CozyLittle.CoffeeCup

You hated apartment 7B.

No, correction.

You hated the man inside apartment 7B.

Because every single night—without fail—he sang.

Not normal singing either.

Not casual humming while doing dishes.

No. Full concerts.

At midnight.

At two in the morning.

At six-thirty on a Sunday when normal people were trying to sleep in.

You had learned his habits against your will.

He liked vocal runs in the shower.

Ballads while cooking.

R&B when cleaning.

And apparently, emotional power notes while reorganizing furniture.

Your ceiling and walls were thin enough that you felt like you lived inside his lungs.

Tonight was especially bad.

You sat cross-legged on your couch with your laptop open, trying to finish a presentation due tomorrow morning, while muffled singing drifted through the wall.

“—baby giiiirl—”

You froze.

Then came another run.

Longer.

Louder.

More offensive to your sanity.

Your eye twitched.

You checked the time.

1:47 AM.

Unbelievable.

You shoved your laptop aside, marched to your front door, and yanked it open with enough force to qualify as violence.

The hallway was quiet except for the voice spilling from 7B.

Honestly?

Annoyingly good.

Which made it worse.

You stomped over and pounded on his door.

The singing stopped instantly.

A few seconds later, the door swung open.

And your entire prepared speech evaporated.

Because your nightmare neighbor was unfairly attractive.

Soft black hair falling into sleepy eyes. Gray sweatpants. Black hoodie half-zipped. Bare feet.

He blinked at you with mild confusion.

“Oh,” he said. “You’re the cute angry neighbor.”

Your jaw dropped.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve seen you in the elevator.” He leaned against the doorway casually. “You glare beautifully.”

You stared.

This man had the audacity to flirt while committing noise crimes.

“You’re singing at almost two in the morning.”

He looked genuinely surprised.

“…Was I loud?”

“Yes.”

“Really loud?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

“Huh?” you repeated incredulously. “That’s your response?”

He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry?”

“You should be.”

A grin tugged at his mouth then, sudden and dangerous.

“You came over in pajamas to yell at me.”

You looked down.

Right.

Tiny sleep shorts. Oversized hoodie. Fluffy socks.

Fantastic.

You crossed your arms immediately. “That’s not the point.”

“I think it’s a little bit the point.”

“You are impossible.”

“And yet here you are.”

You narrowed your eyes.

He smiled wider.

God, you already hated him more.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Why?”

“So I know what name to apologize to.”

You considered refusing purely out of principle.

“…Y/N.”

“Baekhyun.”

Of course his name suited him.

Pretty name for a menace to society.

“Well, Baekhyun, some of us have jobs.”

“So do I.”

“Then act like it.”

He gasped dramatically. “That hurt.”

“You’ll survive.”

“I don’t know. You’re very scary.”

“You should be scared.”

He laughed then—bright and warm and completely incompatible with your determination to stay angry.

It caught you off guard.

For one stupid second, your annoyance slipped.

And he noticed.

His eyes sparkled immediately.

“There it is.”

“There what is?”

“The fact that you don’t actually hate me.”

“I absolutely do.”

“Mhm.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“But still cute.”

Your face heated instantly.

You pointed a threatening finger at him. “If I hear one more note tonight, I’m filing a complaint.”

Baekhyun saluted lazily. “Yes, ma’am.”

You spun around and marched back to your apartment before he could see the tiny smile trying to betray you.

—

The next morning, there was coffee outside your door.

You stared at it suspiciously.

Attached was a sticky note.

SORRY FOR THE MIDNIGHT CONCERT. I’ll keep it down tonight. —7B :)

You frowned.

Then you drank the coffee anyway.

—

Three peaceful days passed.

You almost thought the war was over.

Then Friday happened.

You got home exhausted after an awful shift at work, kicked off your shoes, and collapsed face-first onto your couch.

Silence.

Beautiful silence.

You sighed happily.

And then—

“CAUSE IIIIIIIIIII—”

You shot upright.

No.

No no no.

Not again.

Music blasted through the wall, followed by loud singing and what sounded suspiciously like dancing.

You checked the clock.

11:32 PM.

You marched next door for the second time that week.

This time, Baekhyun opened the door immediately like he’d been expecting you.

“You,” you accused.

“Me,” he agreed.

The music behind him was absurdly loud.

“How are you louder than before?”

“I had caffeine.”

“That explains nothing.”

“It explains everything.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “Please. I am begging you.”

Baekhyun studied you for a second before his expression softened slightly.

“Long day?”

You sighed despite yourself. “Terrible.”

“Boss?”

“Terrible.”

“Coworkers?”

“Also terrible.”

“Want revenge?”

You blinked. “What?”

He stepped aside dramatically. “Come in.”

You stared at him like he’d lost his mind.

“I’m not coming into your apartment.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re annoying.”

“That’s fair.”

“And weird.”

“Also fair.”

“And probably a serial killer.”

Baekhyun looked genuinely offended. “A handsome serial killer at least.”

You snorted before you could stop yourself.

His grin turned victorious instantly.

“Ah. I made you laugh.”

“Don’t get excited.”

“Too late.”

You should’ve gone back home.

You knew that.

Instead, against every intelligent instinct you possessed, you walked into apartment 7B.

His place was… surprisingly cozy.

Messy, but warm.

Vinyls stacked near the TV. Hoodies thrown over chairs. Half-finished ramen on the counter.

And a microphone setup in the corner.

You paused.

“You’re a singer?”

Baekhyun froze for half a second.

Then shrugged.

“Kinda.”

Kinda?

With equipment like this?

Interesting.

Before you could ask more, he tossed you a can of soda.

“Sit.”

You sat cautiously on the edge of the couch.

Baekhyun grabbed the remote and lowered the music.

“There. Better?”

“Much.”

“You know,” he said, dropping beside you, “most people would appreciate free concerts.”

“Most people aren’t trying to sleep.”

“You’re so hostile.”

“You deserve it.”

He leaned back against the couch dramatically. “Enemies to lovers.”

“We are not lovers.”

“Yet.”

You nearly choked on your soda.

Baekhyun looked delighted with himself.

“You flirt with everyone like this?” you asked.

“Only neighbors who threaten me.”

“Good to know your standards are low.”

“Actually my standards are very high.” His gaze flicked over you slowly. “Which is why this is upsetting.”

Your stomach betrayed you with an embarrassing little flip.

Absolutely not.

Nope.

You stood immediately.

“I’m leaving.”

“Coward.”

“I prefer emotionally intelligent.”

“You’re running away because I’m charming.”

“You’re running out of oxygen because your ego takes up the whole apartment.”

Baekhyun burst out laughing.

Really laughing.

Head tipped back. Eyes crinkled. Bright and loud and real.

It hit you unexpectedly hard.

He looked beautiful like that.

Dangerously beautiful.

And suddenly apartment 7B didn’t feel quite so irritating anymore.

Which was a problem.

A massive one.

—

Over the next few weeks, the lines blurred.

It started small.

Coffee left outside your door.

Him carrying your groceries upstairs without asking.

You yelling through the wall for him to shut up.

Him yelling back that your taste in movies was trash.

Then suddenly somehow—

You were eating takeout in his apartment at midnight twice a week.

Somewhere along the way, “neighbors at war” became… whatever this was.

Which was arguably worse for your mental stability.

Especially because Baekhyun was effortlessly affectionate.

He sprawled across your couch like he lived there.

Stole food off your plate.

Whined for attention constantly.

And looked at you sometimes with this soft, lingering expression that made your heart act stupid.

Tonight was particularly dangerous.

Rain hammered against the windows while a movie played quietly in the background.

You sat curled into one corner of Baekhyun’s couch.

He sat beside you.

Too close.

Not touching.

But close enough that you could feel his warmth.

“You know,” he said lazily, “you come over here a lot for someone who hates me.”

“I still hate you.”

“Mhm.”

“You’re still loud.”

“But now you miss it when I’m quiet.”

You opened your mouth to deny it.

Then stopped.

Because annoyingly…

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

Baekhyun noticed your silence immediately.

A smug grin appeared.

“Oh my god.”

“Don’t.”

“You like me.”

“I tolerate you.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

“You’re delusional.”

He shifted closer suddenly.

Your breath caught.

“Then why,” he murmured, “do you look at me like that?”

Your pulse stumbled.

Too close.

Way too close.

“You’re imagining things.”

“I don’t think I am.”

The movie kept playing in the background, forgotten completely.

Baekhyun’s gaze dropped briefly to your mouth.

And the air changed instantly.

Heavy.

Warm.

Dangerous.

You swallowed hard.

“Baekhyun…”

“Hm?”

“If you kiss me,” you whispered, “I might kill you.”

He smiled slowly.

“That sounds worth the risk.”

And then he kissed you.

Soft at first.

Tentative.

Like he was giving you the chance to push him away.

You didn’t.

You grabbed his hoodie instead.

That tiny movement broke whatever restraint he had left.

Baekhyun kissed you deeper immediately, one hand sliding to your waist as he pulled you closer.

Your brain completely short-circuited.

Because apparently your loud nightmare neighbor kissed like he sang.

Confident.

Emotional.

Completely unfair.

You pulled back first, breathing hard.

Baekhyun rested his forehead against yours, equally breathless.

“…Still hate me?” he asked quietly.

You stared at him.

Then sighed dramatically.

“Unfortunately, no.”

His grin lit up the entire room.

“There she is.”

“You’re still annoying.”

“Yeah?”

“But now you’re my annoying.”

Something unbearably tender flickered across his face.

It lasted only a second before he recovered.

“Wow,” he said softly. “That was disgustingly cute.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

You rolled your eyes and kissed him again.

—

Dating Baekhyun turned out to be exactly as chaotic as expected.

He sang constantly.

In the kitchen.

In the shower.

While folding laundry.

While bothering you on purpose.

Especially while bothering you on purpose.

One night, around 1 AM, you woke to muffled singing.

You groaned into your pillow.

Unbelievable.

Actually unbelievable.

You dragged yourself out of bed and stumbled toward your living room.

Only to pause.

Because the singing wasn’t coming through the wall.

It was coming from your kitchen.

You blinked sleepily.

Baekhyun stood at the counter wearing gray sweatpants and your oversized hoodie, quietly making ramen while singing under his breath.

Your irritation melted instantly.

He noticed you and smiled softly.

“Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“You’re loud in every apartment apparently.”

He grinned.

“Come here.”

You shuffled toward him without hesitation, still half asleep.

The moment you reached him, Baekhyun wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you against his chest.

Warm.

Safe.

Home.

You buried your face against him with a tired sigh.

“You’re clingy,” you mumbled.

“And you love it.”

Unfortunately…

Again…

He was right.

You peeked up at him. “What are you singing anyway?”

Baekhyun looked oddly shy for a second.

“Just something I’ve been working on.”

“Can I hear?”

His ears turned slightly pink.

Interesting.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated briefly before setting down the spoon.

Then he looked at you.

Really looked at you.

And started singing again.

No teasing this time.

No dramatic performance.

Just soft, sincere vocals filling the tiny kitchen.

Your chest tightened instantly.

Because this wasn’t the playful singing through apartment walls.

This was intimate.

Raw.

Beautiful.

And every word felt aimed directly at you.

When he finished, the apartment fell quiet.

You stared at him.

“…Baekhyun.”

“Hm?”

“That was really good.”

Relief flickered across his face first.

Then warmth.

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

He smiled softly.

And suddenly you understood something important.

The singing had never really been the problem.

It was loneliness.

Empty rooms.

Long nights.

Someone trying to fill silence with sound.

Now, though—

His apartment wasn’t empty anymore.

Neither was yours.

You reached up and touched his cheek gently.

“You know,” you murmured, “if you wanted my attention, there were easier ways.”

Baekhyun laughed quietly.

“Would they have worked?”

You considered that.

“…Probably not.”

“Exactly.”

Then he kissed your forehead before handing you chopsticks.

“Come eat, angry neighbor.”

You smiled against his shoulder.

“Only if you stop singing after midnight.”

Baekhyun gasped dramatically.

“Baby, don’t ask me to change who I am.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“And yet,” he said smugly, pulling you closer, “you’re still here.”

Yeah.

Birthdays were supposed to be special. A day to celebrate your life, to celebrate growing a year older. And your birthday was soon. So why did it feel like nobody cared about yours?

Forgotten is the best way you would describe it. Because that’s how you felt staring at the group chat messages pop up on your phone.

The topic of discussion was about birthdays. Your friend’s birthday was only a few days after yours and everyone was asking her what she wanted to do on her special day. What type of plans the group should make for her. What she would like for her presents. What type of cake she wants to eat.

Not once did anyone ask you the same questions. Your birthday not being mentioned at all, even though it came first.

But maybe that’s because you didn’t come first to any of them. Maybe nobody cared enough to remember.

So you left it alone. Because what good was it to bring it up?

₊⋆｡‧˚ʚ ୨ৎ ɞ˚‧｡⋆₊

Waking up on your birthday, you were hopeful to think that your friends would remember today’s importance. Maybe they had a surprise planned for you and were trying to make you think they forgot.

It was all wishful thinking though as you look at your phone with bleary eyes. The group chat was full of messages but not one included a birthday wish to you.

Of course not everything was about you but today should have been the exception.

Your heart felt heavy and you could feel the sting of tears starting to form. What a stupid thing to cry about you thought to yourself.

A small smile formed on your face as you replied to the few family members who had sent you a message. At least you weren’t completely forgotten.

After wallowing in your own self pity for a while you decided to at least make the most of your day. It was your birthday after all. And you had a bunch of birthday coupons to use. Who would say no to free things?

You decide to get ready, wanting to at least look somewhat presentable for the day. Throwing on a simple yet nice outfit and doing your hair.

The plan you had quickly come up with was to head to the nearby cafe to pick up your free drink and then head to the bakery next door for a free birthday pastry. And then maybe do some shopping as you had received some generous coupons to use.

You’re in the midst of locking your front door when you hear voices coming from down the hallway. Looking up, you recognize the two boys as they approach closer. They’re bickering about something, hands flying around, and voices loud.

Seungmin and Felix. The two boys who lived in the apartment right across the hall from you. Apartment 511.

They were nice boys. You would consider them good neighbors. Probably the best neighbors you could ask for.

And maybe they somewhat counted as being your friends. The three of you have had multiple conversations in the middle of the hallway before. And they’ve invited you over to hangout a few times ever since you moved in a few months ago.

“Good morning Y/n!” Felix exclaims when he finally notices your presence, distracted by his heated conversation with Seungmin. There’s a bright smile on his face as he waves at you.

“Good morning Felix,” you greet back with your own smile.

“Y/n! You have to tell Seungmin that I’m getting better at League," Felix pleads.

“I don’t know Felix. I watched your stream the other day and you were pretty shit,” you tease.

“See! I told you,” Seungmin exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air. “I knew Y/n would agree with me and not you.” There’s a grin on his face as he taunts the blonde boy.

Your eyes move from Felix to Seungmin and when your gazes meet, he gives you a polite nod.

“Happy birthday Y/n,” he smiles softly.

His words take you by surprise, your eyes widening slightly in shock. You hadn’t expected him to remember your birthday.

“Y/n it’s your birthday! I didn’t know that oh my gosh. Happy birthday!” Felix exclaims before you can reply to Seungmin. “Wait, Seungmin. How did you know it was her birthday?”

“She mentioned it once,” he replies, shrugging his shoulders like it was no big deal.

“And you just remembered it?” Felix wonders aloud. Still stunned, you miss the way Felix smirks and wiggles his eyebrows at the taller boy all while nudging him with his elbow.

“Birthdays are important days to remember.”

The sound of Seungmin’s answer causes heat to rise to your cheeks. Your own friends didn’t remember your birthday but your very cute nextdoor neighbor did. Your eyes flitter between the two boys in front of you.

Felix is standing there in shock mouth agape while looking at Seungmin and the latter is casually rolling his eyes at his stunned roommate, like he just uttered the most common information in the world that everyone should obviously know.

You can’t help but let out a small laugh at the sight of them. The sound of your laughter causes the both of them to look at you.

“Thank you guys. I really appreciate it,” you smile.

And you really mean it. Because out of everyone you knew, you were not expecting to get birthday wishes from your two neighbors that you were just barely starting to become friends with.

“Any fun plans for the day?” Seungmin asks you, tilting his head slightly to the side out of curiosity.

“I’m just heading out to go get my free birthday drink and pastry nearby and then if I feel like it, some shopping. But that’s about it! It’ll be a solo birthday this year, no plans with anyone else,” you reply softly.

“You shouldn’t spend your birthday alone,” Felix gasps. “Why don’t you come over to hang out when you’re done with your solo birthday plans?”

“Oh no no I wouldn’t want to intrude on your guys’ day,” you deny, shaking your head at the thought of messing up any of their plans.

“You wouldn’t be intruding,” Seungmin reassures. “We don’t have anything planned for today anyways. And you shouldn’t spend your birthday alone.”

“We’d love to hang out with you today! If you don’t mind spending your birthday with us of course. Right, Seungmin?” Felix nudges him again and Seungmin shoots him a glare before responding.

“Y/n, you’re more than welcome to come over. That’s what friends are for, right?”

Your heart skips a beat at his words. Friends. You weren’t even sure they considered you a friend and now here they are making last minute plans just for you to not be lonely on your birthday.

You nod your head slowly. “Right, friends. Alright then you’ve convinced me. I’ll come over later after my solo plans, if that’s okay?”

“Of course, take your time!” Felix beams.

“Text us when you’re on the way over,” Seungmin states.

You nod again at his words. “Okay, I’ll see you guys in a bit then.”

As you head down the hallway, you glance over your shoulder to look at the two boys one last time. They’re bickering again in hushed whispers as Seungmin unlocks their front door and you can’t help but smile.

₊⋆｡‧˚ʚ ୨ৎ ɞ˚‧｡⋆₊

After a couple of hours, you’re finally back home in the comfort of your own apartment. There’s a couple of shopping bags you threw onto the floor in the corner of your room that you promised yourself you would put away later. And your stomach was content with the free birthday treats you picked up along the way.

You freshen up quickly before you pick up your phone to text the group chat you had with the two boys.

flr 5 baddies. Felix had named it.

You’re a little nervous to go over to their place. Sure you’ve been over a handful of times but those were usually preplanned invites. Not last minute ones.

Your eyes go to read the last messages sent in the group chat from a few days ago.

y/n: do you guys happen to have one egg? i’m making ramen and i don’t have any :(

kim seungmin - apt 511: yes

You can’t help but let out a laugh at the messages. Typical neighbor messages. Next thing you’ll be asking them if they have any sugar.

Your mind quickly goes back to the day of the texts.

After reading Seungmin’s response you had prepared yourself to walk across the hall to their place to pick up the egg. But before you could slip on your shoes there was a knock at your door.

And when you opened the door Seungmin was on the other side with a small smile and a carton of eggs in his hand.

“Seungmin, I asked for one egg, not a whole carton,” you pointed out.

“Well, luckily for you it’s not a whole carton. It’s like a third of a carton.”

“I only need one egg,” you emphasize.

“We just bought a new carton so you can have the rest of this one for your future ramen.” He pushes the carton into your hands and before you can protest he’s turning around and walking back to his door.

He steps into his apartment and turns to look at you from his doorway, a large grin on his face. “You’re welcome by the way.”

You roll your eyes at his antics. “Thank you Seungmin.”

“I’ll see you around,” he nods. You nod back before the both of you shut your doors.

The memory causes a smile to form on your face. He’s so annoying, you think to yourself. But he was annoying in the worst way possible, in an adorably cute way. And you can’t help the way your heart races at the thought and sight of him.

Before your nerves cause you to change your mind, you quickly send them a message.

y/n: i’ll be over soon!

kim seungmin - apt 511: just knock on the door when you're here

lee felix - apt 511: thank goodness! i’m trying to bake you a cake and seungmin is trying to help. PLEASE distract him i do not want his help

kim seungmin - apt 511: hey i’m a great helper!

lee felix - apt 511: stay away from my cake

kim seungmin - apt 511: can i at least taste test the frosting

lee felix - apt 511: no

You laugh at their bickering and decide to head over to help rescue Felix’s cake. Making your way over to their door, the large 511 across the door glares back at you as you reach up to knock softly.

The door opens instantly and Seungmin stands on the other side.

“The birthday girl has finally arrived,” he teases. There’s a smirk on his face and his arms are crossed as he leans against the doorframe.

“Here I am. In all my glory. I know you must have missed me,” you joke back.

He lets out a soft chuckle before stepping aside and gesturing you in. Once he closes the door behind you, he leads you into the kitchen where Felix is.

“Y/n! You’re here!” Felix cheers. He’s mixing something in a bowl and has on a bright yellow apron littered in sunflowers.

“You didn’t have to bake me a cake Felix. A store bought one would have been fine.”

“Nonsense! A cake made with love tastes way better than one bought at the store,” he protests.

“You mean made with blood, sweat, and tears?” Seungmin teases.

“That only happens when I let you help me. And you’re not allowed to help today,” Felix points the spatula he’s holding at Seungmin. “You ruin everything you touch when it comes to baking.”

Seungmin laughs at his words but doesn’t deny anything. He pulls out a chair tucked away under their kitchen island and gestures for you to take a seat.

Once you’re seated, he mutters under his breath that he’ll be right back before walking down the hallway that leads to their bedrooms. Your eyes follow his figure as he disappears.

Your gaze is broken by the sound of Felix clearing his throat from his spot on the other side of the island. Turning your head to look at him, there’s a mischievous grin on his face.

“Soooo,” he drags out the syllable. He leans in close, over the counter, like he wants to tell you a secret that no one else should hear. “Do you think Seungminnie is cute?”

You nearly choke on the saliva in your mouth at the sound of his words.

“W-what makes you think that?” You stammer out.

“Hmmm, no reason. Just the way your eyes are always on him.”

“What! No they’re not,” you protest quickly, your eyes quickly darting away from Felix’s gaze out of embarrassment.

“Mhmm,” he hums quietly.

“He’s insufferably annoying,” you huff out. “Definitely not cute.”

“You know he’s only annoying to the people he likes.”

You’re about to open your mouth to protest but the sound of a door closing and approaching footsteps cut you off. But before Seungmin can appear from the hallway, Felix quickly whispers out with a playful wink and smile, “He thinks you’re cute too by the way.”

Then he pulls away and continues mixing the frosting in the bowl in front of him, like he didn’t just confess anything to you.

Seungmin finally approaches but you’re too stunned to move to look at him due to Felix’s words.

“What are you guys talking about?” Seungmin asks as he makes his way over to the both of you.

“Nothing much,” Felix replies. “I was just telling Y/n that the cake is cooled and now I just need to frost it. Right, Y/n?”

You nod your head quietly in agreement. Your cheeks flushed with a sudden warmth when you feel Seungmin’s presence next to you.

The sight of a bouquet of flowers and a small gift bag being placed in front of you causes your eyes to look up at the brunette. He’s standing so close that your arms lightly brush against each other’s.

“Happy birthday Y/n,” he smiles, taking a seat in the chair next to you.

“Seungmin!” you gasp. “You didn’t have to get me anything. You guys inviting me over already is enough.”

“Too late now,” he responds. “Felix insisted on the flowers when we went to the store to get cake ingredients.”

“Hey! I’m not the one who spent like twenty minutes trying to decide which ones we thought she would like best!”

“So what about the gift bag then?” you interject.

“Seungminnie had that already,” Felix points out.

“What do you mean by that?” you ask, brows furrowed as you look at Seungmin.

He avoids your gaze, suddenly interested in the bowl of frosting Felix is mixing. His ears and cheeks a slight shade of pink at being called out by his roommate.

“I bought it a while ago and was going to give it to you later today,” he mumbles, hands playing with the sleeve of his flannel.

“But we didn’t have plans until earlier this morning.”

“Well, I was going to text you about it. And if you were too busy for me to drop it off I was just going to leave it at your doorstep,” he confesses.

His confession causes a giggle to slip out. You didn’t mean to but god he was so cute.

The sound of your soft laughter causes him to blush even more and he’s still not looking at you. Eyes completely transfixed onto the mixing bowl.

“So can I open it now?” You ask quietly, waiting for his permission, eyeing the small bag in front of you.

Your question finally causes him to look at you and when your eyes meet you give him a soft smile. He smiles back before nodding his head.

Immediately you go to remove the tissue paper and inside the bag is a limited edition Sanrio blind box that you had been searching months for.

You gasp quietly at the sight of the box and it takes everything in you not to squeal in excitement in front of the two boys.

“Seungmin!” You exclaim loudly. “How did you know I’ve been wanting this oh my gosh. I’ve been searching everywhere for this! Where did you even find it?”

“I know a guy,” he shrugs nonchalantly but his face is still flushed pink. “And you’ve mentioned it a couple of times so I knew it was something you’ve been wanting.”

“I can’t believe you remembered. This is so thoughtful. Thank you so much.”

At this point you're so excited about the present that you’re basically buzzing in your seat. Seungmin laughs at the sight of you and gestures towards the box.

“Go on then, open it up,” he encourages.

“Ahh okay okay let’s open it,” your nod. Looking at the box to see the options.

“Who do you want?” Felix, who has currently moved on to frosting the cake in your favorite color, asks.

You reach forward to show him the box and point towards the character you want.

“That’s a good choice,” he agrees with a nod.

“Pochaccao is the only correct answer,” Seungmin counters. Turning back around to look at him, there’s a grin on his face. “Obviously,” he states matter of factly.

“Pochacco is a good choice,” you agree. “He’d be like my second choice from this set though. But I wouldn’t be upset if I got him.”

“Second place is outrageous. He’s clearly first place out of all the Sanrio characters,” he objects.

“Is this your present or mine?” You question.

He responds with a roll of his eyes, crossing his arms together. “Alright let’s open it up.”

Quickly you pull on the tab and take out the plastic bag. Making sure to not peek at the card that is inside, not wanting to be spoiled.

You tear open the bag with your eyes closed and pull out the figurine. Besides you Seungmin lets out a loud laugh. And when you open your eyes, Pochacco is sitting in your hands.

“I told you. Pochacco is the best.”

“You totally rigged the box or something,” you tease, reaching forward to push slightly at his shoulder.

“No way,” he protests.

“You had to have!”

“Nuh uh!”

“Yeah huh!”

Before the two of you can playfully argue some more, Felix claps his hands loudly.

“Cake is done!” he exclaims.

The two of you turn to look at him and the cake. It’s covered in frosting of your favorite color and he added sprinkles on top. A happy birthday candle is placed right in the center.

“Felix, it looks delicious!” you exclaimed excitedly.

“Thank you,” he replies sheepishly before grabbing a lighter and lighting the candle. “Alright now it’s time to sing.”

“Oh gosh please don’t sing it makes me embarassed,” your protest while shaking your head.

“Well now that’s even more of an excuse to sing,” Seungmin responds.

You playfully glare at him and before you can say anything else the two of them start singing happy birthday to you.

You sit there awkwardly, unsure what else to do besides sway side to side while they sing to you. Eventually they finally finish with a round of applause.

“Make a wish,” they both say at the same time.

Closing your eyes, you make a quick wish before blowing out the candle. And once the flame is extinguished, they both clap again.

Felix cuts slices of cake for everyone and the three of you talk about random topics while enjoying the cake. You move to help the two of them clean up the kitchen but they both protest that you shouldn’t help since it was your birthday and you were their guest.

You try to argue with them but they don’t budge and eventually Seungmin grabs you by the shoulders and pushes you towards the living room couch.

“Sit here and don’t move,” he commands.

“I’m not a dog, Seungmin.”

“Stay,” he jokes before heading back into the kitchen to help Felix finish cleaning up.

From your spot on the couch you can hear them discussing something in hushed whispers, but it’s hard to make out what they’re saying.

Eventually they make their way into the living room and Felix goes to set up his Nintendo Switch.

Seungmin takes a seat on the armchair tucked away in the corner. You’re not sure what they were discussing in the kitchen but his face is flushed pink again and he avoids eye contact.

Felix hands you a controller before taking a seat on the opposite side of the couch from you. And there’s a grin on his face, like he was up to no good again.

The game distracts you from your thoughts about their conversation as the three of you start to playfully yell at each other for the next few hours.

“Who the fuck threw that blue shell at me?”

“No way you just beat me while playing as Isabelle!”

“Why did you get a bonus star for losing every game that’s so unfair!”

“The rice is burning, oh my god the kitchen is on fire!”

Before you know it, the sun is set and the moon and stars shine outside. Your eyes start to feel heavy from exhaustion and your stomach is full of the dinner the boys had ordered for delivery. Both of them insisting that you do not pay them back, your birthday dinner they state.

“Alright boys, I think it’s time I head home. I’m getting sleepy,” you say as you finish up the last round of the game you were playing.

“Let me walk you home,” Seungmin offers. Standing up from his seat.

“I live across the hallway,” you point out. A soft laugh slipping from your lips as you look at him. He’s in front of you holding out his hand to help you up from your spot on the couch.

“You never know there could be danger lurking in the hallway.” There’s a slight smirk on his face.

“My front door is literally three steps from yours, maybe two if you step really wide.”

“Just shut up and let me walk you home,” he huffs out in fake annoyance, the smirk still there.

You roll your eyes at him and grab his held out hand. Once you're standing, you go to remove your hand from his. But before you can let go, he catches you by surprise and entwines his fingers with yours.

Your eyes dart between your connected hands and up at Seungmin. He’s looking away from you. His eyes staring into his front door like it’s his mission to get there without passing out. But you notice the way his ears grow a shade of red for the millionth time tonight.

Felix interrupts your state of shock from his spot on the couch. “Good night. Happy birthday Y/n.”

Turning around to look at him there’s a smirk on his face as he eyes your entwined hands. And when he looks away to meet your gaze, he sends you a quick wink. “Hope you had a lovely day with us.”

“Oh! Thank you Felix. I had a lot of fun. Thank you again for the cake and the dinner and the flowers. I’ll umm see you around,” you stutter out. Still flustered by the weight of Seungmin’s hand in yours.

“I’m sure you will,” Felix replies with a soft laugh before sending you another cheeky wink. He grabs all of your belongings and hands them to you.

And before you can say anything else, Seungmin is tugging at your hand and pulling you towards the door. “Alright time to walk the birthday girl home.”

You send Felix a quick wave as best as you could with your hands full of things and tell him thank you once more as you’re being pulled to the front door.

The both of you slip on your shoes and step outside. Seungmin shuts the door behind him and walks you to your door.

You weren’t exaggerating when you said it was three steps away. The two of you barely moved, he could have just watched you from his doorway, but he was insistent on walking all the way.

And when you stand in front of your door, you turn and look up at Seungmin. Both of your hands are still entwined.

“Thank you for today Seungmin. I had a lot of fun,” you tell him softly. “And thank you for the flowers and present. I can’t believe you remembered all of that.”

“It’s good to remember important stuff.”

“The exclusive blind box I’ve been searching for isn’t that important,” you joke. “It’s just a silly little trinket.”

“Nothing is silly when it comes to you,” he replies with a shy smile.

You beam at his words. “Thank you Seungmin, really. I, umm, was actually a bit sad about today but you and Felix really made today feel extra special.”

“It’s what you deserve, truly. Felix and I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Your heart skips a beat at his words and before you can psych yourself out, you’re reaching up to press a soft kiss to his cheek. The smell of his cologne fills your nose, a soft and subtle soapy lavender scent.

When you pull away, his face is flushed and he’s staring at you with wide eyes. His mouth is opened, frozen in shock.

Before you can say anything there’s a loud crash on the other side of his front door. The both of you quickly turn your head to look at the door.

“Someone is spying on us I think,” you giggle out.

“Ugh, he can never mind his own business,” Seungmin groans out and you can’t help but let out another laugh.

He turns back to you with a smile. “Happy birthday Y/n. Have a good night.”

“Thank you Seungmin. Good night, I’ll see you around.”

“See you around,” he replies with a nod before letting go of your hand and heading to his door.

You watch as he starts to close the door behind him after flashing you one last smile. And before the door completely shuts you can hear him shout Felix’s name loudly and the sound of footsteps running away.

Your friends may have forgotten your birthday, but you were glad to have spent it with the two boys from apartment 511.

You’re staring at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror, and the girl staring back looks like she’s about to either throw up or ascend to another dimension. Maybe both. In that order.

The letter is clutched so tightly in your hand that the pale lavender envelope is starting to crease, and you force yourself to loosen your grip before you ruin the one thing you’ve spent three weeks perfecting. Three weeks. That’s twenty-one days of drafting, crossing out, rewriting, Googling “how to write a love letter without sounding like a desperate loser,” and then rewriting again. You’ve used up an entire pack of stationery. You’ve watched so many calligraphy tutorials that the YouTube algorithm thinks you’re training to become a medieval scribe. All for this one moment. This one letter. This one massive, terrifying, possibly life-ruining leap of faith.

You are a hopeless romantic. Hopeless being the operative word.

It’s not that you don’t believe in love. You do. Desperately, overwhelmingly, with every fiber of your first-year STEM student soul. You believe in meet-cutes and slow burns and the exact moment when two people look at each other and the entire world goes soft around the edges. You’ve read about it a hundred times. You’ve watched it play out on every screen you own. You’ve composed entire daydreams about it during particularly boring chemistry lectures. Love is your favorite subject, the one you’ve studied with more dedication than calculus or physics combined. There’s just one tiny, inconvenient, absolutely infuriating problem.

You’re terrified of it.

Not the idea of it. The idea is lovely. The idea is safe. The idea lives in your head where everything unfolds exactly the way you want it to, where you always say the right thing, where you never trip over your own feet or laugh too loud at the wrong moment or stand frozen in a doorway like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. But real love? The kind that requires vulnerability and eye contact and actually speaking words out loud with your mouth? That kind of love makes your palms sweat and your heart race in a decidedly unromantic, fight-or-flight kind of way. You are, and this is the most embarrassing part, a coward. A romantic coward. You dream of grand gestures but can barely manage a coherent sentence when an attractive person so much as glances in your direction.

Which brings you back to the letter.

The letter is your loophole. Your workaround. Your way of confessing your feelings without actually having to say them, because writing them down felt manageable in a way that speaking never has. You can be eloquent on paper. On paper, you can say things like “the first time I saw your smile, it felt like someone had turned on all the lights in a room I didn’t even realize was dark” without immediately wanting to crawl into the nearest hole and live out the rest of your days an hermit. On paper, you’re brave. On paper, you’re the kind of person who goes after what she wants.

In reality, you’ve been hiding in this bathroom for fifteen minutes, and your hands are shaking so badly that a passing person would think you are having an epileptic seizure.

“Okay,” you whisper to your reflection. “Okay. You can do this. You are a woman on a mission. You are a warrior. You are-”

A toilet flushes in one of the stalls behind you, and you nearly launch yourself through the ceiling.

A girl you vaguely recognize from your introductory programming class emerges, gives you an odd look as she washes her hands, and leaves without saying anything. You wait until the door swings shut, then press your forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and contemplate every life choice that has led you to this moment.

His name is Jungwon.

Yang Jungwon. Second year. Undeclared major but leaning toward something in the humanities, which you know because you may have done a bit of light, respectful, completely non-creepy research. He has a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and a laugh that sounds like sunshine if sunshine could make noise, and he holds doors open for people even when they’re still like ten feet away, which creates that awkward situation where the person has to speed-walk to not seem rude, but he never seems to mind. You first noticed him at the campus library during midterms when he quietly slid a pack of gummy bears across the table toward you at 2 AM, muttering something about glucose being good for brain function, and then went back to his book like he hadn’t just fundamentally altered the trajectory of your entire emotional existence.

That was four months ago. You’ve been pining ever since. Pining, yearning, longing, you’ve run through the entire lexicon of unrequited affection, and you’re exhausted. Today, you’ve decided, is the day it ends. One way or another.

You push yourself off the mirror, square your shoulders, and march out of the bathroom with the determination of someone going to war. The envelope is slightly damp from your grip, but it’s still intact, and the words inside are still true, and somewhere on this campus, Yang Jungwon is about to receive the most heartfelt confession letter ever written by a first-year student who has consumed an unhealthy amount of romance media.

Now you just have to find him.

—————

The hallway is bustling with students, the usual midday chaos of people rushing to classes or huddling in groups to complain about assignments. You scan the crowd, looking for a familiar face that might point you in the right direction, and your eyes land on a guy leaning against the wall, scrolling through his phone with the dead-eyed expression of someone who has just finished a three-hour lab.

“Excuse me,” you say, and your voice comes out about an octave higher than normal. You clear your throat. “Sorry, um, do you know where I can find Yang Jungwon? Second year?”

The guy looks up, blinks slowly, deciding whether or not to acknowledge your presence, and then shrugs. “PC room, I think. Saw him heading there like twenty minutes ago.”

The PC room. Of course. It’s in the engineering and informatics building, a place you’ve rarely ever been to. But you know where it is, roughly, and you thank the guy with what you hope is a normal smile and not the rictus grin of someone rushing toward emotional catastrophe.

The walk across campus takes approximately seven minutes, and you spend every single one of them rehearsing what you’re going to say. You’ve already written the letter, so technically you don’t have to say anything, you can just hand it over and flee but you want to say something. Something cool. Something memorable.

“Hey, Jungwon, this is for you.” Simple. Direct. Good.

“I wrote you something. No pressure, just read it when you have time.” Casual. Low-stakes. Excellent.

“Hi, I’ve been emotionally compromised by your existence for several months, please accept this paper rectangle of feelings.” Okay, maybe not that one.

The engineering building looms in front of you before you’re ready. You push through the main doors and immediately feel out of place. The students here move with a different energy, less frantic, more focused, the kind of people who probably know what a server is and have opinions about programming languages you’ve never heard of.

You follow the signs toward the PC room, your footsteps echoing in the corridor, and with every step, your heart climbs higher up your throat. This is it. This is the moment. You’re going to walk in there, find Jungwon, hand him the letter, and then whatever happens happens. At least you’ll have tried. At least you’ll have been brave, even if it’s only for thirty seconds.

The door to the PC room is slightly ajar, and you can hear voices inside, multiple voices, which gives you pause. You assumed he’d be alone. Or with maybe one other person.

You hesitate. Your hand hovers over the door handle. Every instinct is screaming at you to turn around, go back to your dorm, and spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been. And maybe you would, if not for the small, stubborn voice in the back of your mind that says: You’ve already come this far. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to be the kind of person who actually does the thing instead of just dreaming about it?

Yes. Yes, you do.

You squeeze your eyes shut, take a breath so deep it makes you lightheaded, and push the door open with more force than strictly necessary. It slams against the wall with a bang that makes approximately twelve heads swivel in your direction, and for one horrifying moment, you are the center of attention in a room full of strangers.

But you don’t see any of them. You only see the figure sitting at the computer closest to the door, his back half-turned to you, hair falling over his forehead, the exact silhouette you’ve been looking for. Or at least, the exact silhouette you think you’ve been looking for.

You don’t stop to confirm. You don’t let yourself think. You just march forward, thrust the letter out in front of you like a shield, and launch into the speech you’ve been rehearsing for three weeks.

“This is for you. I’m sorry if this is weird or sudden but I’ve liked you for a really long time and I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. You don’t have to respond right away. You don’t have to respond ever, actually. I just wanted you to know that someone out there thinks you’re wonderful and I wrote it all down because I’m better at writing than talking and honestly I might pass out if I keep standing here so please just take this and I’ll go-”

You finally look up.

And the face staring back at you is absolutely, categorically, one hundred percent not Jungwon.

The boy in front of you is taller than Jungwon. Broader shoulders. Sharper jawline. Different eyes, darker, deeper, currently widened in a mixture of surprise and something you can’t quite read. His lips are parted slightly, as if he was about to say something before you launched into your emotional word-vomit, and he’s holding a half-eaten protein bar that’s now frozen halfway to his mouth.

The room has gone completely, utterly silent.

You can feel the stares of every single person boring into the back of your head. Someone coughs. Someone else whispers something that sounds suspiciously like “did she just-” before being shushed by their neighbor.

And then the boy, the very handsome, very wrong boy, sets down his protein bar, takes the letter gently from your trembling hand, and says in a voice that’s low and smooth and completely unfamiliar: “Wow. Okay. What’s your name?”

This is the worst moment of your entire life. You are going to die right here, in this PC room, surrounded by computer monitors and half-empty energy drink cans and a dozen witnesses who will spread this story to every corner of the university within the next three hours. Your obituary will read: here lies Y/N, the loser who can’t even recognize her ultimate crush.

“Y/N,” you croak, because your mouth is apparently still functioning even though every other part of you has shut down. “L/N Y/N. First year. STEM.”

You don’t know why you said STEM. He didn’t ask for your department. You’re offering information nobody requested. This is a disaster.

But the boy, he’s looking at you with an expression you can’t decipher, his head tilted slightly to the side like you’re a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. He’s wearing a dark hoodie with the informatics department logo on it, and there’s a pair of expensive-looking headphones draped around his neck, and his hair is slightly mussed in a way that suggests he’s been running his fingers through it while concentrating. He’s absurdly good-looking, the kind of good-looking that makes you simultaneously want to stare and look away, and you’re only now noticing the way several girls in the room have been watching him since you entered, not just because of your blunder, but because they’ve been watching him.

“I’m Heeseung,” he says, and there’s a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Lee Heeseung. Third year. Informatics engineering.”

Lee Heeseung. The name registers somewhere in the back of your panic-addled brain. It’s familiar in the way that campus gossip is familiar, attached to words like hot and player and don’t get your hopes up because he’ll charm you and then move on. You’ve heard girls in your dorm talking about him in hushed, giggling tones, trading stories about brief encounters and misinterpreted invitations. And you, in your infinite wisdom, have just handed a love letter meant for someone else directly into his notorious hands.

You have to fix this. You have to tell him it was a mistake. You have to-

“I’m flattered,” Heeseung says, and his smile widens slightly, not quite a smirk but definitely approaching smirk territory. “Really. This is... I mean, no one’s ever confessed to me with an actual letter before. It’s kind of old school.” He turns the envelope over in his hands, examining it with what seems like genuine curiosity. “The handwriting is really pretty. Did you do the calligraphy yourself?”

“Yes,” you say, because you are physically incapable of lying when put on the spot, and also because your brain has apparently decided that the best course of action is to just answer whatever questions he asks like this is a normal conversation and not the emotional equivalent of a tornado.

“Impressive.” He looks at you, really looks at you, and something shifts in his expression. The teasing edge softens just a fraction. “A confession is a lot, though. I mean, I’m honored, but we don’t even know each other.”

This is your opening. This is the moment where you say “actually, that’s because this letter wasn’t meant for you, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding, I’m so sorry, please forget this ever happened.” The words are right there, lined up on your tongue, ready to go.

But the room is still watching. A dozen pairs of eyes. The whispers have stopped, but the staring hasn’t, and you can feel every single gaze like a physical weight pressing down on you. If you correct him now, in front of everyone, you’ll have to explain. You’ll have to admit that you walked into a crowded room and confessed to the wrong person like an absolute buffoon. You’ll become a campus legend for all the wrong reasons: the girl who was too stupid to even identify her own crush. The story will follow you for the rest of your university career. You’ll never live it down.

But if you just... let him believe it... if you just nod and agree and leave as quickly as possible... you can fix this later. Privately. Without an audience. You can find him tomorrow, or send him a message, or do literally anything other than humiliate yourself further in front of all these people.

Your mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

“I know,” you hear yourself say. “It’s a lot. I know.”

Heeseung nods thoughtfully, like you’ve said something profound. “But I’m not against it. Starting slow, I mean. If you want.”

What.

“What,” you say, but it comes out more like a statement than a question.

“I’m okay with starting slow,” he repeats, and now the smile is definitely back, a little crooked, a little curious. “You’re cute. And clearly brave. I like that. So if you want to, I don’t know, get coffee sometime and see where this goes... I’m open to it.”

Someone in the room lets out a low whistle. Someone else says “Heeseung, are you serious right now?” in a tone of utter disbelief. But Heeseung doesn’t look away from you. He’s waiting for your answer, his gaze steady and warm, and you are standing in the epicenter of a complete and total catastrophe with absolutely no idea how to get out.

Say no. Say it was a mistake. Say the truth.

“Okay,” you whisper.

Okay?! Okay?!

“Okay,” he echoes, and the smile breaks fully across his face, transforming him from handsome to devastating. “Good. I’ll find you. Y/N, first year, STEM, right?”

You nod mutely.

“Cool.” He tucks your letter carefully into the pocket of his hoodie, like it’s something precious, like he’s planning to read it later, and the gesture makes your stomach twist with guilt so intense you think you might actually be sick. “I’ll see you around, Y/N.”

You don’t remember leaving the room. You don’t remember the walk back across campus or the elevator ride to your floor or the moment you collapsed face-first onto your dorm bed. All you know is that one moment you were standing in the PC room, and the next you are here, staring at the ceiling, replaying every single agonizing second on an endless loop.

You confessed to the wrong person.

You confessed to the wrong person.

And for some reason that you absolutely cannot comprehend, he said yes.

Across campus, in a PC room that has finally returned to its normal hum of activity, Lee Heeseung pulls a slightly crumpled lavender envelope out of his hoodie pocket and stares at it for a long moment.

“Dude,” says his friend Jay from the next computer over, not bothering to hide his grin. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know,” Heeseung says honestly. And he doesn’t. He’s used to attention, he knows how to handle it, how to smile and nod and gently redirect without hurting anyone’s feelings. It’s a skill he’s developed over the years, the only way he knows to deal with the unfortunate side effect of his people-pleasing tendencies. He’s nice to someone, he helps them with an assignment, he holds a door open or offers a pen, and suddenly they’re looking at him with stars in their eyes, and he doesn’t know how to tell them that he was just trying to be polite without sounding like an arrogant jerk. So he lets them down easy, or he avoids the situation entirely, and his reputation grows in ways that don’t reflect the truth at all.

But this, this is new. A letter. An actual, physical, handwritten letter, with swooping calligraphy and a lavender envelope and a girl who looked so terrified that he thought she might actually pass out right there on the linoleum floor.

She looked at him like he was a natural disaster. Like she was watching a building collapse in slow motion and couldn’t do anything to stop it.

And then she said okay anyway.

“She’s interesting,” Heeseung murmurs, more to himself than to Jay, and carefully opens the envelope.

“Interesting how?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s too busy reading, his eyes moving slowly across the carefully penned words, the ink slightly smudged in places where the writer’s hand might have trembled. It’s beautiful. It’s earnest. It’s the kind of letter that someone writes when they mean every single word, when they’ve poured their entire heart onto the page without holding anything back.

He’s never received anything like it before.

And he wants to know more about the girl who wrote it, the girl who burst into his afternoon like a hurricane of nerves and feelings.

“Jay,” he says, still staring at the letter, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “I think something interesting just walked into my life.”

He doesn’t notice the way his friend shakes his head and mutters something about “here we go again.”

He’s too busy wondering when he’ll see Y/N next.

—————

The following forty-eight hours of your life can be accurately described as a masterclass in strategic avoidance and tactical regret.

You skip two classes. Not on purpose, exactly, you just can’t bring yourself to leave your dorm room when every shadow in the hallway might be Lee Heeseung coming to collect on that coffee date you apparently agreed to in a moment of temporary insanity. You survive on instant noodles and the protein bars your friend left on her desk with a sticky note that said “FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY,” which this absolutely qualifies as. You watch three entire seasons of Bridgerton without retaining a single moment because your brain is too busy replaying the PC room incident on a continuous, merciless loop.

“I’m Lee Heeseung. Third year. Informatics engineering.”

“I’m okay with starting slow.”

“You’re cute.”

You bury your face in your pillow and scream, but it comes out muffled and pathetic, like a small animal giving up on life.

By day three, you’ve developed a system. You only leave your room during off-peak hours, skittering through campus, your head on a constant swivel. You’ve memorized the locations of every vending machine in buildings Heeseung is unlikely to frequent. You’ve started taking the long way to your remaining classes, cutting through the art department and the greenhouse and once, memorably, a service corridor that smelled strongly of bleach and soap. You’ve become a ghost. A phantom. A creature of the shadows who survives on granola bars and instant noddles.

But the problem with running away from your problems is that your problems don’t actually go anywhere. They just wait. And think about you. And eventually, when you least expect it, they catch up.

It happens on a Thursday.

You’re crouched behind a potted plant near the science building, scanning the courtyard for any sign of tall, attractive informatics students, when your phone buzzes with a text from your best friend, Yunjin.

Yunjin: heard you’ve been living like a sewer rat. want me to bring you real food?

You: can’t. i’m in the middle of a crisis

Yunjin: You’re executing what we talked about yet?

You: it’s in process

Yunjin: at the end of the day, you will have to tell him

You stare at the message for a long moment. It’s such a simple solution. So elegant. So reasonable. And yet, every time you imagine yourself walking up to Heeseung and saying “actually, I meant to give that letter to someone else,” your entire body physically recoils like you’ve touched a hot stove. The humiliation would be astronomical. The look on his face, surprise, then confusion, then that horrible moment of realization that he was never supposed to be the recipient would haunt you for the rest of your natural life. And you’d still have to explain the Jungwon part. And Jungwon would find out. And then you’d be the weird girl who couldn’t even confess to the right person, and Heeseung would be the guy who got accidentally confessed to, and everyone would laugh about it for weeks, and-

Your phone buzzes again.

Yunjin: i can hear you overthinking from across campus. just rip off the bandaid. what’s the worst that could happen

You type back a single message: he could tell everyone and i’d have to transfer schools and change my name and become a farmer in New Zeland

Yunjin: dramatic. but valid. good luck with your plant hiding

You shove your phone back into your pocket and peek around the potted plant again. The courtyard is clear. This is your window. You take a deep breath, steel your nerves, and scuttle out from behind the foliage.

The plan for today is simple: find Heeseung, explain the misunderstanding, and disappear forever. You’ve spent the entire morning psyching yourself up for this. You’ve practiced the speech in the mirror seventeen times. You’ve even written a script on your phone that you can refer to in case of emergency. It’s thorough, it’s clear, it leaves absolutely no room for misinterpretation, and it ends with a sincere apology and a polite request that you both pretend this never happened. It’s perfect. It’s foolproof. All you have to do is locate the target.

Easier said than done. You’ve been looking for him since yesterday, not to talk to, but to observe from a safe distance so you could plan your approach and the universe, in its infinite comedic wisdom, has made him completely unfindable. It’s like he vanished off the face of the earth the moment you actually wanted to see him. Three days ago, you couldn’t walk three feet without catching a glimpse of him, but now? Now he’s a ghost. A myth. A concept rather than a physical entity.

You’re going to have to ask for help.

This is, objectively, a terrible idea. Asking for help means talking to people, and talking to people about Heeseung means potentially revealing that you’re looking for him, which means potentially revealing why you’re looking for him, which means the whole campus could know about the letter situation by lunchtime. But you’re running out of options, and you’re running out of granola bars, and you can’t live behind potted plants forever.

You find your informant near the engineering building, a girl with neon green headphones and a laptop covered in stickers, sitting on a bench and typing furiously at something that looks like code. She seems approachable. She seems like she won’t ask too many questions. You approach with what you hope is casual confidence and not the desperate energy of someone who has been living on protein bars.

“Excuse me,” you say, and your voice comes out surprisingly normal. Points for you. “Do you know where I can find Lee Heeseung? Third year, informatics?”

The girl looks up, her eyes flicking over you with mild curiosity. She doesn’t ask why you’re looking for him, which makes you want to hug her. “Heeseung? Yeah, I think I saw him heading to the quad about ten minutes ago. Something about meeting up with some people before his next class.”

The quad. Of course. The most open, public, exposed location on the entire campus. The place where literally everyone congregates. The absolute last place you want to have a conversation about accidental love confessions.

“Great,” you say, and your voice is definitely an octave higher now. “Great. Thank you. Thanks. So much.”

The girl gives you a weird look, shrugs, and goes back to her coding.

You’re already moving, your feet carrying you toward the quad before your brain can catch up and talk you out of it. This is fine. This is progress. You’ll find him, you’ll pull him aside, you’ll give him the speech, and then you’ll be free. You’ll be a normal person again. You’ll be able to walk through campus without checking every corner for a tall informatics student who thinks you’re cute and brave and worthy of a coffee date.

The quad is bustling when you arrive, clusters of students sprawled across the grass and gathered around the stone benches near the fountain. The afternoon sun is bright and warm, the kind of weather that makes everyone want to be outside, which is lovely and picturesque and deeply inconvenient for your purposes. You squint against the glare, scanning the crowd for a familiar dark-haired figure.

No Heeseung.

You circle the perimeter, weaving between groups of friends and dodging a frisbee that comes sailing dangerously close to your head. You check near the fountain, near the big oak tree, near the cluster of food trucks that’s set up along the east edge. Still no Heeseung. Your informant said ten minutes ago, he should be here. Unless he already left. Unless you missed him. Unless this is a sign from the universe that you should give up and commit to the farmer life plan after all.

You’re so focused on your search that you don’t notice someone approaching until a shadow falls across your path, and a voice, warm, familiar, the exact voice you’ve been daydreaming about for four months, says:

“Y/N? Hey, it is you!”

You look up.

Yang Jungwon is standing right in front of you, smiling like the sun just came out from behind a cloud, and every single coherent thought in your brain immediately evaporates.

He’s wearing a soft-looking cream sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and his dark hair is slightly windswept, and there’s a tiny mole near his chin that you’ve never noticed before but is now seared into your memory forever. He’s holding a book, something with a cracked spine and a title in a language you don’t recognize and he’s looking at you with genuine, undiluted pleasure, like running into you is the best thing that’s happened to him all day.

“It’s me,” you say, because you are a conversational genius. “I mean. Yes. Hi. Hello.”

Smooth. Flawless execution. Ten out of ten.

Jungwon doesn’t seem to notice your complete lack of verbal grace. His smile widens, crinkling the corners of his eyes in exactly the way you’ve catalogued in your mental Jungwon database. “I thought I recognized you. You’re in my philosophy elective, right? Front row, near the window?”

He knows where you sit. He knows where you sit. This is both the best and worst information you’ve ever received, because on one hand, Yang Jungwon has noticed your existence, but on the other hand, Yang Jungwon has noticed your existence, and now you have to be a normal human being and not the disaster you currently are.

“Front row near the window,” you confirm, nodding a little too vigorously. “That’s me. I like the natural light. For... note-taking purposes.”

“Makes sense.” He shifts his weight, tucking the book under his arm. “You take really detailed notes, by the way. I sat behind you once, and I was honestly impressed. Your color-coding system is no joke.”

Jungwon has looked at your notes. Jungwon has been impressed by your notes. Your brain is short-circuiting at approximately the speed of light, and you have to physically resist the urge to fist-pump in the middle of the quad.

“Thank you,” you manage. “I have a lot of highlighters. Maybe too many. Is there such a thing as too many highlighters? I don’t think so, but I’ve been told my stationery collection is concerning.”

Oh no. Why are you talking about stationery? You need to say something charming. Something witty. Something that will make him see you as more than the girl with the aggressive color-coding system.

“I don’t think it’s concerning,” Jungwon says, and there’s a teasing lilt to his voice that makes your knees go weak. “Passionate, maybe. Dedicated. I respect it.”

“Passionate and dedicated,” you repeat faintly. “That’s... yeah. That’s my brand.”

He laughs, and it’s exactly like you remember, bright and warm, the kind of laugh that makes you want to do whatever you just did again and again just to hear it on repeat. “I like it. Passion is underrated.” He tilts his head, studying you with an expression you can’t quite read. “So what brings you to the quad? You usually eat lunch in the science building courtyard, don’t you?”

Your heart stutters. He knows where you eat lunch. He’s observed your habits. This is either a sign of mutual interest or you’ve accidentally become the subject of a sociological case study, and at this point you’re willing to accept either outcome.

“I’m, um, looking for someone,” you say, and the confession letter debacle comes crashing back into your consciousness like a wrecking ball through a glass window. Right. You’re supposed to be finding Heeseung. You’re supposed to be fixing the misunderstanding. That’s why you’re here. Not to bask in the radiant warmth of Jungwon’s attention like a lizard on a sunny rock.

“Anyone I know?” Jungwon asks, and there’s something in his tone, curiosity, maybe.

“Probably not,” you say quickly. “Just a... just a person. A random person. Not important.”

Jungwon raises an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced, but before he can press further, a new voice cuts through the afternoon air like a knife through butter.

“There you are.”

You freeze. Your blood turns to ice. Every cell in your body screams in unison: run.

Lee Heeseung is walking toward you across the quad, his headphones hanging around his neck and his hands tucked casually into the pockets of his jacket. He looks exactly as devastatingly attractive as he did three days ago, which is deeply unfair. His expression is a mixture of curiosity and amusement, and when his eyes meet yours, that slight smile, the one that’s not quite a smirk but definitely is a smirk’s second cousin, curves across his lips.

“I heard you’ve been looking for me,” he says, coming to a stop beside Jungwon like this is the most natural gathering in the world. “You know, if you wanted to see me, you could have just messaged. I would have given you my number at the PC room.”

Jungwon looks between you and Heeseung with visible confusion, his earlier smile fading into something more guarded. “Wait. You two know each other?”

This is it. This is the moment the universe has been building toward. Every terrible decision, every act of cowardice, every misguided attempt to avoid embarrassment, it’s all led here, to this exact spot on the quad, with the wrong guy standing next to the right guy and your entire romantic future hanging in the balance.

“I wouldn’t say know,” you begin, but Heeseung is already talking over you, apparently immune to the desperate telepathic signals you’re trying to beam directly into his brain.

“She confessed to me two days ago,” Heeseung says, and his tone is so casual, so conversational, like he’s discussing the weather or what he had for lunch. “Walked right into the PC room, handed me a letter, told me she’d liked me for a long time. It was very romantic. Very old-school. I was impressed.”

Silence. Jungwon stares at Heeseung. Then at you. Then back at Heeseung.

“She... confessed to you,” Jungwon repeats slowly, and his voice has gone flat in a way that makes your heart splinter into approximately seven thousand pieces.

“Full confession,” Heeseung confirms, still smiling. “I’m thinking we’ll start with coffee. Keep it simple, you know? She’s shy. I don’t want to overwhelm her.”

This is a nightmare. This is a waking, breathing, actively-unfolding nightmare, and you are trapped in it like a fly in amber, unable to move or speak or do anything except watch as every possible future with Jungwon crumbles to dust before your eyes.

Because here’s the thing you realize in that horrible, crystal-clear moment: you can’t correct Heeseung now. Not in front of Jungwon. Not when Jungwon has just been told, in no uncertain terms, that you confessed to someone else. If you explain the truth, that the letter was actually meant for Jungwon, that the whole thing was a catastrophic mistake, then what? Jungwon would know you’d been planning to confess to him, but he’d also know that you somehow managed to mess it up so spectacularly that you confessed to his friend instead. You’d look incompetent at best and completely unhinged at worst. And Heeseung would be humiliated, and Jungwon would be awkward, and you’d be the epicenter of a social catastrophe so immense that all three of you would have to avoid each other for the rest of your academic careers.

You are trapped. Completely, utterly, irreversibly trapped.

“Interesting,” Jungwon says, and the word is so neutral that it cuts deeper than any insult ever could. “I didn’t realize you two ran in the same circles.”

“We don’t,” you croak. “We really, really don’t.”

“We’re just getting started,” Heeseung says cheerfully, and he has the audacity to wink at you. Like this is some kind of adorable inside joke instead of the emotional apocalypse it actually is.

You have to get out of here. You have to escape before the sob building in your chest forces its way out and makes everything infinitely worse. You can feel it pressing against your ribs, hot and insistent, and if you don’t leave right now, you’re going to burst into tears in the middle of the quad in front of both of them, and then the disaster will be complete.

“I have to go,” you blurt out, and you’re already backing away, your feet moving before your brain can issue any kind of warning. “I have… a thing. A class. A lab. A lab class. It’s very important. I can’t miss it. I have to go.”

Heeseung’s brow furrows slightly. “Wait, I thought you wanted to talk to-”

“Nope! No talking! We’re good! Everything’s fine! Bye!”

You spin around and power-walk toward the nearest exit, which happens to be in the direction of the fountain, which you only realize when your foot catches on the low stone ledge and you go sprawling forward with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.

Your knee hits the ground. Your dignity hits the ground approximately three feet to the left. Several people turn to look.

“Y/N!” That’s Jungwon’s voice, concerned and moving closer, and you absolutely cannot handle that right now.

“I’m fine!” you shriek, scrambling to your feet with adrenaline-fueled desperation. “Totally fine! Happens all the time! I’m very clumsy! It’s part of my charm!”

You don’t look back. You can’t look back. If you look back, you’ll see Jungwon’s worried expression and Heeseung’s confused one, and you’ll have to confront the full magnitude of what just happened, and your fragile emotional state simply cannot withstand that kind of pressure. So you run. Not jog, not power-walk…run. Across the quad, past the food trucks, through a gap between two buildings, and out onto the main campus pathway like the hounds of hell are snapping at your heels.

You don’t stop until you reach the arts building, and you don’t start breathing normally until you’ve locked yourself in a practice room on the third floor, surrounded by soundproof walls and a piano that’s seen better days. You slide down against the door, pull your knees up to your chest, and let out a sound that’s halfway between a groan and a wail.

Everything is ruined. Everything. You had one chance, one single, solitary chance to fix the misunderstanding and salvage your dignity and maybe, just maybe, preserve the possibility of something with Jungwon somewhere down the line. And instead, you let your hopeless romantic heart get distracted by a five-minute conversation about philosophy notes and highlighters, and now you’re the girl who confessed to Lee Heeseung, and Jungwon thinks you’re interested in someone else, and there is no conceivable way to untangle this mess without making everything exponentially worse.

You’re going to have to transfer schools. You’re going to have to move to another country. You’re going to have to fake your own death and start a new identity as a goat farmer in New Zeland.

The door handle jiggles behind you. “Occupied!” you yell, your voice cracking.

“Y/N? Is that you?”

Your best friend Yunjin’s voice filters through the door, muffled but unmistakable, and the sound of it is enough to crack the dam you’ve been desperately trying to hold together. You scramble to your feet, fumble with the lock, and yank the door open to reveal Yunjin standing in the hallway with a cup of bubble tea in each hand and an expression of profound concern on her face.

“I saw you running,” she says, her eyes scanning your disheveled appearance. “Like, truly running. I’ve never seen you run before. You once told me running was for people who don’t appreciate the journey.”

“Yunjin,” you crumble, and your voice is so pitiful that she immediately sets down both drinks and pulls you into a hug.

“Okay,” she says, steering you back into the practice room and closing the door behind her. “Okay. Sit down. Tell me everything. What happened? Did you talk to Heeseung? Did you fix it?”

You laugh, but it comes out wrong, high and wobbly, on the edge of hysteria. “Fix it? Fix it? Yunjin, I made it so much worse. I made it so much worse that I think I actually created new dimensions of worse. Scientists are going to have to invent new words to describe how badly I messed this up.”

“That’s... improbable,” Yunjin says carefully. “But I’m listening.”

She settles onto the piano bench, and you collapse onto the floor in front of her, crossing your legs and burying your face in your hands. The story spills out of you in a torrent, the quad, the search for Heeseung, the unexpected appearance of Jungwon, the conversation that made your heart soar, and then the moment Heeseung appeared like a harbinger of doom and casually announced your confession to the one person you never wanted to know about it.

“And then I fell,” you finish miserably. “In front of both of them. And I ran away. And now Jungwon thinks I like Heeseung, and Heeseung thinks I like Heeseung, and I can’t correct either of them without making everything even weirder, and my life is a romantic comedy written by a petty incel.”

Yunjin is quiet for a moment. Then she lets out a long, slow breath. “Okay. That’s... that’s a lot.”

“I know.”

“And you’re telling me you couldn’t just say, hey Heeseung, sorry for the mix-up, the letter wasn’t for you, my bad?”

You look up at her, your eyes rimmed with red. “In front of Jungwon? After Heeseung already told him I confessed? What would Jungwon think of me?”

Yunjin considers this. “That you’re a disaster, probably.”

“Exactly!”

“But a lovable disaster,” she adds. “Disasters can be endearing.”

“Yunjin, please focus.”

She holds up her hands in surrender, but there’s a glint in her eye that you recognize, the one that means she’s about to drop some wisdom on you whether you’re ready for it or not. Yunjin has been your best friend since orientation week, when you both accidentally joined the wrong club meeting and ended up spending two hours in a competitive gardening seminar before realizing your mistake. She’s practical where you’re dreamy, decisive where you’re hesitant, and she’s talked you down from approximately four hundred anxiety spirals since the semester started. If anyone can find a way out of this mess, it’s her.

“Okay,” she says, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Let me present you with an alternative perspective.”

“I’m listening.”

“Lee Heeseung,” she says, ticking off points on her fingers, “has a reputation. A big one. Everyone knows it. He’s the guy who’s super nice to everyone, especially girls, and then they fall for him and he gets all surprised when they expect something more, and then things fizzle out because he wasn’t looking for anything serious.” She makes air quotes with her fingers. “Sound familiar?”

You blink. “I mean... I’ve heard things. But he didn’t seem like-”

“That’s his whole thing,” Yunjin interrupts. “He doesn’t seem like it. That’s why it works. He likes when everyone is after him. But nice doesn’t equal interested, so girls get the wrong idea and then they get hurt. It’s a cycle.” She pops a tapioca pearl into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “My point is, you don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to fix this. You just need to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For him to get bored.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Think about it. You’re not actually interested in him, right? You’re not going to fall all over yourself trying to get his attention. You’re not going to be waiting outside his classes or accidentally showing up wherever he hangs out. You’re not going to be like every other girl who’s chased after him.”

You frown. “So... what, I just... do nothing?”

“No, you do the opposite of chasing.” Yunjin grins, and it’s slightly wicked. “You make yourself as uninteresting to him as possible. You’re awkward, you’re weird, you’re clearly not trying to impress him. You don’t dress up when you know you might see him. You talk about boring things. You mention, I don’t know, your extensive collection of vintage stamps or whatever nerdy hobby you can think of. You make yourself boring.”

“I don’t have a stamp collection.”

“Then make one up! The point is, Heeseung is used to girls who want him. If you clearly don’t want him, his interest is going to fizzle out faster than a cheap sparkler. He’ll move on to the next girl who bats her eyelashes at him, and you’ll be free. No confrontation necessary.”

You turn this over in your mind. It’s... not the worst idea you’ve ever heard. In fact, compared to your current strategy of blind panic and tactical fleeing, it’s practically genius. If you can’t correct the misunderstanding without making everything worse, maybe you can just... let it die on its own. Let Heeseung’s fabled short attention span work in your favor. Become so aggressively unappealing that he loses interest within a week and never thinks about you again.

And once he’s out of the picture, once enough time has passed, maybe you can try again with Jungwon. Properly. With better aim.

“You’re a genius,” you tell Yunjin, the hope creeping back into your voice. “An absolute genius. I could kiss you.”

“Please don’t, you’re covered in grass stains.” She nudges one of the bubble teas toward you with her foot. “Drink your tea. Hydrate. And then we’re going to brainstorm all the ways you can make yourself seem as unappealing as possible to a hot third-year informatics student.”

You grab the drink and take a long sip, the sweetness settling something in your chest. For the first time in three days, you feel something other than panic. You feel strategic. You feel determined. Lee Heeseung might think you’re cute and brave and worthy of a coffee date, but he hasn’t met the version of you that’s about to emerge, a version so bland, so uninteresting, so aggressively mediocre that he’ll run in the opposite direction before the week is out.

“Okay,” you say, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. “Okay. Let’s do this. Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested starts now.”

Yunjin raises her bubble tea in a toast. “To being boring.”

You clink your cup against hers. “To being boring.”

Somewhere across campus Heeseung is still standing in the quad with a confused expression on his face and a lavender envelope in his pocket, wondering why the girl who supposedly has a crush on him just sprinted away like she was being chased by bears.

He’s not used to this. He’s not used to any of this.

And that, he realizes with a small, bemused shake of his head, is exactly what makes it so interesting.

—————

Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested lasted exactly four days before it encountered its first major obstacle.

That obstacle is approximately six feet tall, has flowing hair that falls perfectly across his forehead, and is currently walking directly toward your table in the cafeteria with a tray in his hands and a smile on his face that suggests he has absolutely no idea he's supposed to be losing interest in you.

You spot him approximately 2.3 seconds too late. By the time your brain registers the approaching danger, you are already mid-bite into a sad cafeteria sandwich, your mouth full of bread and lettuce and the dawning realization that you are trapped. There is no escape route. Your table is in the corner, surrounded on three sides by walls and on the fourth side by Heeseung's rapidly approaching form. You are a cornered animal. A very stupid, very panicked cornered animal with mayonnaise on her chin.

"Y/N!" Heeseung says your name like it's his favorite word, bright and warm and entirely too enthusiastic for someone who's supposed to be a notorious womanizer with a short attention span. "I was hoping I'd run into you. Mind if I sit?"

Mind if he sits? Of course you mind. You mind immensely. You mind with every fiber of your being. Sitting with Heeseung is the exact opposite of what Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested is supposed to accomplish. Sitting with Heeseung means talking to Heeseung, and talking to Heeseung means opportunities to accidentally charm him, and charming him is categorically Not The Goal.

But Heeseung is already pulling out the chair across from you, and his smile is so genuine, and there's a tiny bit of what looks like grease on his cheekbone that suggests he's just come from some kind of engineering lab, and you are weak. You are so, so weak.

"Go ahead," you hear yourself say, and then immediately want to punch yourself in the face.

Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested, Day Four, 12:34 PM: catastrophic failure already in progress.

Heeseung settles into the chair with an easy grace, setting his tray down and immediately stealing one of your fries like you're old friends who share food on a regular basis. You watch the fry disappear into his mouth and feel a small part of your soul leave your body.

"So," he says, leaning back and studying you with those dark, unreadable eyes. "You ran away from me pretty fast the other day. Should I be worried? Do I have something on my face?"

He doesn't. He absolutely doesn't. He has the kind of face that belongs on a billboard, all sharp angles and soft edges and that one little mole on his forehead that you are definitely not noticing because noticing things about Heeseung's face is counterproductive to the mission.

"No," you say quickly. "No, you're fine. Your face is fine. I mean, you don't have anything on your face. I just remembered I had somewhere to be. Very suddenly. It was urgent."

"An urgent… lab class?" Heeseung's lips twitch. "That's what you said, right? An urgent lab class on a Thursday afternoon?"

Your face heats. "Yes. Exactly. Lab class. Very urgent. Science doesn't wait."

"Mmm." He pops another one of your fries into his mouth. "Well, the good news is, you don't look like you're in a hurry right now. So we can actually talk. You know, like normal people who are supposedly getting to know each other?"

Right. Getting to know each other. Because you confessed to him. Because he thinks you like him. Because you're living in an elaborate lie of your own making.

This is your chance, though. This is the perfect opportunity to implement Phase One of the Make Him Uninterested plan: Be Weird and Off-Putting. You just have to be the most boring, strange, unappealing version of yourself that you can possibly imagine. How hard can it be?

Pretty hard, as it turns out, because your brain chooses this exact moment to go completely blank.

"So," Heeseung says, apparently unbothered by your silence, "tell me about yourself. What do you like to do for fun? Besides writing beautiful love letters and then running away from the recipient?"

You choke on your own saliva. Just… straight up choke on nothing, like a cartoon character. "I don't…that wasn't…I do normal things. Normal fun things. Like… watching paint dry. And counting ceiling tiles. Very relaxing. You should try it."

Heeseung's expression flickers, confusion, amusement, something in between. "Counting ceiling tiles?"

"There are forty-seven in this cafeteria," you say, doubling down with the desperate energy of someone who has already committed to the bit. "Forty-eight if you count the one that's partially covered by that vent over there. But some people don't count partial tiles. It's a philosophical debate, really."

"Fascinating," Heeseung says, and the worst part is that he sounds like he actually means it. "What else?"

What else? What else can you say that will make you sound completely unappealing? You cast around for inspiration, your eyes landing on your sandwich. Okay. Fine. If words can't do the job, maybe actions can.

You pick up your sandwich with both hands and take the weirdest bite you can physically manage, mouth open slightly too wide, chewing with exaggerated jaw movements, making an unfortunate amount of noise in the process. You feel like a cow. You look like a cow. You are embodying the spirit of a cow, and surely, surely, this is enough to make any self-respecting hot informatics student run for the hills.

Heeseung watches you chew. His expression doesn't change.

"Good sandwich?" he asks mildly.

"Mmf," you say, still chewing, still being a cow. "Very good. I love-"

And then the lettuce hits the back of your throat.

You don't know how it happens. One moment you're chewing normally, well, abnormally, but in a controlled way and the next moment a piece of lettuce stages a rebellion and lodges itself directly in your windpipe. Your eyes go wide. Your hand flies to your throat. You make a sound that is somewhere between a wheeze and a honk.

"Y/N?" Heeseung's amused expression shifts to concern. "Are you okay?"

You are not okay. You are choking. You are choking on lettuce in front of Lee Heeseung in the middle of the cafeteria, and this is how you're going to die.

Heeseung is on his feet now, moving around the table with surprising speed. "Hey, hey, can you breathe? Do you need me to-"

You shake your head frantically, still making dying cow noises, and grab your water bottle with shaking hands. The first gulp does nothing. The second gulp, by some miracle, dislodges the lettuce just enough for you to cough it up into a napkin with all the grace and dignity of a cat hacking up a hairball.

Silence.

The entire cafeteria, you're convinced, is staring at you. In reality, probably only a few nearby tables have noticed, but it feels apocalyptic. You sit there, red-faced and teary-eyed, clutching a napkin full of your own near-death experience, and want the floor to open up and swallow you whole.

Heeseung kneels beside your chair, one hand hovering near your shoulder like he isn't sure if touching you would be welcome. "Hey. You're okay. You're okay, right? Do you need me to get you anything? More water? A doctor? A new sandwich without lettuce?"

His voice is gentle. Genuinely gentle. Not the smooth, charming tone you expect from someone with his reputation, but something softer, something that sounds almost like real concern.

"I'm fine," you croak, your voice ravaged. "I'm fine. That happens. All the time. I'm very bad at eating. It's one of my traits."

"One of your traits," Heeseung repeats, and the corner of his mouth twitches despite his obvious worry. "Being bad at eating?"

"It's a lifestyle choice."

He laughs. Not a polite chuckle or a mocking snicker, but a real laugh, surprised and bright and completely unguarded. He sits back down in his chair, shaking his head, and looks at you with something that is definitely not boredom or disinterest.

"You're really something else, you know that?"

You don't know how to respond to that, so you don't. You just sit there, still clutching your napkin of shame, and wonder how Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested has somehow resulted in him laughing at your jokes and looking at you like you're the most entertaining thing he's encountered all week.

"So," Heeseung says, propping his chin on his hand, "I've been wondering. What made you decide to confess to me? Was there a specific moment? Something I did?"

Oh no.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

This is the worst possible question he could ask. You can't tell him the truth…I didn't mean to confess to you, I meant to confess to your friend, you just happened to be sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time, please don't hate me…but you also can't just… not answer. He's looking at you expectantly, his dark eyes curious and open, and you have approximately three seconds to come up with a convincing lie before the silence becomes too awkward to recover from.

"Your… kindness," you say, grasping at straws. "You're very… kind. To everyone. I noticed."

Heeseung tilts his head. "My kindness?"

"Very kind," you repeat, nodding vigorously. "So kind. The kindest. I saw you… hold a door open for someone once. It was… inspiring."

"I held a door open."

"A door. Yes. It was a very heavy door. And you held it. For a long time. Multiple people went through. It was very impressive."

Heeseung stares at you for a moment, and you stare back, your face burning, your soul evacuating your body. This is it. This is the moment he realizes you are completely unhinged and decides to never speak to you again. This is the victory of Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested.

"That's…" Heeseung starts, and then pauses. "That's the first time anyone's ever confessed to me because I held a door open. Usually I get compliments about my face. Or my voice. One girl told me I had a nose made to be sat on, which I still don't fully understand."

"Your node is… fine," you say weakly. "I didn't notice your nose. Or your face at all. Just the door. The door was the important part."

"A door," Heeseung says, and that smile is spreading across his face again, the one that makes him look less like a notorious player and more like someone who has just found a particularly entertaining puzzle. "You wrote me a three-page love letter because I held a door open."

"The calligraphy alone took a week," you say, and immediately regret it.

Heeseung laughs again, and this time it's softer, almost wondering. "You're not what I expected," he says. "At all."

"Is that… good or bad?"

"I haven't decided yet." But he's still smiling, and his eyes are still fixed on you with that curious intensity, and you're starting to get the sinking feeling that everything you do, no matter how strange or off-putting you try to be, is having the exact opposite effect of what you intend.

You need a new strategy. Something foolproof. Something so aggressively unappealing that even the most determined people-pleaser can't pretend to be interested.

And then, like a gift from the gods of social awkwardness, the topic of video games comes up.

Heeseung mentions something about blowing off steam after a tough assignment by playing a few rounds of something, and the question slips out before you can stop it: "Wait, do you play League of Legends?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Sometimes. You?"

And that's it. That's the moment the dam breaks.

You don't mean to start geeking out. It just happens. One moment you're thinking be boring, be uninteresting, be bland, and the next moment you're fifteen minutes deep into an impassioned monologue about the current meta, the problems with the jungle role, and why Riot Games needs to nerf a specific champion into the ground before she single-handedly destroys the competitive scene.

"-and don't even get me started on the new items, because the balance team clearly doesn't play their own game, which is fine, whatever, it's not like I have strong opinions about it except I absolutely do, and I wrote an entire essay about it on the subreddit that got like two thousand upvotes, so clearly I'm not the only one who thinks the armor penetration scaling is completely broken-"

You stop.

You stop because you have just realized, with dawning horror, that you have been talking for an incredibly long time without letting Heeseung get a single word in. You have been gesticulating. You have been making sound effects. At one point, you're pretty sure you drew a diagram on a napkin to illustrate the optimal jungle pathing route.

This is it. This is definitely, absolutely it. There is no way a hot third-year informatics student wants to listen to a first-year STEM girl rant about video game balance for fifteen straight minutes. Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested has just achieved its first genuine success.

You brace yourself for the polite excuse, the awkward glance at his phone, the slow backing away.

Instead, Heeseung leans forward, resting his elbows on the table, and says: "Okay, but hear me out, what if the armor penetration scaling isn't the problem, and it's actually the base damage values that need to be adjusted? Because if you look at the win rate data across different elos, the issue isn't consistent at all levels of play."

You blink.

"I main ADC," he adds, as if this is a perfectly normal confession. "So trust me, I feel your pain about the jungle situation. Do you know how many times I've been left to solo dragon because my jungler was AFK farming? Too many. Too many times."

"You… main ADC?"

"Vayne and Kai'Sa mostly. Sometimes Jhin if I'm feeling dramatic."

You have no response to this. Your brain has short-circuited somewhere around the phrase "win rate data across different elos," and it's still rebooting.

"Your essay on the subreddit," Heeseung continues, pulling out his phone. "What was the title? I want to read it. I love seeing well-reasoned arguments about game balance, and honestly, most of what gets posted is just people complaining without any actual data to back it up."

"It was… it was called The Current State of Armor Penetration: A Statistical Analysis and Why I'm Losing My Mind," you say faintly.

Heeseung types something into his phone, scrolls for a moment, and then his face lights up. "Found it. Two thousand three hundred upvotes and fourteen awards? That's impressive. Wait, you made graphs? You made graphs?"

"I was very passionate about the subject."

"Passionate," Heeseung repeats, looking up from his phone with an expression you can't quite read. "Yeah. I'm starting to get that about you."

He tucks his phone away and smiles at you, and it isn't the smooth, practiced smile you expect from the campus womanizer. It's something smaller. Something realer. Something that makes your stomach do a weird, traitorous flip that you immediately try to suppress.

"You know," he says, tilting his head as he studies you, "you remind me of a mouse."

Your brain screeches to a halt. "A… mouse?"

"Yeah. A little field mouse. The way your nose scrunches up when you're thinking, and how you get all twitchy and skittish when you're nervous. It's cute. It's really cute."

Cute. He calls you cute. He compares you to a rodent and somehow makes it sound like a compliment, and worst of all, worst of all, you can feel a traitorous blush spreading across your cheeks like wildfire.

"I'm not…I don't…mice are not cute. Mice are pests. They carry diseases. I'm basically a health hazard."

Heeseung laughs, and it's the same genuine laugh from before, and he's looking at you like you're the most entertaining thing he's seen in years. "A health hazard. Right. Well, consider me warned."

He stands up, gathering his tray, and for one beautiful, hopeful moment, you think the ordeal is over. But then he pauses, looking down at you with that unreadable expression, and says the words that haunt you for the rest of the day:

"I was interested before, but now?" He shakes his head, still smiling. "Now I'm really interested. See you around, little mouse."

And then he walks away, leaving you alone at your corner table with a half-eaten sandwich, a napkin full of regurgitated lettuce, and the sinking realization that Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested is not only failing, it's backfiring spectacularly.

You try to be weird, and he calls you cute.

You try to be boring, and he engages with your niche gaming opinions.

You try to choke to death in front of him, and he kneels beside your chair with genuine concern in his eyes.

You bang your forehead against the cafeteria table once, twice, three times, not caring who sees. This is a disaster. This is an unmitigated, unprecedented, absolutely catastrophic disaster. Hana's plan was supposed to work. Heeseung was supposed to get bored. He was supposed to move on. He was not supposed to look at you like you're a puzzle he wants to solve, or call you a mouse in a tone of voice that makes your heart do gymnastics, or read your League of Legends essay and compliment your graphs.

You need to regroup. You need to call an emergency meeting with Yunjin. You need to figure out a new strategy before this situation spirals even further out of control.

But first, you need to go to the library and return the books that are due today before you accrue another fine, because no matter how catastrophic your love life becomes, the university library shows no mercy.

—————

The library is your sanctuary. It always has been, a quiet, climate-controlled haven where the smell of old paper and the soft hum of fluorescent lights can soothe even the most tensed of nerves. After the cafeteria incident, you need sanctuary more than ever. You slip through the main doors with your stack of books clutched to your chest, inhaling the familiar scent of knowledge and dust, and feel some of the tension begin to ease from your shoulders.

Everything is fine. Everything is going to be fine. You return your books, you find Yunjin, you regroup, and you figure out a way to-

"Y/N?"

The voice comes from somewhere to your left, and you know that voice. You know it the way a flower knows the sun, the way a compass knows north, the way a hopeless romantic knows the exact cadence of her crush's greeting.

Jungwon is sitting at a table near the history section, surrounded by a fortress of textbooks and loose papers. He's wearing glasses…glasses…and his hair is slightly mussed from what you assume is hours of intense studying, and he's looking at you with that smile, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes your entire nervous system short-circuit.

"Hey," he says, waving you over. "What are you doing here?"

Existing in the same space as you, you think. Breathing the same air. Trying not to spontaneously combust.

"Returning books," you say, holding up your stack as evidence. "I have some overdue ones. The library fines are no joke."

"Tell me about it. I had to pay fifteen thousand won last semester because I forgot about a book I'd checked out for a research paper." Jungwon winces at the memory. "My wallet still hasn't recovered."

"That's brutal."

"The library giveth, and the library taketh away."

You laugh, and it comes out surprisingly normal, not too loud, not too high-pitched, just a regular human laugh from a regular human person who is definitely not having an internal meltdown about how good Jungwon looks in glasses.

"Hey," Jungwon says, glancing at the empty chair across from him, "if you're not in a hurry, do you want to study together? I've been here for three hours and my brain is starting to melt. It would be nice to have some company."

Your heart stops.

Yang Jungwon, the Yang Jungwon, the owner of the smile and the laugh and the gummy bears at 2 AM is asking you to study with him. This is the kind of moment you've daydreamed about for months. This is a meet-cute in progress. This is the universe throwing you a lifeline after the cafeteria disaster, a chance to actually spend time with the boy you've been pining over since midterms.

"Yes," you say, before your brain can remind you of all the reasons this is a terrible idea. "Yes, I'd…I'd love to. Let me just return these first."

You practically skip to the returns desk, your heart doing a full backflip in your chest. By the time you make it back to Jungwon's table, your philosophy textbook and notebook spread out in front of you, you've convinced yourself that this is exactly what you need. Some time with Jungwon. Some time to remember why you wrote that letter in the first place. Some time to reconnect with the feelings that got buried under the chaos of the Heeseung situation.

The only problem is that you can't focus on studying at all.

You try. You really, genuinely try. You open your textbook to the assigned chapter. You uncap your highlighter. You fix your eyes on the page and attempt to absorb information about ethical frameworks and moral philosophy. But your eyes keep drifting up, against your will, over the top of your book, to the boy sitting across from you.

Jungwon is studying. Actually studying, not fake studying, not pretending to study while secretly watching you the way you're watching him. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his pen moving steadily across his notebook as he takes notes. Every so often, he pauses, taps the end of his pen against his chin, and then resumes writing with renewed focus. The late afternoon light slants through the window behind him, catching the highlights in his dark hair and making him look like he's stepped out of a painting.

He is beautiful. He's so beautiful that it makes your chest ache, a soft, sweet ache that you've been carrying around since the moment you first saw him in this very library. You watch the way his fingers curl around his pen, the way he bites his lower lip when he's thinking, the way his glasses slide down his nose and he pushes them back up with an absent gesture.

"I can feel you looking at me," Jungwon says, not glancing up from his notebook.

Your entire body jolts like you've been electrocuted. "I wasn't…I was just…there's a clock behind you. I was checking the time."

Jungwon looks up then, and there's a knowing glint in his eyes that makes your stomach do a slow, somersaulting flip. "The clock is to your right, Y/N. Not behind me."

You look to your right. Sure enough, there's the clock, hanging on the wall in plain view, which you would have noticed if you'd spent even one second actually looking for it instead of gazing at Jungwon's face like a Renaissance painter studying their muse.

"I'm… directionally challenged," you say weakly.

"Uh-huh." Jungwon sets down his pen, and the smile playing at the corners of his mouth is soft and teasing and absolutely devastating. "Come here for a second."

"What?"

"Just come here. Lean forward a little."

Your body obeys before your brain can intervene. You lean across the table, your heart hammering so loudly you're certain the entire library can hear it. Jungwon leans forward too, closing the distance between you, and you catch a faint whiff of something clean and subtle, laundry detergent, maybe, or the kind of fragrance that just smells like him.

His hand reaches out, and before you can process what's happening, his index finger gently pokes your cheek.

"Boop," he says.

You make a sound. You don't know what the sound is supposed to be. Maybe a laugh, maybe a question, maybe a plea for mercy. What comes out is something closer to a squeak, a small, strangled, completely undignified squeak that would be embarrassing if you had any brain cells left to feel embarrassment.

Jungwon's smile widens, and his finger lingers on your cheek for just a moment longer than necessary. "You had an eyelash," he says. "Right there. But also, you just looked really cute staring at me like that. I couldn't resist."

Cute. He calls you cute. That's twice in one day that a devastatingly attractive boy has called you cute, and your hopeless romantic heart doesn't know whether to celebrate or go into cardiac arrest.

"I wasn't staring," you whisper, but it comes out completely unconvincing.

"You were absolutely staring." Jungwon withdraws his hand, but his smile stays, warm and fond and knowing. "It's okay. I don't mind. It's kind of nice, actually. Being looked at like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm something worth looking at."

The words settle into your chest like a stone dropping into still water, sending ripples through your entire body. He thinks it's nice. He thinks you're nice or at least your staring is nice and he pokes your cheek and calls you cute and now he's going back to his studying like he hasn't just fundamentally altered your brain chemistry.

You try to return to your textbook. The words swim in front of your eyes, meaningless and blurry. You highlight a sentence at random, realize you have no idea what it says, and highlight it again for good measure. The page is now approximately forty percent highlighter ink.

"You're going to run out of highlighter at that rate," Jungwon observes, not looking up.

"I have backups," you say. "I always have backups."

"Of course you do."

The studying session continues for another hour, and you absorb approximately zero information about ethical frameworks. What you do absorb is a comprehensive catalogue of Jungwon's study habits: the way he organizes his notes with color-coded tabs, the way he mutters to himself when he's working through a difficult concept, the way he absentmindedly drums his fingers against the table when he's thinking. Every detail is another entry in your mental Jungwon database, another thread in the tapestry of your affection.

By the time you pack up your things and say goodbye, "See you in philosophy," Jungwon says, and you respond with something that might be words or might be a series of enthusiastic nods, you are floating. You are literally, physically floating, your feet barely touching the ground as you drift out of the library and across campus toward your dorm.

Jungwon pokes your cheek. Jungwon calls you cute. Jungwon says he likes being looked at by you.

You are winning. Despite the Heeseung disaster, despite the cafeteria catastrophe, despite everything, you are winning.

By the time you reach your dorm room, you are a mess of giddy energy with nowhere to go. You close the door behind you, throw your backpack onto your desk chair, and then proceed to wriggle across your bed like an ecstatic worm, kicking your feet and muffling your squeals into your pillow.

"He called me cute," you whisper to your empty room, your voice muffled by fabric. "He poked my cheek. He did the boop thing. The boop thing, you guys. Who does the boop thing? Adorable people, that's who. Perfect people. People with beautiful smiles and kind eyes and-"

You roll onto your back, staring at the ceiling with a dreamy expression. The ceiling has forty-three tiles in your room. You counted them on your first night in the dorm. But right now, all you can see is Jungwon's face, the way he looked at you across the library table, the way his finger felt against your cheek, the way his voice went soft when he said like I'm something worth looking at.

You are going to marry him. You are going to marry Yang Jungwon and have a beautiful wedding with string lights and wildflowers and a three-tier cake, and you will tell the story of how you stared at him in the library and he poked your cheek and-

You stop wriggling.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

You can't marry Jungwon. You can't even confess to Jungwon, because Jungwon thinks you confessed to Heeseung. Jungwon thinks you're interested in someone else. Jungwon was sweet and friendly and maybe a little bit flirty, but that's just his personality. He's nice to everyone. He gives you gummy bears at 2 AM; he probably gives gummy bears to everyone who looks tired. You aren't special. You are just… there.

The giddiness begins to drain out of you, replaced by the familiar weight of reality. You are still trapped in the Heeseung situation. You are still the girl who confessed to the wrong person. And no matter how many times Jungwon pokes your cheek, that fundamental fact isn't going to change.

With a heavy sigh, you drag yourself through your evening routine: shower, skincare, the episode of the baking show you're halfway through and finally crawl into bed around midnight, your emotions a tangled knot of hope and despair.

Sleep comes slowly, a gradual descent into darkness, and then-

—————

You are in the PC room again.

But this time it's different. The lights are dimmer, the computers all dark, the chairs empty. It's just you, and the door is swinging shut behind you, and there's someone waiting at the computer closest to the door.

Heeseung.

He's sitting in the chair, facing away from you, his headphones around his neck and his shoulders relaxed. When he hears your footsteps, he turns, and his expression isn't surprised or amused or curious. It's something else entirely. Something darker. Something that makes your breath catch in your throat.

"You're here," he says, and his voice is lower than you've ever heard it, a rumble that vibrates through your bones. "I've been waiting for you, little mouse."

"I'm not-" you start, but he's already standing, already moving toward you, and you can't seem to make your feet work. You're rooted to the spot, watching him approach with a mixture of fear and something else, something you don't want to name.

He stops inches away from you, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from his body, close enough that you can see the individual strands of his hair and the curve of his lips and the way his eyes, God, his eyes are fixed on your mouth.

"You know what I've been thinking about?" he murmurs, and one of his hands comes up to brush a strand of hair away from your face, his fingers lingering against your temple. "I've been thinking about that letter. The way you said you only had eyes for me. The way you said you couldn't stop thinking about me."

"That wasn't-" you try, but your voice comes out as barely a whisper, and Heeseung's thumb is tracing along your jawline now, feather-light and devastating.

"I can't stop thinking about you either," he says, and his face is getting closer, closer, and you can feel his breath against your lips. "Do you want to know what I think about?"

Your heart is hammering. Your skin is on fire. You can't move, can't speak, can't do anything except stare up at him with wide eyes as his other hand settles on your waist, warm and solid and pulling you closer.

"I think about this," he whispers, and then his mouth is on yours.

The kiss is…it's…

It's intense. It's consuming. It's the kind of kiss that erases every rational thought from your brain and replaces it with pure, unfiltered sensation. His lips are soft but insistent, moving against yours with a confidence that makes your knees weak. His hand tightens on your waist, pulling you flush against him, and you make a sound against his mouth, something small and breathless and completely involuntary.

When he finally pulls back, his forehead resting against yours, his voice is rough. "You’re what I’ve been looking for my whole life, Y/N. You’re my miracle."

And then his lips are on your neck, trailing fire down to your collarbone, and your head falls back, and his name escapes your mouth in a way you've never said it before-

He kneels before you, his movements fluid and deliberate. His eyes never leave yours as he unzips his jeans, freeing his already hard cock. It stands proud and thick, the tip glistening with pre-cum. He takes your foot in his warm hand, bringing it to his shaft.

"Look what you do to me," he murmurs, his voice husky with desire. He wraps your foot around his length, his thumb pressing against your arch as he begins to move your foot up and down his cock. His eyes flutter closed for a moment, a low groan escaping his lips.

The sensation of his hot skin against your sole sends shivers through your body. You watch, mesmerized, as he uses your foot to pleasure himself, his hips thrusting in rhythm with the movements of your foot. His other hand moves to your ankle, his grip firm but gentle, his fingers stroking your sensitive skin.

His eyes open, locking with yours again, and the intensity in his gaze makes your breath catch. "You're so beautiful," he breathes, his movements becoming faster, more urgent. "You’re perfect the way you are."

His breathing grows ragged, his muscles tensing. With a guttural moan, he comes, his hot release spilling over your foot and his hand. He leans forward, his tongue darting out to taste his own cum from your skin, his movements slow and sensual. He licks your foot clean, his tongue tracing patterns on your arch, between your toes, sending waves of pleasure through your body.

Then he shifts, positioning himself between your legs. He looks up at you, his eyes dark with desire. "I need to taste you," he says, his voice rough with need.

He hooks his fingers into the waistband of your panties, pulling them down slowly, his eyes never leaving yours. He tosses them aside, then leans in, his breath hot against your most sensitive flesh.

His tongue flicks out, teasing your clit, and you gasp, your hands flying to his hair. He chuckles, the vibration sending another jolt of pleasure through you. "Patience, little mouse," he murmurs against your skin.

His tongue moves in slow, deliberate circles, building your pleasure gradually. He alternates between broad, flat strokes and quick, precise flicks of his tongue against your clit. His fingers join in, one, then two, sliding inside you, curling to hit that spot that makes you cry.

Your hips buck against his face, your breath coming in ragged gasps. "Heeseung," you moan, your fingers tightening in his hair.

He responds with increased enthusiasm, his tongue working faster, his fingers pumping in and out of you. The pressure builds inside you, a coil of pleasure winding tighter and tighter until it snaps.

You come with a cry, your body convulsing as waves of pleasure wash over you. But Heeseung doesn't stop. He continues his assault on your senses, his tongue and fingers working in perfect harmony to bring you to the edge again.

And then you are squirting, your release flooding his mouth and chin as he drinks you in, his movements never faltering. He looks up at you, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he laps up every drop.

When he finally pulls away, his face glistening with your juices, he crawls up your body, capturing your lips in a searing kiss. You can taste yourself on his tongue, and the intimacy of it sends another wave of desire through you.

"Tell me you’re only thinking of me," he whispers against your lips, his hands roaming your body. "and not Jungwon."

You wake up.

You wake up in your dorm room, in your bed, at 7:43 AM on a Tuesday morning, with your heart pounding and your skin flushed, your panties soaked and your sheets twisted around your legs like they've been through a battle.

For a long moment, you just lie there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe.

Did you just… did you just dream about… did Lee Heeseung, the guy you're supposed to be making uninterested in you, the guy you've been trying to avoid and ignore and repel, just star in what can only be described as an extremely obscene dream? The virgin you are just cringed at the memory.

You press your hands to your burning cheeks and let out a sound that is somewhere between a groan and a scream.

"No," you whisper to the empty room. "No, no, no. This isn't, this can't…I don't even like him. I like Jungwon. Jungwon! I've liked Jungwon for four months. I wrote a letter to Jungwon. I have a color-coded mental database of Jungwon's habits. I want to marry Jungwon and have a three-tier wedding cake with wildflowers!"

But your brain, traitorous and unhelpful, keeps replaying fragments of the dream, the way Heeseung's eyes go dark, the way his voice rumbles against your ear, the way his hand feels on your waist, the way his tongue is warm and-

You grab your pillow and press it over your face, screaming into it with all the force your lungs can muster.

This is wrong. This is so, so wrong. You are a Jungwon girl. You've always been a Jungwon girl. You don't think about Heeseung like that. You don't think about Heeseung like anything. Heeseung is an obstacle. Heeseung is a problem to be solved. Heeseung is the guy you're actively trying to repel, not the guy who shows up in your subconscious and does things that make you blush in the privacy of your own bed.

"I'm a psychopath," you say to your pillow. "I'm a complete and utter psychopath. Who dreams about this with a guy they're supposed to be making uninterested? A psychopath, that's who. A deranged lunatic. A person with a broken brain."

Your pillow, predictably, does not respond.

You drag yourself out of bed and into the bathroom, splashing cold water on your face and avoiding your own reflection in the mirror. You don't want to look at yourself. You don't want to see the evidence of the dream still lingering in your flushed cheeks…and between your legs.

This is a problem. This is a Major Problem with capital letters and possibly a warning siren. You can't afford to be having dreams about Lee Heeseung. You can't afford to be thinking about Lee Heeseung at all. Your entire strategy, Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested depends on you being able to keep a clear head and a steady heart, and neither of those things is going to be possible if your subconscious keeps ambushing you with extremely vivid, extremely inappropriate content.

You need to talk to Yunjin. Immediately. Before your brain can conjure up any more unauthorized imagery.

But as you grab your phone and type out a frantic message, EMERGENCY MEETING REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY CODE RED REPEAT CODE RED, you can't quite shake the lingering sensation from the dream.

The way Heeseung's thumb traces along your jawline.

The way he calls you little mouse in that low, rumbling voice.

The way he says you were perfect the way you were like he means it, like it's true, like he's been into you his whole life and hasn't even known it.

You shake your head violently, flinging droplets of water across the bathroom mirror.

"Nope," you say out loud. "Nope, nope, nope. We're not doing this. We're not thinking about this. We're going to go to class and eat lunch and avoid all tall informatics students, and we're going to get our brain back on the Jungwon track where it belongs."

But even as you say it, even as you try to mean it, a small, treacherous part of you wonders if maybe, just maybe, the Jungwon track isn't the only track worth following anymore.

You shove that thought into a mental box, lock it, and throw away the key.

You have a plan. You have a strategy. You are going to make Heeseung uninterested, and you are going to figure out a way to untangle the misunderstanding, and you are going to end up with Jungwon like you were always supposed to.

The dream is just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. It can't mean anything.

You refuse to let it mean anything.

(But when you catch yourself glancing toward the informatics building on your way to class, you walk a little faster, and you definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent do not wonder what Lee Heeseung is doing right now.)

—————

The dream haunts you for three days.

Not in a supernatural, ghost-in-the-corner kind of way. More in an I-can't-make-eye-contact-with-my-own-reflection kind of way. Every time you close your eyes, fragments of it flicker behind your eyelids like a movie you hadn't asked to watch. The dark PC room. The way Heeseung's voice drops to a rumble. The phantom sensation of his tongue on your clit, his hand on your ankle, his look-

You physically convulse every time the memory resurfaces, which is approximately every forty-five minutes. Your philosophy notes become a graveyard of distracted doodles, half of which look suspiciously like the curve of someone's jaw. You have to throw away an entire page because you accidentally write "little mouse" in the margin instead of "moral relativism."

Yunjin is no help whatsoever.

"So you had a wet dream about the hot guy who you’re supposedly getting bored of," she says over bubble tea the day after the incident, her expression thoroughly unimpressed. "This is a problem because…?"

"Because I don't like him, Yunjin! I like Jungwon! I've liked Jungwon since midterms! Jungwon is the goal! Jungwon is the three-tier wedding cake!"

"And Heeseung is…?"

"A temporary obstacle! A misunderstanding with legs! A very tall, very inconvenient plot twist!"

Yunjin sucks on her tapioca pearls with the air of a therapist who has heard it all before and is no longer surprised by anything. "You know what they say about protesting too much."

"I am not protesting too much. I am protesting exactly the right amount. I am protesting a perfectly calibrated quantity."

"Sure." She pats your hand with condescending sympathy. "Whatever helps you sleep at night. Oh wait-"

You throw a tapioca pearl at her face. It sticks to her cheek for a solid three seconds before falling off, and the look of absolute betrayal on her face is the only bright spot in your otherwise nightmare-plagued week.

But now it's Thursday. Thursday, 2:15 PM. You're stationed in the science building's main hallway, crouched behind a bulletin board that is absolutely not wide enough to hide your entire body, waiting for the coast to clear so you can sprint to your next class without encountering any tall informatics students.

Your system has evolved since the early days of the crisis. You now have a color-coded schedule of Heeseung's known movements, courtesy of some light reconnaissance work that Yunjin calls "stalking" and you call "strategic intelligence gathering." You know his class schedule. You know his preferred study spots. You know that he tends to grab coffee from the campus café at exactly 3 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means the science building hallway should, theoretically, be a Heeseung-free zone at 2:15.

Theoretically.

You're just about to make your move, a quick dash to the stairwell, then up two flights, then a straight shot to classroom 307, when you hear it.

"Hey, is Y/N L/N in there?"

Your blood freezes. Your muscles lock. Your soul briefly departs your body and then slams back into it with force.

That's Heeseung's voice. That's unmistakably, undeniably, catastrophically Lee Heeseung's voice, and it's coming from approximately ten feet to your left, where the door to your department's main office stands open.

You press yourself harder against the bulletin board, praying for invisibility, praying for a sudden power outage, praying for the ground to open up and swallow you into its merciful embrace. None of these things happen. Instead, you hear the department secretary respond with cheerful obliviousness.

"Y/N L/N? First year, STEM? I think I saw her in the hallway just a minute ago. Let me check, oh, there she is! Y/N! You have a visitor!"

The secretary is pointing directly at your bulletin board. Your bulletin board that is not hiding you at all. Your bulletin board that is, in fact, leaving approximately seventy percent of your body completely visible to anyone who happens to look in that direction.

Heeseung turns.

Your eyes meet.

Time stops.

There are moments in life that feel like they stretch into eternity, moments so profoundly awkward, so cosmically embarrassing, that the universe itself seems to pause and take notice. This is one of those moments. You are frozen in a half-crouch behind a bulletin board, your backpack dangling from one shoulder, your hair escaping from the ponytail you threw it into this morning, your expression one of pure, unfiltered terror. Heeseung is standing in the doorway of the department office, looking unfairly attractive in a simple black hoodie and jeans, his eyebrows rising slowly toward his hairline.

A small crowd of students has paused in the hallway to watch. You can feel their eyes on you like a physical weight. Someone whispers something to their friend. Someone else pulls out their phone.

You are going to die. You are going to perish right here in the science building hallway, and your ghost will be doomed to haunt this bulletin board for all eternity.

"Y/N?" Heeseung's voice is a mixture of confusion and amusement. He takes a step toward you, and you instinctively take a step back, which results in you bumping directly into the bulletin board and causing several flyers to flutter dramatically to the ground. "Were you… hiding behind that?"

"No," you say, too quickly. "No, I was…I dropped something. A contact lens. I was looking for my contact lens."

"You don't wear contacts."

"I might! You don't know my life!"

"Your glasses are literally on your face right now."

You reach up and touch your glasses, which are indeed sitting on your nose, clearly visible, doing their job of correcting your vision. You have no response to this. There is no response to this. You have been caught in a lie so transparent it's essentially a window.

Heeseung's lips twitch. "You know, most people who have a crush on me don't run away and hide behind furniture. This is very confusing for my ego."

The crowd is still watching. Why is the crowd still watching? Don't they have classes to go to? Midterms to study for? Lives to live that don't involve spectating your public humiliation?

"I wasn't hiding from you specifically," you say, because apparently your mouth has decided to operate independently from your brain. "I was hiding from… the sun. It's very bright in here. I'm photosensitive."

"You're a STEM student hiding from the sun in a basement hallway with no windows," Heeseung says slowly. "That's… a new one."

"It's a medical condition. It's very serious. My doctor says I need to avoid direct fluorescent lighting."

"The fluorescent lighting is what's getting you."

"Absolutely. It's my greatest enemy. Well, second greatest. After-" You stop yourself before you can say after incredibly hot informatics students who keep appearing in my life like a recurring nightmare.

Heeseung waits. When you don't finish the sentence, that smile, the one that's definitely a smirk's second cousin, maybe even its first cousin at this point, spreads across his face.

"Well," he says, "now that I've found you and dragged you out of the shadows, literally, I was wondering if you wanted to grab coffee. With me. Right now."

Every single person in the hallway is looking at you. The secretary is looking at you from the office doorway, her expression one of grandmotherly delight at what she clearly perceives as a romantic overture. The students who stopped to watch are exchanging glances and whispers. One girl gives you an encouraging thumbs up.

You are trapped. You are cornered. You are a mouse being offered coffee by a very tall, very persistent cat.

And just like every other time Heeseung has put you on the spot, you open your mouth and the wrong words come out.

"I love coffee," you say. "Coffee is my favorite liquid. After water. And possibly juice. But it's definitely in the top three."

"Is that a yes?"

"…Yes."

The first time Seonghwa realizes something is off, it’s because your door is vibrating.

Not metaphorically.

Actually vibrating.

The bass bleeds through the walls of the KQ building practice floor like a second heartbeat, low and relentless, rattling the metal door handle as if something inside is trying to escape.

He hesitates before knocking.

You’re known for bubblegum choruses, glittering stages, soft smiles—the company’s “pop princess.” The kind who brings snacks for everyone, who hums while stretching, who laughs too easily.

So this?

This sounds like the opposite of you.

Still, he pushes the door open.

And freezes.

You’re in the middle of the room, hair tied up messily, oversized hoodie slipping off one shoulder, absolutely losing your mind to a track blasting from the speakers.

Harsh guitars.

Industrial beats.

A deep, commanding voice growling in a language Seonghwa doesn’t recognize.

You’re headbanging.

Actually headbanging.

“—DU HAST—”

You whip around mid-lyric when the door creaks, eyes widening.

“Oh—!”

The music keeps blasting.

For a second, the two of you just stare at each other.

Seonghwa blinks.

“…Is this… you?”

You stare back.

“…Yes?”

Another beat.

Then he gestures vaguely at the speakers. “But—you—this is… very… aggressive?”

You snort, rushing to pause the song. The sudden silence feels almost violent after the intensity.

“It’s Rammstein,” you explain, like that clears everything up.

It does not.

Seonghwa steps further in, still looking like he’s just walked into an alternate dimension. “You listen to this… voluntarily?”

“Hey!” you laugh. “I’m half German, remember? It’s practically in my DNA.”

“That doesn’t explain why it sounds like… a war declaration.”

You grin. “It kinda is.”

—

Word spreads fast.

It always does with ATEEZ.

Within an hour, your practice room is no longer just yours.

Hongjoong leans against the wall, arms crossed, intrigued.

Yunho is peeking at your playlist like it might bite him.

Yeosang looks quietly fascinated.

Mingi is already nodding along to the beat, despite clearly not understanding a thing.

San and Wooyoung are whispering like they’re watching a documentary.

And Jongho stands near the back, arms folded, expression unreadable but eyes sharp.

Seonghwa points at you like he’s presenting evidence. “Play it again.”

You grin slowly.

“Oh, you want the full experience?”

You don’t wait for an answer.

The music slams back on.

This time louder.

The room fills with the heavy opening of Du Hast, the rhythm pulsing through the floor.

Mingi’s head starts bouncing immediately. “Okay—wait—this is kinda—”

“Right?!” you beam.

Hongjoong tilts his head, listening closely. “The production is interesting. Very… layered.”

“It’s industrial metal,” you explain, stepping beside him. “They mix electronic elements with heavy guitar. It’s all about atmosphere.”

Seonghwa is still staring at you.

“You know the lyrics?” he asks.

You smirk.

“Of course I do.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Then explain.”

—

You pause the track at the chorus.

“Okay,” you say, slipping into teacher mode. “So—‘Du hast’ sounds like ‘you have,’ but it’s actually a wordplay with ‘you hate.’”

Their faces collectively shift.

“Oh—” Yeosang murmurs.

You nod. “And the line is basically about commitment… or refusing it.”

Seonghwa leans closer without realizing it. “Say it again.”

You repeat the line slowly in German.

He tries to mimic you.

Fails.

Tries again.

This time you step closer, gently correcting his pronunciation, your voice softer as you guide him through the sounds.

“No, not ‘hasst’—you have to push the ‘t’ more.”

He focuses intensely, lips forming the unfamiliar words.

The others watch.

San elbows Wooyoung. “Why does this feel like a language class?”

Wooyoung whispers back, “Why is it kinda romantic?”

You ignore them.

“Better,” you tell Seonghwa, smiling. “You’re getting it.”

Something in his expression shifts—quiet pride, maybe.

“Play it again,” he says.

—

What starts as curiosity becomes something else.

A shared secret, almost.

They start dropping by your practice room more often.

At first it’s just Seonghwa.

Then Hongjoong joins, asking questions about structure, about sound design.

Mingi starts requesting songs with “heavier bass.”

San and Wooyoung mostly come to laugh at the dramatic vocals—until they catch themselves enjoying it.

Jongho doesn’t say much, but one day you catch him humming a riff under his breath.

And Yunho?

He just smiles, happy to be included.

—

Weeks later, you burst into their practice room, phone in hand.

“Guys.”

Eight heads turn.

You’re grinning like you’re about to cause chaos.

“What?” Hongjoong asks cautiously.

You hold up your phone.

“They’re coming to Seoul.”

Silence.

Then—

“…Who?” Yunho asks.

You blink.

“Rammstein?”

The room erupts.

“No way.”

“Wait—seriously?”

“You’re kidding.”

You shake your head, eyes sparkling.

“And we’re going.”

—

The night of the concert feels unreal.

The venue is massive, buzzing with anticipation.

You’re practically vibrating as you lead them through the crowd.

“Stick close,” you warn. “And don’t panic.”

“Why would we panic?” San asks.

You just smile mysteriously.

Then you show your tickets.

Feuerzone.

Front VIP.

Right near the stage.

Wooyoung squints. “That sounds… dangerous.”

“It’s fine,” you say. “Probably.”

—

The moment the show starts, everything changes.

Fire.

Actual fire.

Columns of flames shoot into the sky as the band storms the stage, the heat washing over you instantly.

ATEEZ collectively flinches.

“WHAT—” Yunho yelps.

Mingi’s eyes go wide. “YO—”

Seonghwa grabs your arm. “IS THIS SAFE—”

You’re laughing, completely at home.

On stage, Till Lindemann commands the crowd like something out of a dystopian opera, his voice thunderous, presence overwhelming.

Hongjoong leans closer to you, shouting over the music. “THE PYROTECHNICS—HOW—”

“He’s licensed!” you yell back. “He has a pyrotechnic permit—he does all his own stunts!”

Hongjoong’s eyes light up.

“Oh, that’s insane.”

Flames roar again—this time right above you.

The Feuerzone lives up to its name.

Heat blasts over your heads as jets of fire shoot across the stage, the timing perfectly synced with the music.

ATEEZ is stunned.

Yeosang just stares upward, mesmerized.

Jongho watches with sharp focus, clearly analyzing everything.

San alternates between awe and disbelief.

Wooyoung is screaming—half fear, half excitement.

And Mingi?

Mingi is thriving.

When Mein Teil starts, he’s already bouncing, completely locked in.

Then it happens.

Till pulls out the flamethrower.

A massive, ridiculous, terrifying flamethrower.

And sets another band member on fire.

Mingi loses it.

“NO WAY—NO WAY—” he shouts, grabbing Yunho’s shoulders like he needs support.

Yunho is laughing in disbelief. “THIS IS CRAZY—”

You’re laughing too, shouting over the chaos, “THIS IS THEIR THING—”

The flames shoot higher.

The crowd roars.

ATEEZ is officially converted.

—

By the time Pussy starts, the energy shifts into something… absurd.

You know what’s coming.

They don’t.

Till climbs onto a prop.

A very specific prop.

Seonghwa squints. “What is that—”

Too late.

Foam sprays into the crowd.

Directly at you.

And them.

San doubles over laughing instantly.

Wooyoung is screaming, clinging to him. “WHAT IS HAPPENING—”

Mingi is shouting incoherently.

Yunho is trying to shield himself and failing.

Even Jongho cracks, a rare laugh breaking through as he wipes foam off his sleeve.

Seonghwa just stares.

At you.

At the stage.

Back at you.

“…You brought us here.”

You grin, soaked and unbothered.

“You’re welcome.”

—

After the show, your ears are ringing, your clothes smell faintly like smoke, and everyone looks like they’ve just survived something life-changing.

Because they kind of have.

Hongjoong is still talking about the stage design, animated, inspired. “The synchronization—the scale—we could incorporate elements—”

Mingi is buzzing with leftover energy. “That flamethrower—did you SEE—”

San and Wooyoung keep dissolving into laughter every time they make eye contact.

Yunho is smiling so wide it looks permanent.

Yeosang is quiet, but his eyes are bright.

Jongho simply says, “That was impressive.”

And Seonghwa?

He walks beside you, quieter than usual.

After a moment, he speaks.

“…I understand now.”

You glance at him. “Yeah?”

He nods slowly.

“It’s not just the music.”

You smile softly.

“No,” you agree. “It never is.”

He looks at you—really looks this time, like he’s seeing something new, something deeper beneath the bright, bubbly image everyone else knows.

“You’re full of surprises,” he says.

You bump his shoulder lightly.

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.”

A small smile tugs at his lips.

“…Maybe I did.”

And when you catch him later—quietly, under his breath—murmuring the German lyrics you taught him?

You know you’ve changed something.

Not just his playlist.

But the way he sees you.

And maybe—

Just a little—

You don’t tell them where you’re going at first.

That’s part of the fun.

ATEEZ is used to surprises—midnight schedules, sudden flights, last-minute stages—but this one feels different. There’s no staff trailing behind you with clipboards, no cameras, no managers whispering about timing. Just the nine of you, bundled in coats against the crisp Dutch morning air, standing at a parking lot bordered by pine trees and low fog.

Hongjoong squints at the entrance in the distance.

“Why does this feel like we’re about to be kidnapped by fairies?”

You laugh, breath fogging in the cold. “You’ll survive. Probably.”

Wooyoung grabs your sleeve. “You said this was important. Childhood important. That sounds emotional.”

“It is,” you say softly. “Just… trust me.”

You grew up between worlds—Korean at home, Dutch outside. Music and language always shifting, always overlapping. This place is one of the few constants that stayed untouched by training rooms, debut schedules, and industry pressure.

When you were little, your mother used to braid your hair before coming here. Your father would pretend not to know the stories and act surprised every time. This park raised your imagination before the stage ever did.

And now, you’re sharing it.

The gates open, and the music hits first.

Soft, orchestral, almost breathing.

San freezes mid-step. “Why does it already feel like I walked into a movie?”

“That,” you say, smiling, “is the correct reaction.”

Yeosang tilts his head, eyes scanning the architecture. “It doesn’t look real.”

“It is,” you answer. “And it isn’t. That’s the point.”

The Fairy Tale Forest

The Fairy Tale Forest slows everyone down.

Not because you ask them to—because the place demands it.

The path curves instead of running straight, cobblestones uneven beneath your boots, as if the forest itself is gently guiding your steps. Trees lean inward, branches heavy with moss, and somewhere nearby a soft mechanical voice recites a story in Dutch, lilting and calm.

Wooyoung reads one of the plaques out loud, stumbling over the pronunciation. You correct him automatically, the words rolling off your tongue with a familiarity that surprises even you.

“You sound different,” Yunho says. “Your accent.”

You smile faintly. “This is how I sounded before trainee life beat it out of me.”

San crouches near a small scene—tiny figures moving behind a window, a story looping endlessly. “So you’d just… walk here? As a kid?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Sometimes alone. Sometimes holding my mom’s hand. I knew all the stories already, but I liked checking if they were still there.”

Mingi lingers near the trees, hands stuffed in his coat pockets. “Like making sure the world hadn’t changed without you.”

You glance at him, startled by how accurately he names it.

Jongho stops at one tale longer than the others. He doesn’t say anything at first, just watches. Then, quietly, “It feels respectful. Like the stories aren’t rushed.”

“They’re not,” you reply. “They’ve been telling themselves for decades.”

Near the end of the path, you slow unconsciously. You hadn’t planned to stop here, but your feet remember. A small house, crooked roof, warm light glowing inside.

“This one,” you say, voice softer now. “I always saved it for last.”

Hongjoong looks at the scene, then back at you. “Why?”

You shrug, though your chest tightens. “Because no matter how old I got, it was still waiting. Made me feel like I was allowed to come back.”

No one jokes. No one teases.

Seonghwa steps closer, close enough that your shoulders almost touch. “I think,” he says gently, “that’s something you’ve been doing your whole life.”

Coming back. Carrying worlds with you.

The forest breathes around you, stories whispering in a dozen languages, and for a moment—just a moment—you feel exactly where you belong.

Droomvlucht

Droomvlucht begins with silence.

The kind that feels intentional—like the world has gently placed a finger over its lips.

The ride vehicle lifts slowly, almost shyly, and Yunho’s hand immediately grips the side. “Why does it feel like we’re being tucked in?”

You laugh quietly. “That’s… actually the best description I’ve ever heard.”

The first room opens like a secret. Soft blue light, glowing flowers, tiny figures dancing just out of reach. The air hums with music that doesn’t push or pull—it simply carries you.

Yeosang leans forward, eyes reflecting starlight. “This doesn’t feel like a ride.”

“It isn’t,” you whisper back. “It’s a dream you’re allowed to borrow.”

They all go quiet after that.

You watch them instead of the scenery sometimes—San’s lips parted in wonder, Wooyoung craning his neck to catch every detail, Jongho’s expression unguarded in a way you rarely see. Even Hongjoong leans back, shoulders finally relaxing, as if the constant buzz in his head has been muted.

When the ride lifts higher, floating forests unfolding beneath you, something in your chest loosens.

This was where you learned it was okay to drift.

You remember being small, feet swinging, thinking that if you concentrated hard enough, you might stay here forever. Somewhere gentle. Somewhere soft enough to land.

Mingi exhales shakily. “I feel like I’m not supposed to talk.”

“You’re not,” you murmur, smiling. “But not because you can’t. Because you don’t need to.”

The elves glow warmer near the end, light pooling like candle flames. Seonghwa’s shoulder brushes yours, unintentional but grounding. You don’t pull away.

As the vehicle descends, the music fades slowly—like a lullaby ending only when it knows you’re asleep.

San sniffles dramatically the second the lights brighten. “I don’t know what just happened to me emotionally.”

Wooyoung points accusingly at you. “You knew this would hurt.”

You laugh, eyes suspiciously bright. “It’s okay,” you say softly. “You’re awake again now.”

Lunch

Lunch is warm soup and bread inside a wooden hall that smells like cinnamon and history. You explain which snacks you used to beg for, which ones you weren’t allowed to have too often.

Mingi listens intently, chin in his hands. “You’re different here.”

“How?”

“Softer,” he says. “Like you fit.”

You hadn’t realized how much you needed to hear that.

Baron 1898

Baron 1898 looms over the path like it’s judging you.

The mine shaft creaks in the wind, gears groaning, smoke curling lazily from the structure as if the ride itself is breathing. You slow your steps unconsciously, a grin tugging at your lips.

“I told you,” you say, far too cheerfully, “this one is… intense.”

Jongho crosses his arms. “I’m not scared.”

No one believes him.

Wooyoung squints up at the drop. “That’s not a ride. That’s a threat.”

San, already vibrating with nervous energy, grabs your sleeve. “Why is it historical and haunted? Pick a struggle.”

Inside the preshow, the Baron’s voice fills the room—deep, ominous, theatrical. The curse. The gold. The warning.

Mingi leans down to whisper in your ear. “I feel like we’re about to be sacrificed.”

“You kind of are,” you whisper back. “To gravity.”

When you take your seats, Jongho sits ramrod straight, hands gripping the bar like it owes him money. Wooyoung immediately starts regretting his life choices. Hongjoong, of course, looks excited—eyes bright, smile sharp, like he’s daring the drop to impress him.

The lift clanks upward slowly.

Too slowly.

San chants, “I hate this I hate this I hate this,” under his breath while Yunho laughs in that loud, fearless way that means he’s pretending not to be nervous. You feel your own heart pound—not fear exactly, but anticipation. This was the ride you’d bragged about surviving as a kid. Proof you were brave.

The Baron’s voice returns.

The floor disappears.

You scream—not panic, but release. Wind tears it from your lungs, gravity yanking every thought straight out of your head. For a split second, there is nothing but air and sound and the wild certainty that you are alive.

The train barrels on, sharp turns, breathless speed, chaos stitched together by laughter and screams.

When it ends, Jongho sits frozen, eyes wide.

San stumbles off like he’s just survived a war. “I need to sit down. Or lie down. Or rethink my career.”

Wooyoung points at you accusingly. “You enjoyed that.”

You grin, hair wild, heart racing. “I told you. Childhood trauma, but make it fun.”

Seonghwa steps close as you steady yourself, hand hovering at your elbow. “You were fearless.”

You shake your head, breath still uneven. “No,” you say softly. “I just trusted I’d come back up.”

And somehow, standing there with them, you realize—you always do.

Symbolica

Symbolica feels like an exhale.

The palace rises elegant and calm, its towers glowing faintly as dusk begins to settle in. After the chaos of Baron 1898, the quiet here feels almost reverent. You catch San still clinging to your sleeve, as if afraid the ground might drop away again.

“This,” he says cautiously, “looks like it might forgive us.”

“It will,” you promise. “Symbolica is gentle. Curious. It likes visitors.”

Hongjoong hums thoughtfully. “That sounds suspiciously like something that’s about to trap us in a mirror.”

Inside, the air cools immediately. Marble floors, soft gold lighting, music that echoes like footsteps in a dream. The ride vehicle arrives without a sound, gliding into place like it’s been waiting.

Wooyoung leans closer. “Why does it feel like we weren’t supposed to find this place?”

“Because you weren’t,” you reply. “It finds you.”

The moment the doors close, the palace begins to move around you. Walls shift. Doors appear where there weren’t any before. The ride doesn’t follow a track—it drifts, choosing paths as if guided by mood rather than mechanics.

Yeosang’s eyes flick everywhere at once. “This is… unsettling.”

“But in a good way,” Yunho adds.

You nod. “It’s different every time. Like it’s responding to who’s inside.”

A hallway of glowing books opens before you, pages fluttering as if whispering secrets. Mingi reaches out instinctively, fingers brushing the air. “It feels alive.”

Seonghwa glances at you. “Is this another place you came to a lot?”

“Not as much,” you admit. “This one scared me a little when I was younger. It made me think too much.”

“About what?” Jongho asks.

You watch a door swing open into a starlit room. “About who I was becoming.”

The palace doesn’t rush you. It invites you to look, then quietly moves on. Mirrors reflect versions of yourselves that don’t quite line up. A throne room glows warm but empty.

When the ride slows near the end, Hongjoong finally speaks. “This feels like… choosing a path.”

You smile softly. “That’s why I wanted you to ride it after Baron. Balance.”

As you step back into the evening air, the palace doors closing behind you, Wooyoung stretches his arms overhead. “Okay. I get it now.”

“Get what?” San asks.

Wooyoung grins at you. “Why this place made you who you are.”

You don’t answer—but the way your chest warms tells you he’s not wrong.

The sun begins to set earlier than they expect. Golden light filters through the trees, turning everything softer, warmer.

You find a bench near the edge of the forest. One by one, they drift closer, until it feels like a small circle of warmth around you.

Wooyoung rests his head on your shoulder without asking. San leans against your other side. Yunho sprawls at your feet. No one comments on it. It just… happens.

“This feels like something we shouldn’t forget,” Yeosang says quietly.

“Then don’t,” you answer.

Hongjoong looks at you again, that thoughtful expression he gets when something lodges deep in his chest. “You trusted us with this.”

You nod. “Because you’re my people too.”

The park lights flicker on, fairy-tale yellow against the darkening sky. Somewhere, soft music swells.

For a moment, you’re not a Dutch-Korean idol. Not a bridge between worlds.

You’re just a girl sharing her childhood with the people who became home.

Part III — The Valentine You Chose

Cupid always loved the future best.

Not because it was perfect—but because it was honest.

Time unfolded gently this time. No jolt, no rush. Just the quiet sense of arrival.

Valentine’s Day again.

But not the one filled with hesitation, glances stolen and words swallowed.

This one breathed differently.

The Future

The space was familiar—but changed.

The dorm had grown softer. Plants near the windows. Photos on the walls—group shots, candid moments, memories layered over years. Shoes by the door that weren’t sorted by owner anymore.

And you.

You stood in the kitchen again—but this time, Chan wasn’t hovering in the doorway pretending not to watch. He was beside you, sleeve brushing yours, grounding rather than guarding.

Minho leaned against the counter, close enough that your knees touched. Comfortable. Chosen.

Changbin passed behind you, hand warm and steady at your lower back—no performance, just presence.

Hyunjin sat at the table sketching absentmindedly, eyes lifting every so often to check if you were still smiling.

Jisung hummed quietly while rummaging for snacks, anxiety replaced with ease.

Felix laughed, leaning into Seungmin’s shoulder, light and unafraid.

Jeongin sprawled on the floor, legs tangled with yours, unbothered by proximity.

Eight hearts.

One rhythm.

Cupid appeared near the window, arms crossed, watching the way no one flinched when someone else reached for you.

“This,” he said softly, “is what you saw.”

The room went still—not tense, just attentive.

The Confession (Together)

It hadn’t happened all at once.

That was the thing people always got wrong.

There was no dramatic moment where everyone spoke over each other, no sudden declarations in a rush of jealousy.

Instead—

It started with honesty.

With Chan, first.

“I don’t want to own you,” he’d said one night, voice careful but sure. “I just… want to choose you. And be chosen.”

You’d nodded. “I don’t want to be divided. I want to be shared—with consent.”

Minho had surprised everyone next.

“I thought wanting meant losing control,” he admitted. “Turns out it just means trusting.”

Changbin had laughed, then gone quiet.

“I don’t need to be the loudest part of your life,” he’d said. “I just want to be in it.”

Hyunjin had spoken slowly, eyes steady.

“I don’t want to be admired by you,” he’d said. “I want to be known.”

Jisung had taken your hand, grounding himself.

“I’m scared sometimes,” he admitted. “But I’m more scared of not trying.”

Felix had smiled, soft but certain.

“I don’t feel like extra with you,” he’d said. “I feel… included.”

Seungmin had been simple.

“I don’t say things unless I mean them,” he’d said. “I mean this.”

And Jeongin—

“I don’t think this is too much,” he’d said quietly. “I think it’s just… right.”

No competition.

No hierarchy.

Just choice.

Together.

Boundaries

Cupid watched as the scene shifted—memory layered over reality.

You sat together, talking. Actually talking.

What this meant.

What it didn’t.

What was okay.

What needed time.

What jealousy felt like—and how it was spoken instead of swallowed.

Love, here, wasn’t endless access.

It was agreement.

“I need honesty,” you’d said.

They’d nodded.

“We need communication,” Minho had added.

“And reassurance,” Felix said.

“And space when someone asks for it,” Seungmin added.

“And no assuming,” Hyunjin said.

“And no disappearing,” Jisung said.

Chan had smiled, eyes warm.

“And no one left behind.”

Cupid had nearly clapped.

Now

Back in the present-future moment, Valentine’s Day hummed around them.

No pink balloons.

No spectacle.

Just intention.

Chan handed you a small box—not grand, not flashy.

Inside were eight rings.

Not matching.

Chosen.

Each one symbolized something different—music, protection, growth, honesty, warmth, stability, youth, endurance.

“You don’t have to wear them all,” Chan said gently.

“I want to,” you replied.

Minho smirked. “Figures.”

You slipped them on—not stacked, not overwhelming. One on each finger, spread, intentional.

Changbin exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for years.

Hyunjin reached out, thumb brushing your knuckle, reverent.

Jisung smiled—no panic, just warmth.

Felix leaned in, resting his forehead briefly against yours.

Seungmin’s gaze softened.

Jeongin grinned.

No one felt replaced.

No one felt lesser.

That was the miracle.

Cupid’s Lesson

Cupid cleared his throat.

They turned.

“This,” he said, wings folding slowly, “is not a trick of fate.”

He gestured between you.

“This works because you chose communication over fear. Trust over competition. Love over ownership.”

He looked at you.

“And because you didn’t ask them to be smaller for your comfort.”

Then at them.

“And because you didn’t ask her to choose between you.”

Cupid smiled.

“My work here,” he said, “is done.”

Light shimmered around him.

But before he vanished, he added—

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”

And he was gone.

After

Later, curled together in a pile that made no sense and perfect sense all at once, you laughed softly.

“Do you think this would’ve happened without him?” you asked.

Chan shook his head. “Eventually.”

Minho snorted. “We’re stubborn, not hopeless.”

Felix smiled. “I think we just needed permission.”

Seungmin corrected gently. “We needed courage.”

You looked around—eight boys, eight choices, one shared certainty.

Love wasn’t smaller for being shared.

It was fuller.

And for the first time, Valentine’s Day didn’t feel like expectation.

It felt like home.

You don’t cry at work.

It’s an unspoken rule you’ve built your entire career around—composure first, feelings later. Especially when you’re the manager of eight of the busiest, most chaotic, most loved men in the industry.

There’s no room for breakdowns when schedules are tight, cameras are rolling, and everyone depends on you to keep things running.

But today…

Today doesn’t care about your rules.

It starts small. It always does.

A delayed flight. A missed call. A stylist misunderstanding that turns into a last-minute scramble. Then a scheduling overlap that somehow becomes your fault. A sharp comment from someone higher up who doesn’t even know how hard you’ve been working.

You brush it off.

You always do.

Until your phone buzzes again.

And again.

And again.

One message that shouldn’t hit as hard as it does—

We need to talk about your performance lately.

You stare at the screen for too long.

Then lock it.

Then unlock it again.

Your chest tightens.

You still don’t cry.

Not when you fix the issue.

Not when you apologize.

Not when you skip lunch.

Not when you rearrange three different plans to make everything fit again.

But by the time you get back to the dorm, long after the boys have finished their schedule and gone ahead of you, something inside you is… thin.

Like stretched glass.

One more push and it might shatter.

You tell yourself you’ll just go to your room. Shower. Sleep. Reset.

That’s the plan.

It never works out that way.

—

You barely make it past the entrance before a voice calls out.

“Hey—noona?”

You freeze.

Too late.

Han Jisung is already looking at you.

And Jisung… notices everything.

His head tilts, eyes narrowing just slightly—not suspicious, not probing. Just… attentive.

“Did you eat?” he asks.

Such a simple question.

Such a dangerous one.

You nod too quickly. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just tired.”

He doesn’t move.

Doesn’t call you out.

Doesn’t push.

Instead, he just hums softly and disappears into the kitchen.

You think you’ve gotten away with it.

Until he comes back.

Not with questions.

But with a warm bowl in his hands.

“Sit,” he says lightly, setting it down on the table. “You always lie when you say you ate.”

You blink at him.

“Jisung—”

“Just sit,” he repeats, softer this time.

You do.

Because arguing feels like too much effort.

Because something about the quiet way he’s treating you—like you’re fragile but not broken—makes your chest ache in a different way.

He doesn’t stay.

Doesn’t hover.

He just lingers long enough to make sure you take the first bite.

And when you do, he grins, satisfied, like he’s accomplished something important.

“You don’t have to talk,” he says casually, leaning against the counter. “But eating helps everything suck slightly less.”

You huff a quiet laugh.

It cracks something open.

Not enough to break.

But enough to breathe.

Safe place one.

—

You think you’ll make it upstairs after that.

You really do.

But the second you step into the living room—

“Whoa.”

Seo Changbin’s voice cuts through your fragile calm.

He’s on the couch, mid-scroll on his phone, but now he’s staring at you.

Not in a teasing way.

Not in his usual loud, chaotic energy.

Just… steady.

“You look like you fought a whole company and lost,” he says bluntly.

You almost laugh.

Almost.

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” he snorts. “And I’m quiet.”

You try to move past him.

He stands.

Blocks your path—not aggressively, just enough that you have to stop.

Then, without asking, he gently takes your bag off your shoulder.

“Sit down,” he says.

There’s no argument in his tone.

Just certainty.

You sink onto the couch before you can protest.

He disappears for a moment, then comes back with a glass of water.

Pushes it into your hand.

“Drink.”

You obey again.

You’re noticing a pattern.

Changbin sits beside you, not too close, not too far.

“Bad day?” he asks.

You nod.

He doesn’t ask for details.

Doesn’t try to fix it.

Instead, he leans back and sighs.

“Same,” he mutters. “Let’s both pretend everything’s trash for five minutes.”

You blink at him.

“What?”

“It’s allowed,” he says, glancing sideways at you. “You don’t always have to be strong. It’s exhausting.”

The words land heavier than they should.

Your grip tightens around the glass.

He notices.

Of course he does.

But he doesn’t point it out.

Just nudges your shoulder lightly with his.

“Stay here for a bit,” he adds. “No responsibilities. I’ll fight anyone who tries to bother you.”

You smile—small, shaky.

Safe place two.

—

By the time you finally make it toward the hallway, you’re… softer.

Still tired.

Still fragile.

But not as alone.

That illusion doesn’t last long.

Because the moment you reach the stairs—

“Manager-nim.”

Bang Chan.

Of course.

He’s standing halfway down, like he’s been waiting.

You try to straighten instinctively.

He notices that too.

His expression shifts immediately.

“Hey,” he says gently. “No. None of that.”

You stop.

And somehow, just those words—

None of that—

Make your throat tighten.

“I’m okay,” you try again.

He doesn’t believe you.

Doesn’t pretend to.

But he also doesn’t call you out.

Instead, he walks down the rest of the stairs slowly, like approaching something delicate.

“Come here,” he says quietly.

And then—

He opens his arms.

You hesitate.

Just for a second.

Because this crosses a line.

Because you’re supposed to be the one holding things together, not falling apart in front of them.

Because if you step forward, you might not stop.

But Chan doesn’t move.

Doesn’t rush you.

Just waits.

Safe.

Steady.

Reliable.

You step forward.

And the second his arms wrap around you—

That thin glass feeling inside you cracks.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Just… quietly.

You exhale, and it trembles more than you want it to.

His hand comes up to the back of your head instinctively, pressing you closer—not forcefully, just enough to ground you.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he murmurs. “But you don’t have to carry it alone either.”

You close your eyes.

And for the first time all day—

You don’t feel like you’re about to break.

Safe place three.

—

When you finally pull away, it’s not because you want to.

It’s because footsteps echo down the hall.

“Hyung?”

Felix’s voice.

You turn instinctively.

Big mistake.

Because the second he sees your face—

Everything in his expression softens.

“Hey…” he says, slower now, gentler.

You try to smile.

It doesn’t quite work.

He walks over without hesitation.

No questions.

No hesitation.

Just… presence.

“Come sit with me,” he says, already guiding you toward the couch again.

You don’t argue.

Again.

He sits beside you—closer than Changbin did, but not overwhelming.

Just enough that your shoulders touch.

Warm.

Grounding.

“You wanna watch something?” he asks.

You shrug weakly.

“Anything’s fine.”

He scrolls for a second, then puts something light and familiar on—something you’ve seen before, something easy.

You don’t really watch it.

But he doesn’t seem to mind.

At some point, his hand finds yours.

Not tightly.

Just… there.

His thumb brushing lightly over your knuckles in a slow, absent rhythm.

Comfort without pressure.

Care without expectation.

You lean into him slightly.

He adjusts immediately, letting you.

“Bad days don’t last forever,” he says softly. “But I can stay with you until it feels like they will.”

Your eyes sting.

But you don’t cry.

Not yet.

Safe place four.

—

You lose track of time.

Until—

“You guys stole her already?”

Hyunjin.

Of course.

You glance up.

He’s leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, but his usual dramatic flair is… muted.

Concern flickers behind it.

Felix shifts slightly. “We didn’t steal. She came willingly.”

Hyunjin huffs.

Then walks over.

Stops in front of you.

Crouches slightly so he’s at eye level.

“You look like you haven’t taken a proper breath in hours,” he says quietly.

You blink.

He reaches out—not touching you immediately, just hovering for a second.

Giving you time to pull away.

You don’t.

His fingers gently brush your hair back from your face.

A small, careful gesture.

“You’re allowed to pause,” he murmurs. “The world won’t collapse if you do.”

You let out a shaky breath.

He smiles softly.

“There,” he says. “That’s better already.”

It’s not.

But it feels like it could be.

He stands, then disappears briefly.

Returns with a blanket.

Drapes it over your shoulders like it’s something ceremonial.

“You’re not moving for a while,” he declares. “Doctor’s orders.”

You almost laugh again.

Almost.

Safe place five.

—

“Why is everyone so quiet?”

Seungmin.

He steps into the room, immediately suspicious.

Then he sees you.

And his expression changes in that subtle, sharp way only he can manage.

“Oh,” he says simply.

No teasing.

No sarcasm.

Just understanding.

He walks over, hands in his pockets, and studies you for a second.

Then—

“You look like you need a distraction,” he decides.

Before you can respond, he grabs the remote from Felix.

“Hey—”

“Trust me,” Seungmin cuts in.

He switches the show.

To something ridiculous.

Something loud.

Something impossible to take seriously.

You stare at the screen.

Then at him.

He raises an eyebrow.

“What?” he says. “If you’re going to suffer, we might as well make it entertaining.”

A small, real laugh escapes you this time.

He notices.

Smiles—just barely.

Mission accomplished.

He sits on the armrest near you.

Close enough to be there.

Far enough to not overwhelm.

“You’ll be okay,” he adds quietly, almost as an afterthought.

It lands more than the joke.

Safe place six.

—

By the time Jeongin appears, the room is fuller.

Warmer.

Safer.

He looks around, confused.

“Why is it so crowded—”

Then he sees you.

“…oh.”

He doesn’t ask.

Doesn’t need to.

Instead, he disappears immediately.

You barely register it.

Until he comes back.

With snacks.

A ridiculous amount of them.

He sets them down on the table like an offering.

“I didn’t know what you’d want,” he says sheepishly. “So I got everything.”

You stare at the pile.

Then at him.

“You didn’t have to—”

“I wanted to,” he interrupts quickly.

Then, softer—

“You always take care of us. It’s okay if we take care of you too.”

That…

That does it.

Your chest tightens again.

But this time, it’s not from stress.

It’s from something warmer.

Something heavier.

Something that feels dangerously close to breaking you in a different way.

Safe place seven.

—

You don’t notice Minho at first.

Because he’s quiet.

Always has been.

But suddenly—

He’s there.

Standing just behind the couch.

Watching.

Observing.

Understanding.

He doesn’t say anything.

Doesn’t ask questions.

Doesn’t join the chaos.

Instead, he steps forward.

And gently presses something into your hand.

You look down.

A small, familiar object.

Something personal.

Something comforting.

Something you didn’t even realize you’d been missing.

You look up at him.

He shrugs slightly.

“Thought you might want that,” he says simply.

No explanation.

No elaboration.

Just… knowing.

Your fingers close around it tightly.

And this time—

You do cry.

Just a little.

Just enough.

No one makes a big deal out of it.

No one points it out.

They just… stay.

Around you.

With you.

Talking softly.

Laughing occasionally.

Letting you exist in the middle of it all without pressure.

Without expectation.

Without needing anything from you.

And somewhere in the middle of that—

You realize something.

You didn’t ask for any of this.

Didn’t explain.

Didn’t break down.

Didn’t say you needed help.

And still—

They showed up.

In their own ways.

At their own pace.

One by one.

Eight different kinds of comfort.

Eight different ways of saying the same thing.

You’re not alone.

You wipe your eyes quietly.

Take a steady breath.

And for the first time all day—

You feel okay.

Not perfect.

Not fixed.

But… safe.

Surrounded.

Held together in ways you didn’t even realize you needed.

Eight safe places.

And somehow—

You’ve always loved the practice room at night.

Not because it’s quiet—practice rooms are never truly quiet—but because it’s honest. No cameras. No fans. No schedules breathing down your neck. Just mirrored walls, worn floors, and music echoing through muscle memory.

And Yunho.

“Again,” he says, breathless but smiling, palms resting on his knees as he looks up at you through damp bangs. “From the top. We were off by half a count.”

You groan dramatically, flopping backward onto the floor. “You’re lying. We were perfect.”

“We were almost perfect,” Yunho corrects, walking over and nudging your shoe with his foot. “Which is worse.”

You snort. “You’re such a perfectionist.”

“And you love me for it.”

You do.

But you don’t say that.

Instead, you sit up and roll your shoulders, muscles warm, heart steady. This has been your rhythm for years—late-night practices, shared water bottles, quiet laughs, Yunho’s presence always solid, grounding. Best friends. Dance partners. Emotional support humans for each other when idol life gets overwhelming.

Safe.

Too safe.

The music starts again, bass vibrating through the floor. Yunho moves effortlessly beside you, tall frame precise and powerful, every motion clean. You’ve danced with him so many times that your bodies anticipate each other automatically—steps aligning without conscious thought, spacing perfect without looking.

That’s when it hits you.

The realization isn’t loud.

It’s subtle. Dangerous.

You catch your reflection mid-turn—not yourself, but him. The way his jaw tightens in concentration. The way his eyes flick to you instinctively, checking your timing. The way he smiles when you nail a move that took weeks to perfect.

Your chest tightens.

You miss a step.

“Hey—” Yunho stops the music instantly. “You okay?”

“I—yeah.” You shake your head, forcing a laugh. “Just spaced out.”

He studies you for a second longer than usual, concern softening his features. “You never space out.”

Something about that makes your throat close.

You’ve known Yunho since before debut. Since cramped dorm rooms and borrowed clothes and dreams that felt too big to touch. You’ve cried on his shoulder, screamed with him after first wins, celebrated birthdays at convenience stores because schedules didn’t care.

You’ve loved him in a hundred ways.

Just… not that way.

Right?

“Let’s run it again,” you say quickly.

The choreography pairs you closer this time—mirrored movements, turns that bring you face-to-face. Yunho’s hand catches yours during a transition, fingers warm, grip steady.

It lingers.

Just half a second too long.

Your breath stutters.

You look up at him.

He’s already looking at you.

Not the casual, familiar glance you’re used to—but something searching. Something uncertain. His thumb presses lightly against your knuckles before he lets go, like he doesn’t quite want to.

The music ends.

Silence stretches.

“…Did you feel that?” Yunho asks quietly.

You swallow. “Feel what?”

He exhales, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Something felt different.”

Your heart starts racing.

This is the moment where you joke. Deflect. Keep things easy.

But suddenly, the idea of pretending makes your chest ache.

“Yunho,” you say softly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Do you ever…” You hesitate. “Do you ever think about us?”

His eyes widen—just slightly.

“…I think about you all the time,” he admits.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know.” His voice drops. “But that’s the problem.”

The room feels smaller.

Yunho steps closer, careful, like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he moves too fast. “I’ve been trying to ignore it,” he says. “Because you’re my best friend. And I don’t want to ruin that.”

Your chest aches at the word ruin.

“I don’t think it would ruin anything,” you whisper. “I think… it’s already different.”

He laughs softly, disbelief threaded through it. “When did this happen?”

You think about late nights. Shared silence. The way he always knows when you’re overwhelmed. The way your first instinct is always Yunho.

“I don’t know,” you admit. “I think it’s been happening for a long time.”

Yunho’s smile is slow. Tender. Almost shy.

“Good,” he says. “Because I don’t think I could stop even if I tried.”

You don’t remember who moves first.

Only that suddenly Yunho’s hands are warm on your waist, grounding and familiar and entirely new. Your forehead rests against his chest, heartbeat strong beneath your ear.

“This okay?” he murmurs.

You nod. “More than okay.”

He laughs softly, relief clear. “You know we still have to practice, right?”

You groan into his hoodie. “Let me have five minutes of emotional crisis first.”

“Fair.”

He hugs you closer.

And for the first time, the practice room feels like more than a place to work.

The house is quiet in a way that only happens after 9:17 PM.

You know the exact time because that’s when your daughter finally stops asking for “one more sip of water,” “one more hug,” “one more question about space.”

And Seonghwa always gives in.

Every single time.

You’re leaning against the kitchen counter when you hear his voice drift down the hallway.

“Last hug,” he murmurs gently.

A tiny giggle.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

There’s a pause. A softer one.

“I love you, Appa.”

And then, the voice that still makes your chest warm after all these years:

“I love you more.”

You don’t move.

You don’t interrupt.

You just stand there, watching the faint hallway light stretch across the floor, feeling the quiet pride of loving a man who kneels to tuck blankets properly.

Seonghwa appears a minute later.

Sleeves rolled to his forearms.

Hair slightly messy from little fingers tugging at it.

T-shirt soft and worn, the one he refuses to throw away because your daughter painted on it when she was three.

He sees you watching him.

His expression softens immediately.

“She negotiated for five minutes,” he whispers.

“Did she win?” you ask.

He nods solemnly. “I lost custody of the water bottle.”

You laugh quietly, stepping toward him.

“Terrible father.”

“I know,” he sighs dramatically. “Completely manipulated.”

But when he wraps his arms around you, it isn’t dramatic.

It’s grounding.

His chin rests on the top of your head, and you melt into him automatically. Years of muscle memory. Years of knowing exactly how he holds you when he’s tired.

This is what people don’t see.

They see the stage presence.

The sharp suits.

The intensity.

They don’t see him humming lullabies in the dark.

They don’t see him checking the baby monitor three times before coming to bed.

They don’t see him looking at you like you’re still the girl he married.

You’ve been together long enough that love isn’t loud.

It’s steady.

It’s packed lunches at 6:30 AM.

It’s him texting you:

Did you eat?

It’s you replying:

Did YOU?

It’s shared glances across the dinner table when your daughter announces she’s going to become a dinosaur scientist.

It’s the way he always reaches for your hand in parking lots.

Not possessive.

Protective.

Habitual.

Like breathing.

Tonight, though, something lingers in the air.

He doesn’t pull away after hugging you.

His hands stay at your waist.

His thumbs move slowly over the fabric of your shirt like he’s memorizing you.

“You’re quiet,” he murmurs.

“You’re tired,” you counter.

He smiles faintly. “I can be both.”

You look up at him.

There are faint shadows under his eyes. Not exhaustion — just fatherhood.

Busy schedules. Early mornings. Late nights.

“You had rehearsal all day,” you say softly. “You should rest.”

His hand slides up your back.

“I will,” he says.

He doesn’t move.

You raise a brow.

“When?”

He leans down slightly, brushing his nose against your temple.

“When you stop standing so far away from me.”

You snort. “I’m literally in your arms.”

“Closer,” he whispers.

And something in your stomach flips, even after all this time.

You step fully into him.

Chest to chest.

His arms tighten.

There it is.

The married kind of intimacy.

Not rushed.

Not desperate.

Just deep.

His fingers slip under the hem of your shirt just enough to touch skin at your lower back — warm, familiar.

You shiver.

He notices.

Of course he does.

“Cold?” he asks softly.

“Maybe.”

His eyes darken slightly, not in hunger — in awareness.

“Come here,” he murmurs.

He walks you backward slowly until your hips bump the counter.

Not dramatic.

Not aggressive.

Just controlled.

Intentional.

His hands settle at your waist again.

His gaze drops to your mouth.

“Do you know,” he says quietly, “that you still look at me the same way you did when we first dated?”

You blink. “I do not.”

“You do,” he insists gently. “Like I’m something you can’t believe is yours.”

You smile softly.

“You are something I can’t believe is mine.”

That makes him still.

Completely.

For a moment, he looks almost shy.

“You married me,” he says quietly.

“I know.”

“You chose me.”

“Still do.”

That’s what gets him.

His forehead presses to yours.

And for a second, you’re not parents.

Not responsible adults.

Just two people who built something beautiful together.

His kiss starts soft.

Always soft with you.

It deepens gradually — familiar, slow, warm.

The kind of kiss that says I know you. I know how you breathe. I know what makes you melt.

Your hands slide up his chest.

He exhales quietly when your fingers curl at the back of his neck.

It’s not urgent.

It’s not wild.

It’s slow heat.

Married heat.

When he pulls back slightly, he brushes his thumb over your cheek.

“You’re incredible,” he murmurs.

“For putting our child to bed?”

“For everything.”

His voice is steady, but his eyes are intense.

“You carried her,” he says softly. “You built our family. You hold everything together.”

You shake your head gently. “We do.”

He leans down, kissing the corner of your mouth.

“Still,” he whispers.

Your hands slide under his shirt this time.

Warm skin.

Familiar muscle.

He inhales sharply — not because it’s new.

Because it’s you.

Even after years, your touch still affects him.

“You’re going to make me forget I was tired,” he murmurs.

You smirk slightly. “That’s the idea.”

He laughs softly against your mouth.

Then, because he is who he is, he pauses.

“Door locked?” he asks.

You roll your eyes.

“Yes.”

“Monitor on?”

“Yes.”

“Volume—”

“Seonghwa.”

He grins faintly.

“Just checking.”

That’s the best part.

The responsibility never leaves.

Even when his hands slide to your hips again.

Even when he lifts you slightly onto the counter, just enough to stand between your knees.

Even when the kiss deepens into something warmer.

He pulls back first.

Always controlled.

Always steady.

“Bedroom,” he murmurs quietly. “Not the kitchen.”

You laugh softly.

“Why?”

“Because,” he says, brushing a strand of hair from your face, “I want to take my time.”

And that’s the difference between new love and this.

He doesn’t rush you.

He doesn’t need to.

He already has you.

He just likes reminding you.

Later, you’re tangled in clean sheets, the room dim except for the soft glow of the baby monitor on the nightstand.

Seonghwa lies on his side facing you, one arm draped over your waist.

His thumb traces lazy circles against your skin.

“You know,” he murmurs, “she told me today that she wants to marry someone like me.”

You smile sleepily. “She has good taste.”

He huffs quietly.

“I told her she should marry someone kinder.”

Your eyes open fully.

“You are kind.”

His gaze softens.

“I learned it from you.”

Your chest tightens.

He leans forward, kissing your forehead.

Then your cheek.

Then your lips — soft and lingering.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“For what?”

“For loving me before I was a father.”

Your throat burns.

“And for loving me after.”

You brush your hand over his jaw.

“There was never an ‘after,’” you say quietly. “It was always just you.”

He looks at you like he still can’t believe it.

Like after years of marriage, shared bills, school runs, late nights, and morning chaos — he still sees you as the girl who chose him.

His wife.

The mother of his child.

His safe place.

He pulls you closer.

Your leg tangles with his.

The monitor hums softly in the background.

Your house is warm.

Your family is safe.

And Seonghwa presses one last kiss to your temple before whispering:

“I’d choose you again. Every lifetime.”

You smile into his chest.

“I know.”

And that’s what makes it powerful.

You didn’t expect him to be real.

Not like this.

Not standing at the front of a softly lit hall, dressed in a black suit that fit him too perfectly, fingers wrapped around a microphone like it was an extension of himself. Not with his hair neatly styled, forehead exposed, eyes calm but focused—like the world narrowed to the music stand in front of him.

You sat in the third row, hands folded in your lap, heart doing something unprofessional and inconvenient inside your chest.

Your sister was getting married.

And Seonghwa—your Seonghwa, your bias, the man whose fancams you’d watched in quiet hotel rooms and late nights—had been booked as the wedding singer.

You had known this for weeks. You’d seen the contract. You’d helped coordinate logistics. You’d told yourself, firmly and repeatedly, that idols were professionals and you were an adult and this was not a fan moment.

But when the first note left his mouth, all of that logic dissolved.

His voice filled the room like warm water—controlled, emotional without being indulgent. It wasn’t flashy. It didn’t need to be. He sang as if the song mattered, as if every word carried weight, as if this wasn’t just another booking.

You felt your throat tighten.

Your sister glanced back once, smiling softly at you, and you smiled back—because you were happy for her, truly—but your eyes betrayed you, drifting back to the front.

Seonghwa sang like he was holding something precious.

And then, halfway through the second song, he looked up.

Not scanning the room. Not checking cues.

He looked directly at you.

You froze.

It was subtle. Anyone else would have missed it. But you felt it—felt the shift, the momentary stillness as his gaze held yours just a fraction longer than polite.

Your breath caught.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t break professionalism.

But something passed between you—recognition, maybe. Curiosity. A quiet, unspoken oh.

And then the song ended.

Applause filled the room. You clapped, hands trembling slightly, pulse loud in your ears. Seonghwa bowed politely, thanking the couple, his expression warm and composed.

But when he turned away, you were almost certain—

He glanced back once more.

The reception buzzed with laughter and soft music, the clink of glasses, the warmth of family and friends. You helped your sister adjust her dress, checked in with the coordinator, made sure the timeline was still on track.

You did not think about Seonghwa.

That was a lie.

You thought about him constantly.

You avoided looking toward the stage area where he stood speaking quietly with staff. You told yourself you were being respectful. You told yourself you were being ridiculous. You told yourself this was nothing.

Then your sister leaned in, voice low and teasing.

“He asked about you.”

You stiffened. “Who?”

She smiled. “The singer.”

Your heart dropped straight into your stomach. “Asked… what?”

“Your name,” she said easily. “If you were my sister. Said you looked familiar.”

You stared at her. “You didn’t—”

“I said you were my sibling,” she continued, smirking. “And that you helped organize things. Relax. I didn’t out you as a fan.”

You swallowed. “Why would he ask?”

Your sister shrugged. “Maybe because you were staring at him like he hung the moon.”

“I was not.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“…Okay, maybe a little.”

Before you could say anything else, a shadow fell across the table.

You looked up.

Seonghwa stood there, close enough that you could see the fine details—the way his lashes cast shadows against his cheeks, the faint crease between his brows when he smiled softly.

Up close, he was devastatingly real.

“Excuse me,” he said politely, voice lower without the microphone. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Your sister beamed. “Not at all. This is my sister.”

His eyes flicked back to you.

“So we were right,” he said gently. “You were family.”

You nodded, hoping your voice wouldn’t betray you. “Congratulations on the performance. You were… incredible.”

A hint of something crossed his face—surprise, maybe. Pleasure.

“Thank you,” he said. “That means a lot. I try to give weddings something personal.”

Your sister glanced between you, then stood abruptly. “I’m going to check on the photographer. You two talk.”

She was gone before you could protest.

Silence settled—not awkward, but charged.

Seonghwa cleared his throat lightly. “I hope it wasn’t strange, me asking about you.”

“No,” you said quickly. “I just didn’t expect it.”

He smiled, small and honest. “Neither did I.”

You laughed softly, nerves easing just a fraction. “So… do you sing at weddings often?”

“More than you’d think,” he replied. “They’re… grounding. Everyone’s sincere. No pretense.”

You nodded. “That makes sense.”

He studied you for a moment, thoughtful. “You weren’t watching like a casual guest.”

Your cheeks warmed. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to someone who’s used to being watched,” he said gently. “It wasn’t uncomfortable. Just… noticeable.”

You met his gaze. “I admire artists who take their craft seriously.”

Something in his eyes softened.

“I’m glad,” he said quietly.

Another pause. Then, almost carefully, “Would it be inappropriate if I asked to stay in touch?”

Your breath caught. “In touch?”

He hesitated—just enough to show this wasn’t automatic for him. “I don’t usually do this. But I’d like to talk again. Outside of… today.”

You held his gaze, heart racing.

“I’d like that,” you said.

He pulled out his phone, offering it to you with a shy smile. “Then—may I?”

You took it, fingers brushing briefly against his. The contact sent a quiet jolt through you.

You typed your number.

When you handed it back, he looked at the screen like it mattered.

“It was nice meeting you,” he said.

“You too.”

As he walked away, your phone buzzed.

A new message.

Seonghwa: This is me. Thank you for today.

You stared at the screen, smiling to yourself.

You had come to celebrate your sister’s love.

You hadn’t expected to find the beginning of something else.

The wedding ended the way all good nights do—too quickly.

You hugged your sister tight, careful of her dress, whispered promises to visit, to call, to not disappear into work again. When you finally stepped outside, the air was cool and clean, the city humming softly around you. Your phone was warm in your hand, screen lighting up more often than you meant to check.

You didn’t open the messages yet.

You wanted to savor the space between moments—the quiet after music, the breath after applause. You wanted to keep the feeling intact a little longer.

In the car, you finally unlocked your phone.

Seonghwa: Did you get home safely?

You smiled before you could stop yourself.

You: Just got in. Thank you again—for everything today.

The reply came a minute later.

Seonghwa: I should be thanking you. Today felt… meaningful.

You leaned back against the seat, watching streetlights pass. Meaningful. The word settled somewhere soft inside you.

The days after the wedding were gentle, unhurried.

No dramatic confessions. No expectations pressed too close. Just messages that arrived like small, steady notes of a song you were learning by heart.

He asked about your work—what you did, how you ended up organizing half your sister’s wedding without meaning to. You asked about his—about balancing schedules, about singing outside massive venues, about what it felt like to be quiet on purpose.

He didn’t overshare.

But he didn’t hide either.

Late one night, after a long day, you found yourself sitting on your couch, lights low, phone glowing.

You: Can I ask you something honestly?

There was a pause.

Seonghwa: Always.

You hesitated, then typed.

You: Why did you ask for my number?

The dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

When his reply came, it was slower. Thoughtful.

Seonghwa: Because I don’t usually feel seen when I sing somewhere like that. Today, I did.

Your breath caught.

Seonghwa: And because I didn’t want to regret not asking.

You set the phone down, heart pounding—not with anxiety, but with something steadier. Something warm.

You didn’t reply right away.

You didn’t need to.

The first time you met again, it wasn’t dressed up as a date.

It was coffee. Mid-afternoon. Neutral ground.

He arrived early.

You spotted him through the window—cap pulled low, coat buttoned, posture relaxed but alert. He looked up when you entered, eyes brightening instantly, smile genuine and unguarded.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

It felt easy. That surprised you most.

Conversation flowed without effort—stories about childhood, about favorite quiet places, about music that felt like home rather than performance. He listened with his whole body, leaning in slightly, nodding, eyes focused like nothing else existed.

At one point, he laughed—soft, unrestrained—and you realized how rare it must be for him to do that without cameras.

“You know,” he said, fingers circling his cup, “I was nervous today.”

“You?” you teased gently. “You sing in front of thousands.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling. “But this felt… different.”

You met his gaze. “How?”

“Because this isn’t part of my job,” he admitted. “It’s a choice.”

The word lingered.

Choice.

You nodded slowly. “I appreciate that.”

When you stood to leave, neither of you moved right away.

“I’d like to see you again,” he said—not rushed, not hesitant. Just honest.

“I’d like that too.”

Outside, he walked you to your car, hands tucked into his coat pockets. Before you parted, he hesitated.

“Can I—?” he began, then stopped, catching himself. “Sorry.”

You smiled softly. “You can ask.”

“May I hold your hand?”

Your answer was immediate.

“Yes.”

His fingers laced with yours, warm and steady. Not possessive. Not tentative.

Just there.

It wasn’t always simple.

There were days he went quiet—travel schedules, rehearsals, obligations pulling him in different directions. You never pushed. You understood the weight he carried.

And he noticed.

One evening, after a particularly long silence, he called you instead of texting.

“I didn’t disappear,” he said quietly. “I just… needed a moment to breathe.”

“I know,” you replied. “Thank you for telling me.”

There was a pause on the line.

“You’re very kind,” he said.

“So are you.”

Another pause. Deeper this time.

“I’m not used to this,” he admitted. “Being… intentional.”

Your voice softened. “You don’t have to rush.”

“I don’t want to,” he said. “I want to do this right.”

Something in your chest eased. “Then we’re on the same page.”

The first time he sang for you again, it wasn’t on a stage.

It was late. Quiet. His voice low through your phone as he hummed something unfinished—melody only, no words yet.

“I’m working on something,” he said shyly. “I wanted to know what you think.”

You listened, eyes closed, heart full.

“It sounds like home,” you said when he finished.

He didn’t speak for a moment.

Then, softly, “That’s what I hoped you’d say.”

Weeks turned into something steadier.

Not labels. Not promises shouted from rooftops.

Just presence.

And one night, sitting beside him on a bench overlooking the city, lights stretching endlessly below, he finally said it.

“I know what this costs me,” he said quietly. “I know the risks.”

You turned toward him, searching his face. “Seonghwa—”

“And I’m choosing it anyway,” he continued, eyes steady. “I’m choosing you.”

Your breath caught, tears threatening—not from fear, but from the weight of being chosen so deliberately.

You reached for his hand. “I’m not asking you to sacrifice yourself.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why this matters.”

He leaned in, forehead resting gently against yours.

“Stay,” he murmured—not a demand, not a plea. Just an invitation.

You smiled, heart full.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Above you, the city kept moving.

Between you, something quiet and strong took root.