed, his entire demeanor shifting from tender comfort to complete, stunned confusion. "What do you mean, what if you don't go? Your application to SNU is already approved."

"I know, but I’m just... I’m really not so sure about Seoul anymore, Soobin," she argued, crossing her arms tightly as she looked up at him, her defenses flaring because of how scared she actually was. "I've lived on this island my whole life. Everything here makes sense to me. Seoul is massive, crowded, and terrifying. W-What if I just stay in Jeju? I could just find a university here, stay close to my family, and..." She swallowed hard, her voice cracking. "And just stay where I know I fit in."

Soobin stared at her, a rare flash of hurt and sharp defensiveness coloring his features. He stepped toward her, his tall frame cutting off the light from the streetlamp, his jaw tight.

"You're talking about completely throwing away your dream because you're scared?" he asked, his deep voice dropping into a sharper, more intense register than she had ever heard from him before. "You've been working toward this for a year. We've been talking all week about what we're going to do when we get to the city."

"It's easy for you to say it's just 'being scared'!" Y/N shot back, her frustration boiling over. "You grew up there, Soobin! You have your family, your friends, your entire life waiting for you. For me, it's starting completely over from scratch. What happens when you're busy with your own life and your own classes? Am I just supposed to sit in a tiny dorm room wishing I never left home?"

"That’s completely unfair!" Soobin said, looking genuinely wounded. He ran a frustrated hand through his dark hair, pulling at the roots as he looked away from her for a brief second to catch his breath before looking right back into her eyes. "You think I’m just going to leave you to fend for yourself? You think I view you as some fling for the summer? I was finally excited to go back to Seoul because you were going to be there. But now it feels like you're using Jeju as an excuse to pull away from me before we even get there."

The accusation hung heavily in the cool night air, the steady, rhythmic chirping of the July cicadas suddenly sounding entirely too loud in the space between them.

Y/N stared up at him, her breath catching in her throat. Seeing Soobin—who was always so compliant, so careful with his words, and so endlessly patient—looking at her with such raw, flashing hurt in his eyes made her anger instantly evaporate, leaving behind nothing but a cold, hollow ache.

"I'm not trying to pull away from you," she whispered, her voice trembling as the defensive walls she’d built up over the last ten minutes completely crumbled. "Soobin, how can you think that? You’re the best part of being here."

Soobin didn't answer right away. He kept his jaw clenched so tight the sharp line of it caught the edge of the yellow streetlamp. He took a long, heavy breath through his nose, his broad shoulders rising and falling under his cream cardigan as he tried to swallow down the sudden spike of emotion. He looked down at his shoes, then out at the dark lane, refusing to meet her eyes for a long, agonizing moment.

When he finally looked back at her, the sharp defensiveness was entirely gone, replaced by a quiet, vulnerable exhaustion.

"Because that’s what it feels like," he said softly, his voice dropping back into that deep, gravelly register. He closed the small distance she had put between them, though he didn't reach out to touch her just yet. "It feels like you’re ready to completely rewrite your entire future—throw away a dream you worked so hard for—just to stay in your comfort zone. And it makes me feel like I’m not enough of a reason for you to want to take that leap."

"It's not that you're not enough," Y/N murmured, looking down at the gravel, her chest aching. "It's just... Jeju is safe. Out here, I know who I am. Up there, I'm just nobody."

"You're not a nobody to me," Soobin insisted, stepping even closer until the warm, familiar scent of his laundry detergent and the sea completely enveloped her.

He reached out, his large, slightly trembling hand gently catching her wrist before sliding down to lock his fingers securely with hers.

"You think I’m not terrified of going back?" he admitted, a bittersweet, self-deprecating smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Y/N, I hate crowds. I hate how fast Seoul moves. Half the time I'm up there, I just want to lock myself in my room and hide. I was dreading the end of summer because it meant going back to all of that."

He squeezed her hand tightly, his dark eyes entirely bare and full of an intense, quiet sincerity.

"But then I met you. And for the last week, every time I thought about Seoul, I wasn't dreading it anymore. I was actually excited. Because I kept imagining showing you my favorite quiet spots, walking across the campus to meet you after your classes, and having a piece of home—a piece of this—with me. If you stay here, yeah, you’ll be safe. But you’ll always wonder 'what if.' Don't let fear make your choices for you, Y/N-ah. Especially not when I'm right here ready to catch you."

The honesty in his voice cut right through the remainder of her anxiety. Y/N looked up at him, realizing that in her fear of the unknown, she had completely overlooked how much strength he was drawing from her, too.

Slowly, she let out the breath she’d been holding, her shoulders relaxing. "I'm sorry," she whispered, leaning her forehead lightly against his chest. "I'm just so scared."

Soobin let out a soft, defeated sigh, the tension finally bleeding out of his tall frame. He let go of her hand only to wrap both of his long arms completely around her, pulling her tightly against his chest. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, rocking her slightly from side to side under the warm glow of the streetlamp.

"I know," he rumbled gently against her skin, his grip tightening as if he could physically shield her from her doubts. "I am too. But we still have all of July left. Let's just focus on being right here, together, and we'll figure out the rest when the time comes. Deal?"

Y/N nodded silently against his chest, her hands gripping the fabric of his jacket. The steady, comforting beat of his heart under her cheek did more to quiet her racing thoughts than any logic could.

"Deal," she murmured, her voice muffled by his shoulder.

Soobin held her like that for a few more long moments, his fingers gently tangling in the hair at the back of her neck, just holding her steady against the weight of the future. When he finally pulled back, he didn't go far. He kept his hands resting lightly on her waist, looking down at her with a soft, slightly tired but deeply affectionate smile.

"Good," he whispered, his deep voice carrying a trace of relief. He reached up, using the pad of his thumb to gently wipe away a stray tear she hadn't realized had slipped down her cheek. "Because I can't let my mom and grandma think I made you cry on our very first official family dinner. I'll never hear the end of it."

Y/N let out a breathless laugh, swatting playfully at his chest. "You did make me cry. You were using your scary voice."

"My scary voice?" Soobin’s eyes widened in genuine shock, his head tilting back as a breathless laugh escaped him. His deep dimples popped back into his cheeks, completely erasing any lingering tension from their argument. "I don't have a scary voice! I was just... passionately communicating!"

"You sounded like a strict teacher," she teased, finally smiling fully as she looked up at him.

"I was defending my honor," he protested softly, his expression turning incredibly tender again as his gaze dropped to her lips for a brief second before locking back onto her eyes. He stepped in closer, his chest pressing against hers as he slid his hands down to find hers again, weaving their fingers together. "Seriously, though. Don't hide it from me when you feel like that, okay? Even if we argue. I'd rather know."

"I won't," Y/N promised, squeezing his large hands. "I'm sorry I took it out on you."

"Forget about it," Soobin murmured, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss right to the top of her head. He smelled like the smoky sweet scent of the backyard grill and the cool night air. "Come on, let’s get you home before your dad comes out here with a broom to see what's taking so long."

They walked the final few meters to her front gate in a much lighter, sweeter silence, their joined hands swinging gently between them. The anxiety about Seoul hadn't completely vanished—the city was still massive, and August was still coming and nothing was going to make time freeze—but as Y/N looked at Soobin waving energetically from the bottom of the lane, his giant, dimpled smile lighting up the dark July night, she realized the unknown didn't feel quite as lonely anymore.

The rest of July dissolved into a sun-drenched, blurry haze of the best days Y/N had ever known. True to his word, Soobin didn't let a single afternoon go to waste.

Once the anxiety of the future was tucked away, they lived entirely in the present. They spent hours down at the hidden cove, Soobin’s long legs dangling off the rocks as he watched Y/N swim, always ready with a dry towel and a warm embrace the second she shivered. They rode his scooter through the winding, emerald-green roads of the island, the salt wind whipping through their hair while Y/N held tightly to his waist. There were quiet afternoons spent on the floor of his grandmother’s porch, splitting frozen water ice bars in half, and late-night walks under the vast July stars where they talked about absolutely everything and nothing at all.

But summer, no matter how deeply you try to hold onto it, always has an expiration date.

Suddenly, it was the final week of July. The lazy, endless days caught up to them, and the reality they had successfully avoided for a month settled back into the air. Tomorrow morning, Soobin was leaving for Seoul with his parents.

That final evening, the sky over the island turned a bruised, dramatic shade of violet and gold. They didn't go to the cove or the bustling town; instead, they walked up to the ancient, sprawling tree on the hillside that overlooked the ocean—the place where so many of their quietest promises had been made.

The July breeze was warmer now, heavy with the scent of upcoming late-summer rains. Soobin sat with his back against the thick trunk of the tree, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Y/N sat between them, leaning her back securely against his chest. His large arms were wrapped loosely but completely around her waist, his chin resting gently on the crown of her head.

Neither of them spoke for a long time. They just watched the distant, tiny lights of the fishing boats out on the dark water begin to twinkle one by one.

"My bags are packed," Soobin’s deep voice finally broke the silence, vibrating softly against Y/N’s back. It sounded heavier tonight, grounded in a quiet, reluctant sadness. "My dad wants to leave for the airport at five tomorrow afternoon."

Y/N reached down, placing her hands over his arms, her fingers tracing the soft cotton of his sleeve. "It feels weird. The whole month felt like it lasted a year, but today went by in a second."

Soobin tightened his grip around her waist, pulling her just a fraction closer, as if trying to memorize the exact way she fit against him. He let out a long, slow breath that brushed through her hair.

"I don't want to go," he whispered, a rare admission of vulnerability. "I hate thinking that tomorrow night, I'll be in my room in Seoul, and I won't be able to just walk down the lane to see you. I won't be able to hear the cicadas like this."

Y/N turned her head slightly, looking up at him through the twilight. The sharp, handsome profile of his face looked solemn, his dark eyes fixed on the horizon. The fear she had felt at the beginning of the month didn't flare up this time; instead, seeing him look so reluctant to leave gave her a strange, quiet wave of strength.

"It's only for a few weeks, Soobin-ah," she said softly, reaching up to gently touch the edge of his jaw. "Two weeks will pass. And then I'll be right behind you."

Soobin turned his head, his gaze dropping to meet hers. In the dimming light, the intense, unwavering devotion in his eyes made her breath catch. He caught her hand from his jaw, bringing her palms to his lips and pressing a soft, lingering kiss against her knuckles.

And then, his gaze dropped to her lips.

The space between them seemed to shrink to nothing as he leaned down, his large hand shifting from her knuckles to gently cup the side of her face. His thumb brushed softly over her cheekbone, tilting her chin up just a fraction. When his lips finally met hers, the kiss was soft and slow, tasting faintly of the sweet summer air and carrying all the heavy, unsaid weight of tomorrow’s departure.

It wasn't a rushed goodbye, but a deep, lingering promise. Soobin sighed into the kiss, his other arm tightening around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest as if he could physically print the memory of her into his skin to carry back to Seoul.

When he finally pulled back, just an inch or two, his forehead rested against hers. Both of them were breathing a little shallower now. In the quiet dark of the hillside, with his eyes closed and his hands holding her so securely, the massive, terrifying city of Seoul didn't feel like an ending anymore—it felt like a beginning.

"Two weeks," he murmured again, his voice lower, rougher, and completely certain against her lips. "I'll see you in Seoul."

Two weeks later, the intense, sticky heat of a Seoul mid-August hummed through the glass panes of Incheon International Airport—the bustling hub for domestic flights coming in from the island.

Inside the terminal, the atmosphere was a stark contrast to the quiet, slow-paced lanes of Jeju. The late afternoon air was thick, filled with the loud hum of old-school floor fans, the clatter of analog arrival boards flipping their plastic letters, and the chatter of travelers carrying heavy vinyl duffel bags and strapped luggage.

Standing right at the edge of the metal barrier, completely oblivious to the chaotic rush around him, was Soobin.

He was hard to miss—his tall frame easily towered over most of the crowd. He was dressed casually in an oversized, faded blue short-sleeve button-up shirt and dark trousers, looking every bit like a boy straight out of a classic retro film. For the past forty-five minutes, he had been shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his large hands nervously gripping his foldable phone. Every time the heavy doors of the domestic arrivals gate swung open, his shoulders would tense, his dark eyes instantly scanning the emerging faces with intense focus.

To say he had been restless for the last fourteen days was an understatement. He had practically scratched the days off his wall calendar at home, and his room in Seoul had felt entirely too quiet without the sound of the ocean—and without her.

Then, the doors swung open yet again.

Through the crowd of arriving passengers, a familiar figure pushed through, rolling a heavy, boxy suitcase out into the terminal.

Soobin’s entire posture locked up. The moment his eyes landed on Y/N, the anxious, tense expression he had been wearing for an hour completely vanished. A massive, radiant smile broke across his face, his deep dimples carving instantly into his cheeks.

Forgetting all about his usual shy, reserved nature in public, he lifted a long arm and waved frantically over the heads of the crowd.

"Y/N-ah!" he called out, his deep voice easily cutting through the airport noise.

He didn't even wait for her to navigate past the waiting crowd. Soobin eagerly stepped over the divider line, his long strides eating up the distance between them in seconds. Before Y/N could even properly lift her hand to wave back, he was already right in front of her.

He lifted her seamlessly, his large hands anchoring firmly at her waist as he spun her in a slow, sweeping princess twirl right there in the middle of the crowded terminal. Y/N let out a breathless, surprised gasp, her hands instantly flying up to clasp tightly around his neck as the busy airport blurred around them, the retro signs and humming fans fading into a background hum.

When he finally set her back down on her feet, he didn't let go. His arms looped loosely around her waist, keeping her anchored flush against his chest. He leaned down, burying his face into the crook of her neck for a long, quiet second, just breathing her in. He smelled like his familiar laundry detergent, but underneath it was the distinct, crisp scent of the city—he really was a Seoul boy.

"You're actually here," Soobin mumbled against her skin, his deep voice vibrating straight through her.

He pulled back just enough to look down at her face, his eyes shining with an almost overwhelming amount of happiness. His dimples were cut so deep into his cheeks they looked permanent. He reached up, his large, warm hand instantly cupping her cheek, his thumb sweeping over her skin exactly the way he used to under the streetlamps in Jeju.

"I missed you so much," he whispered, completely ignoring the busy travelers navigating around her boxy suitcase. "Two weeks felt like two years. I kept staring at the clock all morning."

Y/N leaned into his palm, the last lingering trace of her anxiety about the massive city completely evaporating the moment his arms had wrapped around her. "I missed you too. Did you really wait here all morning?"

"Of course I did," Soobin said softly, his gaze dropping to her lips for a fraction of a second before he leaned down and pressed a sweet, lingering kiss right to lips. "Come on. I have my dad’s car parked in the parking lot, and I promised my mom I’d bring you straight to the apartment for dinner. But first..."

He stepped back, effortlessly grabbing the handle of her heavy suitcase with one hand while using his other to firmly lock his fingers with hers, squeezing tight.

"Let's get out of this crowd. Welcome to Seoul, Y/N-ah."

The mid-August dusk settled over Seoul not with the quiet, fading gold of the Jeju coastline, but in a sudden, electric blaze of neon and concrete. Stepping out into the city streets, the sheer, crushing scale of the capital was nothing like the island. Where Jeju was defined by the endless blue horizon and the rhythmic, grounding sigh of the ocean, Seoul was a towering maze of grey stone, steel, and a dizzying web of overlapping telephone wires cutting the sky into jagged pieces.

The air here carried no trace of salt or wind. It was thick and heavy, radiating the metallic warmth of roaring city buses, the rich, spicy steam of tteokbokki from roadside stalls, and the humid exhaust of a metropolis that never slowed down. Everywhere, a relentless sea of strangers moved with hurried, serious strides across the asphalt, their voices swallowed by the overlapping din of car horns and analog billboard lights humming to life in vibrant shades of green and red. It was loud, chaotic, and entirely overwhelming—a sprawling jungle that made the quiet, stone-walled lanes of her village feel like a distant dream.

Yet, as the rushing crowd blurred past on the wide sidewalk, the vastness of the city shrank to the space of a single heartbeat.

His large, warm hand remained firmly locked with hers, a solid and unyielding anchor against the frantic pulse of the city. Towering over the rush of commuters, his familiar presence completely blocked out the intimidating skyline, his dark eyes reflecting the glow of the first evening lights with the exact same quiet devotion from the hillside tree. With a slow, breathtakingly tender smile that brought back the soft warmth of summer, he squeezed her fingers tight, pulling her just a fraction closer to his side.

The city was massive, terrifying, and completely foreign. But as they turned together into the vibrant, crowded streets of Seoul, the unknown no longer felt like a place to get lost—it simply felt like the next place they would walk through, hand in hand.

Jeju was far behind her, and the massive, unfamiliar capital stretched out as far as the eye could see. Yet, looking up at him as the neon signs began to blur together, the lingering fear finally dissolved into the humid evening air. Jeju hadn't been her home because of the sea, the tide, or the quiet, stone-walled lanes.

She realized then that home was no longer a fixed place on a map or a quiet village frozen in time. It wasn't defined by geography at all. Home was the sound of his laugh, the safety of his arms, and the unwavering devotion in his eyes. Wherever he was, that was where she belonged.

In the middle of this massive, chaotic city, Soobin had become her home.

🫧𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚🎐

permanent taglist @nanilis, @flytomyro0m, @fairfootedflekk, @swangyu, @frostymatcha, @starlami, @jellyybelly, @bakudon, @twinklefairyland, @monosung, @bamgeutori, @pageraf, @wonniiz, @soohashits

IT’S BEEN ONE HELL OF A DAY. you’d spent the better part of your arrival reuniting with your families and briefly recounting the experience of trying to find them after the fallout. despite best efforts, tears were shed. 

now you’re up on the hills overlooking the camp, having slipped away for a moment of peace after what has been definitively the most insane week of your entire life. 

as relieved as you are to have found your family and the boys’, there is a part of you that’s a little sad the adventure is over. as chaotic and jarring as the journey had been, you had never felt closer to your friends and to james than you had this past week. add to that the stress of figuring out what comes next? you sigh, arms crossed tight over your chest to preserve warmth and provide any small comfort. 

and like always, whenever you are sad, james finds you. you turn when you hear footsteps and relief sinks deep in your bones when you see him come up the trail behind you. 

he smiles softly when he sees you, standing to meet him. his hands reach out to hold yours, both of you just taking in the other’s presence for a moment, savoring the peace and quiet after a crazy day. 

you pull yourself in with his hands, falling into his arms when he opens them to you. your body melts against his, taking refuge in the warmth and stability of his chest as he wraps his arms around you. 

“what’cha thinking about?” he murmurs, pulling back just enough to look at you. his voice is thoughtful, but there’s a knowing look in his eye that makes you feel seen in a way that, for the first time, doesn’t scare you. 

you give a weak shrug. “just…thinking.” you trail off, gaze wandering to the overlook and the view of the sprawling survivors camp below you where the boys are probably enjoying being babied by their families after your harrowing adventures. you guess you all didn’t know how good you had it until it was almost all gone…

“i don’t think i can go back to the way things were,” you admit. you don’t know where long weekends at the lake and afterschool band practices and late night convenience store runs with the boys fit into this new world. you don’t even know where you fit. 

“me neither,” james confesses, hands wandering to find your own once more. he tugs them once, gently, just enough to get your attention. you barely meet his eyes when he leans down to kiss you again. 

it’s not the hurried, desperate kiss from before. this one is different. slow, rhythmic, and reassuring as warmth travels through your entire body. this one says, it’s going to be okay. you fit right here, in my arms. 

you’re almost dizzy when you both finally pull apart for air. the sun is beginning to dip below the mountains in the distance, but you’re not cold anymore. not when james is so close, holding you between his arms, with those eyes that light you up from the inside out. they gleam when a smile takes over his face, one so bright you can’t help but smile back. 

“LET’S FIGURE IT OUT TOGETHER.”

💭 — the thrilling conclusion has arrived! thank you so much to everyone who has kept up with the series, i really really hope you’ve enjoyed it!! ik had a blast writing it <33

© mytwinsung ♥︎ do not copy, translate, repost, feed to ai, etc. — comments + rbs always appreciated!

if you're at a cafe, he'll break off a piece of his own croissant to feed you, even though you already have your own, and a muffin and a fruit tart.... at a restaurant, his hand is hovering in front of your mouth with a spoonful of his soup, waiting for you to subconsciously open up in the middle of your ramble, even when you try swatting his hand away, embarrassed that someone might see. when the dessert comes out, he always wants to give you the first bite, scooping up some of the cream on the little coffee spoon for you and loving the way your face scrunches up in delight.

ryul without a doubt, thinks of himself as the provider and protector. he loves to pay for you any chance he gets. whether that be a dubai jjundeok cookie you always get with your coffee, your makeup essentials you always restock up on whenever you pass by the store, adding money to your subway card, your nails, hair, etc. you name it he pays for it. at first, you really protested, insisting that you at least cover the dessert, but to him its a failure as a boyfriend to not provide financially. every so often, you try to tap your apple/samsung pay before him without success. he lovesss when you text him a few inspo pictures for your next nail set, he wordlessly hearts the one he likes the most and a notification for a bank transfer from him comes in soon after. it not only boosts his ego, but it also reassures him that the person he loves is taken care of and comfortable. after a certain point, it becomes such second nature that you don't even look at the prices on a menu anymore when you're with him, but little did you know, that's exactly what he was aiming for muahaha

lastly, one of ryul's favorite parts of your guys' night time routine together is washing your hair for you in the shower. he loves it not only because you do it to him in return, but because he truly enjoys the feeling of you relaxing under his touch. the height difference is also so striking in the shower when the top of your head barely reaches his shoulders, the expanse of your back so small and delicate to him. he's obsessed with how smooth your hair gets after the conditioner is rinsed out, "how is it so silky?!?" he's so fascinated every. single. time. the fruity notes of your matching shampoo and body wash are especially strong as the steam condenses on the tiles, a scent that ryul always says could wake him out of a coma. he steps out first, so that he can dry off while you savor the last of the hot water. when you're ready to come out, he loves to dry you off with your towel, bundling you up in the fabric like a swaddled baby. its one of those rare moments you get to see ryul so careful and sensitive, he's usually air boxing or fake dunking around you, but after a shower he claims that your pheromones and the artificial fragrances from the soap mix and rewire his nerve endings turning him into a simp, whatever that means :[

ohyul:

ohyul pretends like he doesn't, and when asked about it, will act like he doesn't know what you're talking about, but in reality he is constantly checking your location on find my friends. you're the only person he has location turned on for besides his sister. not in any possessive way, but he just likes knowing where you are and what you're doing especially during times when you can't be together or if you've been away from each other for a bit. every morning on his way to work, he sends you a good morning text, giving a brief summary of his schedule for the day and asking you about yours. he loves when you're detailed, naming exactly which friend(s) you're going to see, the specific items of clothing you're looking for if you're going shopping, what drinks you had at the bar with your coworkers, etc. it makes him feel like he was there when he can't be. when he has free time in between shoots, he's checking up on your location, mentally running through your agenda and placing where you are on it according to your location. when you surprise visit him at the company, you send him a screenshot of your contact profile next to his on the map and he loves that you entertain his odd quirks. if he's out of the country on an abroad schedule, he checks your location more frequently, seeing you at home or at your usual spots gives him a sense of familiarity and comfort when he needs it.

ohyul finds it really endearing when you accidentally get food on your face, its instinct for him to wipe the corner of your mouth with his thumb, sometimes, if not most of the time, licking whatever it was off. you find it gross every time, moaning about how he just needs to hand you a napkin or something, but it falls on deaf ears because one of ohyul's love languages at this point is wiping your face for you. if you fall asleep with your makeup on, you're woken up by ohyul wiping the smudged eyeliner on your temple. its turns him on to no end when your lip gloss smudges and transfers to his skin whenever he kisses you. it hurts him to wipe off the pretty sparkle from your lips, but the sight of his fingers near your mouth stays in his head for days after. when you guys have your silent ipad kid doom scroll time together, its almost inevitable that your feed produces some kind of sad or heartwarming video about animals, the latest being about a pitbull that saved his puppy brother from drowning in a pool, and the waterworks are instant. ohyul has learned to become less and less startled when this happens, but nonetheless he still pulls you into his chest. "aigoo, my baby," he coos while you dampen his t-shirt with your tears. with one hand under your chin, he tilts your face up to him, his other hand coming around to wipe away at the wet tracks on your cheeks. "what did you see?" he asks as you stammer unintelligibly, his thumb swipes under your nose distracting you momentarily from your hiccupping. "y-you're so gross actually," you cringe, but it doesn't faze him. he just kisses the tip of your nose and holds his arms out for one last comforting hug.

words of affirmation is undoubtedly ohyul's default method of showing affection. its so easy for him to slip out a "good job, baby" whenever you're beaming up at him, him being the first person you want to share whatever you're proud about makes his heart thump painfully in his chest. with ohyul, its natural for him to shower you in compliments and praise for even the most basic of accomplishments.

you meal prepped your breakfast for the week? "baby, you are so impressive, i wish i could cook like you,"

you got positive feedback from your senior at work? "of course you did, my love, they would be blind to not recognize your hard work,"

you went to your pilates class, instead of skipping even though you were exhausted? "lock innn, nice job babe,"

sometimes, it can even be completely irrelevant. you text him "i got a cinnamon latte this morning, instead of my usual vanilla latte and it was so yum," and he'll text back "let her cook,".

"where's james?" you ask keonho, eyes still wandering the whole room—not finding his existence.

"he went to buy a cake for hyeon. you can wait here, i'm gonna grab some candles." keonho leads you to sit on a couch in the living room and rushes back to the kitchen.

the party is simple. they only invite someone who's really close to seonghyeon since the boy's very shy around others and they don't want to make him uncomfortable on his birthday. a few balloons sit randomly on each corner of the room. there's a banner on the wall that says "happy birthday, seonghyeon" with his photo on it.

not so long after that, you hear the clicking sound on the front door and see james holding paper bags in his left hand and a box of cake in the right. "cake's coming!" james yells. you approach him immediately and try to help him.

"babe!" james' eyes lighten and he smiles so brightly at your presence. "i thought you wouldn't come! i was so sad today." he kisses the corner of your lips before the two of you bring all the stuff to the living room.

"i decided to come since keonho wouldn't stop texting me while i am at work." james stops for a while, hoping he had misheard what you said. "my phone keeps buzzing all day, you know."

"why would keonho text you?" james squints his eyes in suspicion.

"he texted about preparing hyeon's birthday. he thinks i'm going to like this party." you answer absentmindedly while putting the cake on the table.

james shrugs off his shoulders, thinking it was no big deal. he doesn't need to be jealous. it's just keonho, right?

"here are the candles." keonho comes with a few candles in his hand. "hyung! you're home." he grins. james answers him with a quick smile before putting pink whipped cream on seonghyeon's cake.

"i wanna do it too!" you exclaim and ask james for the whipped cream. he lends you the whipped cream and settles behind you on the couch, absentmindedly pulling you back until you're comfortably sitting between his legs.

keonho sits right next to james' left foot—making him unintentionally sits right next to you. "do you think seonghyeon would like this party?" he asks you.

"definitely! why wouldn't he?" you shoot him a little smile and continue to put whipped cream on seonghyeon's cake.

"i know, right?" keonho nods. the three of you remain silent for a while before keonho interrupts again. "do you think hyeon would prefer green candles or blue ones?"

"i think green would suit his vibes more."

"that's exactly what i thought! that's why i brought mostly the green ones." he smiles brightly at you, and you answer with a nod.

5 minutes later, keonho asks you again. "would i look good in blonde hair? just like martin hyung."

"ask martin." james mumbles.

"you would! oh my god, it would be exciting don't you think, james?" you look at james—signaling him to agree with you.

"i don't know no james." james stares at you. who's james? where are baby, babe, honey and all the sweet nicknames going?

"okay, babe. it would be exciting, right?" you emphasize the word babe and squeeze james' thigh—forcing him to nod at your question.

"oh, i'm not hearing this." keonho closes his ears with both hands, causing you to laugh at his reaction.

15 minutes later, seonghyeon, martin, and juhoon come through the front door from the studio. everything went as planned and seonghyeon was so happy.

"you're coming! thank you so much!" seonghyeon gives you a brief hug and accepts your gift. "a ps5 for me? thank you! hyung is so lucky to have you." seonghyeon giggles and james just rolls his eyes.

the night is getting late. james drinks a cup of soda on the couch. martin plays an acoustic guitar and rumbles random melodies. seonghyeon and keonho play with the ps5 you just gave him. and you play chess with juhoon. "hey, that's cheating!" your voice heard— making james looks directly at your way.

"no, it's not." juhoon answered calmly. "you're not gonna win if you keep playing that old tactic, you know?"

"you know what? i always won back then using this 'old tactic'."

"that's why i called it old."

the two of you laugh and james' definitely not having it. he clears his throat and proceeds to stand. "i'm gonna get some rest. once again, happy birthday hyeon." he taps seonghyeon's shoulder before walking to his bedroom.

your eyes dart towards him until his figure disappears behind the door. you excuse yourself to the boys and quickly follow james. you knock his door, "can i come in?"

after he said yes, you come in and see he is curling in his white blanket—his back faces you. you close the door and hug him from the back. "hi handsome." you smile and kiss his exposed cheek. "you look so handsome today." your compliment makes his cheek blushed but he tries so hard not to smile.

he clears his throat. "thanks. you don't look bad either."

you mumble and play with his dark brown hair. "what happened, baby?"

"nothing."

"it seems like a thing." you answer him back calmly— still playing with his strands. he remains silent.

"are you jealous?" you bite your lips, trying not to laugh at this very serious situation.

james' eyes widened and he immediately turns around to face you. "what? me? jealous? no. absolutely not. why would i?"

you smile at his reaction and kiss his cheek. "you're looking extremely handsome today. what's with the glasses? i love it." you ignore his answer and touch his glasses.

"it's called fashion."

"i know, and you're looking too good with it." you pout.

"...okay, yeah. i'm jealous. but just a little. are you satisfied?"

to james, seeing you acting all pouty and clingy around him makes his stomach full of butterflies, just like how he met you for the first time. he loves you THAT much.

"i knew it!" you celebrate after his confession. "you could've just told me!" you cling your arms around his waist and rest your chin on his chest—looking up directly to meet his eyes.

"i don't wanna ruin hyeon's birthday." he looks to the other side—or basically anywhere as long as he doesn't have to meet your puppy eyes, because he would genuinely become a jelly right now.

"aww," you pinch his cheek. "you know you're the only person i love for these past 2 years. out of everyone in that room, i've been looking for you since i stepped in this dorm today."

"you're literally the sexiest man alive and i'm not planning to let you go that easily." you smirk at him.

"stop, it's getting cringe."

"but you love it when i compliment you, though."

"you're right," he smiles and wraps your body in his embrace. "i love whatever you do."

you stay at your position for a while. "if you have to choose, would you pick me or the boys?" he suddenly asks.

"you." you look up at him, finding he's already staring at you. "really?" his eyes brighten.

"no."

"BABE." james looks at you in disbelief.

"of course i choose you, you silly." you kiss his lips briefly. before he could kiss you back, you were already breaking the kiss. so he decided to chase after your lips, making it the sweetest kiss you had after a long day.

"hyung, did you see my—" juhoon's voice was heard with the sound of the door opening. "i didn't see anything!" juhoon left right after he saw the two of you.

james lets out a loud sigh and you laugh. "we need to lock the door next time."