Payeng FC

Seoul’s late afternoon sun stretched across the campus with a mellow golden light. The air carried that crisp edge of early autumn. A gentle breeze lifted a few fallen leaves and sent them flying in the air. It was almost the weekend so the pace on campus felt unhurried. Students were leaving classes and walking out of libraries, some sat on the benches chatting, laughing with iced coffees while a few couples strolled hand in hand to the bus station. The sky itself leaned into the mood, soft and tender.

Typical episode six, K-drama vibe. Perfect setting for a date, right?

Isa tugged on your sleeves, her smile brighter than sunlight itself. Her soft brown sweater slipped off her shoulder just a bit as she dragged you along, showing off her delicate collarbones. Her hair was tied back neatly. She was beautiful, you always knew. But what made her stand out was even more the tiny details—the mole under her eye and another on her nose.

“Come on, Youngwon-ah! You promised to check that new shop out with me today!”

You chuckled and adjusted the straps of your backpacks, hers in front and yours on your back. You always held her backpack after class like this, it’d become a habit by now.

“You make it sound like I signed a contract, Isa-ah. I just said I’d just go with you after class.”

Isa pouted, though her sparkling eyes said the opposite. 

“Same thing, idiot! A promise is a promise.” she dragged you by the wrists. “Besides, you need new clothes. Don’t think I didn’t notice you wearing that same jacket everyday.”

“It looks good. Besides, what are you now? My stylist!?”

“Of course I am!” Isa replied dramatically. “What kind of best friend would I be if I let you go to lectures looking like that?”

The way she said “best friend” made her heart hurt a little. Still, nothing new to Isa. She quickly masked it with a smile and rolled her eyes. 

The weather is pretty today. Might as well make it feel like a date.

To everyone else, you and Isa looked like the most obvious couple ever. Isa hoped things were that way. You? Not a single clue. Isa walked a step ahead, hand on your wrist to lead you while you carried both of your backpacks without a single complaint. Then, the wind suddenly teased at a few strands of her hair, carrying the scent of one of her favorite things ever on this earth at the same time, melon bread. She slowed her steps and breathed it in, smiling to herself. You nodded your head in the direction of familiar the bakery across the street.

“Melon bread?” 

“Melon bread.”

Isa confirmed, smiling. Her eyes took no time curving into those half-moon shapes, an unmistakable trademark of Lee Chaeyoung. You hummed, already knowing what to do. You knew everything about her. Her favorite food, colors, MBTI, music taste... even her extensive list of allergies.

“Let’s go. I’ll buy you some.”

Her heart fluttered from how easy you said it. The words came out of your mouth like buying your best friend her favorite melon bread was just another part of your day. Maybe it was for you. But for Isa, it was everything.

“You don’t have to.” she said softly.

“I know. But I want to.” you replied, quick and simple. Isa’s heart was gone again, maybe floating the in air now. Without a second thought, you slipped your hand around hers and started walking to the bakery. The bell above the bakery door chimed as you pushed it open, still holding her hand. The sweet and warm scent of fresh bread immediately washed over both of you. You were about to ask Isa something when a familiar voice came up.

“Isa? Oh, GPT!”

Isa froze in her steps at the sound of a familiar voice. You both turned at once. Sat at a table near the window were Yoon and Seeun, your close friends.

“Yah. Here~” Seeun grinned, eyes amused at the two of you being hand in hand. “Look at you two.”

Isa felt her cheeks burning as she quickly pulled her hand back from yours, hiding it in her sweater sleeves. Yoon tilted her head at the sight, smirking. “Came here together?”

“Yup.” you answered, completely oblivious to the intention behind her words and walked to them. “Isa wanted some melon bread so I figured I should b-”

“Buy it for her.” Seeun finished for you and leaned into her palm. “Of course you do, GPT.”

Isa kicked lightly at the back of your shoes, hoping your dumbass would realize what was going on. You turned and frowned at her in confusion, only to see Isa glaring at you.

They all can see. Everyone can see it. Except you, you robot.

“What was that for?” you muttered, glaring back. Isa just huffed and refused to answer, cheeks pink. Shaking your head, you walked to them and pulled out the chair beside Seeun, gesturing for Isa to sit. “Sit here, you bully. I’ll get you your melon bread. And don’t move.”

The way you pulled out the chair for her, the way you said it. Again. They all had her heart fluttering. The moment you were walking to the counter and out of sight, Seeun leaned in. “So… how are you doing with GPT?”

Isa groaned and dropped her face into her hands. “Don’t even start.”

Yoon sipped her drink and smiled. “He’s still oblivious no matter how hard you try. The two of you is like a movie.”

Isa's voice came out muffled. “More like a comedy. A really frustrating one.”

Seeun chuckled. “Maybe for you. It’s free entertainment for us. Do you know how many people call you two a couple now? Even my mom thinks you two are dating when I show her your photos together.”

Isa lifted her head to look at her friends, eyes defeated.  “I wish we were. He’s just so… ugh!” she threw her hands up and let them fall back on the table a bit too hard. Seeun then spoke up, voice serious enough to make Isa squirm. “Then just confess already. You’ve been in love with him for forever now.”

Isa pressed her lips together and exhaled, shaking her head. “I can’t. At least not yet.”

“Why not?” Yoon asked.

Isa sighed and traced her finger on the table. “Because… I want to be sure. I want to know if Youngwon feels the same before I say anything. If I confess too soon and he doesn’t then… everything between us changes. I don’t want to lose what we have.”

“So you’re waiting for GPT to realize?” Yoon added, understanding. Isa nodded. “Yeah. I need that idiot to realize on his own.”

Seeun sat back and exhaled dramatically. She’d heard this a few times now. 

“With GPT’s understanding of love and processing speed? Good luck with that. It’ll take you a lifetime.”

Isa laughed at her own situation and-

Thump

She turned back to see you standing there with a melon bread bag dangling in your hand and the most annoying grin on your face. You’d just hit her on the head lightly with the bag.

“Are you talking bad about me?” you asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What?! No!” Isa shot up from her chair and hit your arm in return, cheeks flaring red. “Yah, don’t just go around hitting me like that!”

“Mmm. Sounds guilty to me.” you teased, pulling the bag just out of reach when Isa tried to grab it. Seeun let out a humorous laugh, entertained. “You two are unbelievable.”

Yoon added with a knowing smile. “Lovebirds quarrel.”

“S-Stop saying weird things!” she sputtered and threw them a glance, only to make them laugh even harder. You chuckled at the scene then casually reached out and took Isa’s hand, not even aware of her being startled at the contact. “We’re leaving.” you announced, waving at Seeun and Yoon with your melon bread bag holding hand. “Thanks for watching Isa for me.”

Isa was too stunned to pull her hand back, she could only gape at you before you dragged her toward the door, leaving Seeun and Yoon cackling behind. The bus ride after was calm. You sat next to Isa near the back of the bus, like always. As soon as you sat down, you pushed the overhead vent so the breeze could hit her instead of you. Then you dug through your backpack and fished out your water bottle, handing it over without much thinking.

“Drink. You haven’t had any water today. I didn’t see you drinking any.”

Isa parted her lips as she was about to argue but your steady look left her no room. She huffed and twisted the cap open, taking a small sip. You nodded, satisfied, and leaned back with your eyes already looking out the window. To Isa though, everything wasn’t settled. Her fingers tightened around the plastic bottle. It was the fact that you always noticed, that you always cared in these quiet, unconscious ways that made her heart tingle and her face warm.

“Done?” you asked, turning your head back to her. 

Isa nodded and you gently took the bottle back, capped it and slipped it into your backpack. Then, with that same old casual tone of yours, you offered.

“Lean on my shoulder if you’re tired.”

The words dropped into Isa’s chest like a stone. How could you say things like that so easily? How could you offer your shoulder like it was nothing, when to her it was everything? Isa stared at you, eyebrows furrowed as she wondered what she was to you. You, on the other hand, were calm in such a relaxed posture, maybe even a little confused at Isa’s silence.

Am I a close friend to you, you idiot? Someone you look after out of habit? Or something more that you didn’t even realize yet?

Her shoulder twitched as the temptation to actually lean on you was almost unbearable. But then she decided to swallow hard and stared out the window, pretending she hadn’t heard your offer.

“Are you mad at me?” you asked, genuinely trying to understand.

“No.” Isa replied. Her voice was so soft it almost disappeared under the sound of the bus’ engine. You studied her profile quietly. “Then why won’t you look at me?”

Isa just exhaled quietly, eyes still fixed stubbornly on the window. You let out a short breath, not annoyed or frustrated, just thoughtful. Then you moved a little in your seat so that your shoulder leaned a little closer to hers, bridging the gap that Isa was afraid to close. You did it without knowing how much it meant to her. The gesture lingered in the air like an unspoken invitation. Isa’s heart thumped hard in her chest as she hesitated for a second. Finally, she carefully let her head rest on your shoulder.

“See. I know everything.” you smirked, thinking you were slick. “Isn’t that why you call me GPT? Smart and understanding, Isa-ah.”

You made it sound like a badge of honor. In reality, it was her way of calling you incapable of feeling a little something called “love”. Inside, Isa’s thoughts twisted.

No, idiot. I call you GPT because you act like a robot… like some AI who says the right things without even realizing how much they mean.

Isa couldn’t say it out loud. Not when your shoulder felt so steady, not when the sun looked so nice outside, and especially not when being this close felt like a dream she never wanted to wake up from. So she whispered.

“Shut up. You don’t know everything.”

You laughed softly. “That’s exactly what someone would say when I do know everything.”

Isa groaned under her breath and tried to hide her flushed cheeks for the rest of the ride. When the bus slowed at your stop, you stood up first and held your hand out for her bag. 

“C’mon. Backpack. I’ll carry it.”

“No.” Isa shook her head, already putting it on her back.

“It’s okay. Just giv-”

Isa quickly grabbed your hand. The warmth of her fingers laced into your palms felt so nice that it made you forget what you were going to say. With her face angled away so that you couldn’t see, Isa walked out of the bus, hand holding yours. 

“Let’s go, dummy.”

The two of you then got to the clothing store she’d been hyping up a few days ago. The moment you stepped inside, Isa immediately let go of your hand. She was already pulled in by the vibe, eyes lit up. The store itself screamed “Instagram famous”. Trendy songs were playing through the speakers. Bright walls stretching high, making the color from the clothes pop even more. The whole place smelled like youth and new cotton. It matched her vibe perfectly. Stylish and a little playful. You could already tell that she would spend way too much money here if given the chance. She then began to flip through the hangers, eyes sparkling as she pulled out different pieces, holding them up against herself in the mirror.

“You’re having too much fun.” You leaned on one of the racks, smiling. Isa stuck her tongue out at you. “Isn’t a girl allowed to have fun?”

You chuckled. “Sure, but didn’t you say I need new clothes?”

That made Isa paused mid air. She then turned to you slowly, eyes scanning you up and down. You’d just walked into her trap.

“Exactly.” Isa said and hung the hangers back, marching over and grabbing your wrist. “Finally, you admit you need help.”

“I dress okay, good even.” you defended yourself, though her grip was very determined. "You complimented me a few times."

“Sure. But you could always do better, right?” Isa shot back, pulling you toward the men’s section. Within minutes, she’d piled a stack of new clothes into your arms.

“This is way too much.” you muttered, nearly dropping a pair of pants she shoved on top.

“You’ll live, dummy.” Isa smirked and gave your elbow a push toward the fitting rooms. “Go change. I need to try something too. We’ll compare after.”

You chuckled and shifted the pile of clothes in your arms. “Couple lookbook?”

“What?! No!”

Isa stopped in her steps, her words bursting out faster than she meant. The denial tumbled from her lips in a rush to shut down the tiny spark of hope in her heart before it could grow even bigger. Her fingers wanted to fidget but she managed to force them still.

“Don’t say dumb things like that.” she muttered, voice lowered just a little. You laughed, oblivious as always and already nudging open the fitting room door.

“Just saying, Isa-ah. People say we look good together sometimes.”

Her teeth sank into her lower lip as she stared at your dumb, stupid back. Frustration and longing tangled together until she could hardly breathe.

Why would you even say that if you didn’t mean it?

She turned on her heels and headed for the other section, yanking hangers free with much harder force than she intended. Isa rarely felt like this. Except for whenever she was with her favorite oblivious idiot who was apparently too book smart but incapable of understanding human feelings. Shirt hangers snapped against the metal bar, pants scraped and slid off in messy clumps. 

Stupid, stupid you. 

Her chest felt tight, each tug getting harder than the last. The longer she thought about your dumb face, the heavier her movement grew. 

“Excuse me, miss…”

Isa was startled when a staff member had appeared by her side, eyebrows raised in concern. 

“Is everything okay? How can I help you?”

Her stomach flipped. She quickly ducked her head and bowed, voice small and shy.

“Ah- no, no. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to- I- everything is fine. I’m sorry.”

The staff smiled at her cautiously and bowed back before walking away, leaving Isa clutching the pile of clothes with burning ears. She exhaled hard and forced herself to calm down, it wasn’t their fault anyway. It was her GPT’s fault. It was yours. Still, she carried her armful of clothes to the fitting room, head hot. Even then, her mind kept circling back to you, to your words, to that annoying casual smile that always made her go crazy, Her frustration didn’t ease. If anything, seeing her own reflection in the mirror only reminded her how stupidly hot her cheeks still were because of you. When she finally stepped out of the fitting rooms, you were already outside waiting for her. You smiled at Isa the moment your eyes landed on her.

“You look good~” you meant it. Every single word. Her heart skipped but no emotions showed on her face. She then brushed her hair behind her ear and gave you a little twirl, letting the hem of her new shirt sway.

“Just good?” she asked, voice with a little bit of challenge. Your grin widened, eyes following her spin.

“Hmm, once more.”

Isa felt the heat creeping back onto her cheeks. She did anyway, twirling again.

How do you know to say the right thing every time? Are you actually GPT?

“What do you think?” she asked again, hands now on her hips as she striked a pose.

“Better than good. Perfect, actually.”

She huffed, a smile forming slowly. Your words squashed away her frustration from earlier so easily, just like that. “Of course I do.”

“Now me.” you smiled, straightening your posture and spreading your arms. “How do I look?”

Isa looked at you, longer than usual. Those half-moon eye smiles were back on her face as she squinted and thought with an exaggerated expression. Then she hummed, tapping her fingers on her lips.

“Really?” you muttered, smile slowly falling apart at her silence. Isa then shook her head, eyes softening. A laugh finally escaped as she said. “I’m just joking. Of course you look good. I chose those.”

“Perfect?” you tried.

Isa rolled her eyes. “Okay now. Don’t push it.”

The two of you kept drifting through racks, getting random items. Sometimes, you would hold a jacket up to her shoulders and zip it carefully, brushing her hair as you fixed the collar. Sometimes, you perched oversized glasses frames on her nose and tilted her face side to side before nodding like a stylist. Other times, you would just pinch her cheeks. They just looked looked pinchable, that’s all. Isa then also started leaning into it, testing you. When you zipped up the jacket, she pouted her lips and tiptoed closer to you, fishing for a few compliments. And you did, with no hesitation. Isa did look pretty, no lie there.

“You make this jacket look good.”

When you fixed her hair, Isa intentionally leaned her head into your hand just to see what you would do. You tucked her hair behind her ear before flicking her forehead lightly. To you, it was something small and natural. To her, it felt like love. When you cupped her cheeks and gave them a playful squeeze, a sly smile began to tug at her lips as she looked into your eyes.

“Isn’t this what lovers do?” she asked, both teasing and serious. You squeezed them a little harder, stretching them like she was a silly and pouty cat.

“Lovers?” you mocked, amused by the idea. “Nah. We’re too close to be lovers, Isa-ah. You just look pinchable.”

On the outside, Isa laughed, smacking your hand away like it was nothing. On the inside, however, her chest burned.

Too close to be lovers?

She hid it well by forcing a playful grin and nudging you toward the mirror. You didn’t know but it felt like you were shutting the door in her face.

✧✧✧✧✧

아닌 척해볼까 해도, there's an issue (ah) 숨길 수가 없어, why should I miss you?

That night, Isa lay on her bed as the words kept running around in her head like a broken, haunted record. Your voice, your mocking expression.

Too close to be lovers?

She then turned on her side and groaned, hugging her pillow. She really wished squeezing the pillow tight enough would crush the feelings she had for you. Too bad, it didn’t. The memory of everything about you made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. 

No! It doesn’t matter! 

You’re just my best friend. Just a best friend!

Still, even the words in her mind were too shaky to believe in. With a frustrated yell, Isa punched the pillow over and over. Then, she ran her fingers through her hair and gripped it hard to try and let out all the frustration, messing her hair all up in the process.

“Arghh! Stop it, Lee Chaeyoung.” she scolded herself, biting her lip hard. Isa buried her face into the pillow again, voice weak this time. “Why do you have to be like this?”

Then her hand searched for her phone against her will. It didn’t take long before she navigated to the photo gallery of memories she’d tried so hard not to look back at. Photo after photo. Memory after memory. You and Isa at the photobooth, hugging each other too comfortably. Everyone’d laughed at this one and said the two of you looked too much like a couple, a married one even. Then another of you two at a cafe, looking happy with matching drinks. And then, her favorite—the one of her kissing your cheek on your birthday. Your surprised smile looked too genuine for an oblivious guy, while Isa looked too happy to be trapped in the situation that she was still stuck in right now. Isa stared at the screen for too long, pulling the phone closer to her face with each passing second.

Finally, a laugh bubbled out of her throat.

“Of course people would think we’re a couple…”

Her thumb scrolled again, the next photo instantly killed the laughter. It was a selfie Isa’d taken months ago. She had her arm around you, her hand was on your back. Your face was buried in her shoulder, eyes closed, expression crumpled from crying. You’d been hugging and clinging to Isa that night after being rejected by the girl you liked, Sieun. She remembered everything that night. The way you showed up at her place all sad and quiet. The way your tears seeped through her shirt. Even the way she’d smiled through it all for you, assuring you that everything would be okay, even though her own heart was breaking. Her hand trembled as she zoomed in on your face, thumb hovering over your eyes and cheek like she could wipe the tears away.

“Why do I always let you do this to me?” 

Before Isa knew it, her vision started to blur until she couldn’t see anything clearly. She hugged the phone close against her chest, holding all the feelings she had right now in place. Then, the sob finally tore out of her throat. All raw and broken, she curled into the blanket. Her finger unlocked the screen again, tapping the contact of the person she always ran to when things like this bothered her.

“Unnie…” she said the moment Sumin picked up her call. The familiar warmth of her voice immediately hugged Isa through the speaker.

“Isa-ah. What happened? Is it that GPT boy again?”

Isa tried to hold herself together but her throat burned too much. She bit her lip again but a shaky breath managed to escape, enough to let Sumin know what was wrong.

“Oh, Isa…” Sumin said, worry showing in every syllable. “He made you cry again, didn’t he?”

“Unnie… I don’t know what to do.” Isa broke down. “He- he just… why does he have to be like this?”

Sumin stayed quiet for a moment, letting Isa cry through the line. Sumin took in all of her sadness without saying anything, her silence was the safest space Isa knew. Sumin’d been doing this for… longer than she remembered. When Isa finally calmed down, Sumin spoke gently. 

“Isa-ah, listen to me. You can’t keep letting this eat you up inside.”

“What do I do now, unnie?” Isa replied, tears still wet on her cheeks. Sumin exhaled slowly.

“Stop torturing yourself like this, that’s what. If he’s making you feel lost like this then don’t sit around and wait. Just tell him.”

“Tell him?” Isa's voice went up high.

“Confess.” No doubt in Sumin’s tone. “Lay it out for him straight. If he feels the same, good. This endless circle of you being sad finally stops. And if he doesn’t…” Sumin paused, taking a moment to choose the right words. “Then screw him. Because no one is worth all these tears you keep shedding.”

Even though Sumin couldn’t see, Isa shook her head.

“No, unnie. I can’t. I still… love him too much. I just can’t let go like that.”

Sumin’s sigh carried through the line, low and slightly tired. She could guess this was going to happen. Isa was always stubborn when it came to love, when it came to you. “Chaeyoungie… you deserve someone who makes you feels safe, not someone who keeps you guessing and waiting like that.”

No answer.

“Isa.”

Still nothing, Sumin tried again.

“Lee Chaeyoung. I know you can hear me.”

Isa’s silence said enough. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, breathing in and out slowly.

“Please.” Sumin said, soft and firm. “Don’t waste yourself waiting like this forever. If he ca-”

Beep

The line went dead, Isa’s heart pounding harder and harder as she ended the call. She knew Sumin was right. But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear right now. Some part of her still wanted to wait, to believe that one day you would finally look at her the same way she looked at you.

But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear right now. The other parts of her still wanted to wait, to believe that one day you would finally look at her the same way she looked at you. 

고민 고민해도, 안 풀리는 비밀 매번 나만 네가 필요하단 느낌

Isa stared at her phone again for a long while. Sumin’s words were still flying in her mind but whatever, her life, her choice. Then, she opened your message. Already, she knew it would hurt her even more.

[아이사😻]

what are u doing? i’m bored 🫠

No reply. She sighed, watching the text she’d just sent sit there staring back at her.

[아이사😻]

u ate dinner right? don’t tell me u skipped again

yah

what are u doing? 😾

don’t leave ur bestfriend waiting like this

10 minutes passed. No answer from you. Isa groaned and threw her phone lightly to the side, only to pick it up a few seconds later. She knew she wasn’t ready to let you go like this. Isa chewed the inside of her cheeks, a tight knot forming in her heart.

[아이사😻]

helloooo

GPTTTT

you’re so sloww

sometimes i think u would forget me if i didn’t text you first

ur such a bad friend 🙅‍♀️🙅‍♀️

Isa stared at the “bad friend” specifically then quickly texted another one to mask it. Too risky.

[아이사😻]

ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

nervermind, i’m just bored rn

Still no reply. As the minutes dragged on, her screen stayed dark and silent. It made her feel even dumber and more ridiculous for trying. 

“Why does it feel like it’s only me that needs you…?” she muttered slowly. Rolling around and finally settling on her back, Isa stared at her ceiling with her phone pressed on her chest. Another sigh left her lips.

I’m so pathetic. 

In a desperate move, she opened up ChatGPT and typed.

i’m in love with my best friend, but he’s an oblivious idiot. what do i do?

The reply popped up instantly. Her eyes scanned every single word carefully, then she burst out laughing. Especially at how similar it sounded to you, the way you formed your words at times, the way you explained things and gave advice.

“I can’t believe it… You sound just like that idiot.”

Even the AI was giving her your voice back, telling her the very thing she was too chicken to do. She wiped her wet eyes, still giggling but not so sure if it was because it was funny or it hurt. Maybe both? Isa then sniffled, debating whether to keep venting to the AI version of you or keep bombing the real version with texts until you finally replied when suddenly-

[GPT🤖]

ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

sorry sorry

just finished a lol game

Isa stared at your text for a second, heart already fuming. Typical. Absolutely typical of you. 

You jerk! Your stupid game is more important than me?

She laughed anyway, at least her favorite idiot finally bothered to text back. Her fingers hovered the keyboard, preparing her reply like she hadn’t just been pouring her heart out into an empty void while you were off farming minions.

[아이사😻]

so ur best friend is bored and u just leave her like this?

ur such a meanie, youngwon

[GPT🤖]

sorry, sorry ㅠㅠㅠ

i didn’t mean to

“Really?” Isa huffed, tone flat. “Of course, you didn’t mean to at all.”

[아이사😻]

did u even have dinner, u idiot?

[GPT🤖]

of course i did, did u? 

u don’t have to worry about me, it’s me who have to worry about u

Isa smiled. You cared, you always did, right? Even in the dumbest, smallest ways. Even when your words came out with much more intentions and affection then you ever meant to. She sat up and leaned back against the bedframe, staring at your reply.

[아이사😻]

of course i did, i don’t need u reminding me everyday like that

[GPT🤖]

doesn’t seem like it tho

u yawn and look dead every single time u show up to class

Isa scrunched her nose and clenched her teeth at your text. That was because she’d been staying up and thinking about your AI self too much lately. She wanted to say it, she really did. But she couldn’t, so she bit back the truth and shifted the conversation elsewhere.

[아이사😻]

whatever, stop nagging me

did u finish all the assignments? i need help ㅠㅠ

[GPT🤖]

yup yup i’ll send it to u later dw

btw, the pants we bought this afternoon was a bit too tight

i tried it again earlier, my butt is too big for it

A photo soon followed with you posing ridiculously in front of the mirror, tugging at the waistband. Isa immediately burst into laughter, the sound filling her quiet and lonely room. Her heart was pounding in that stupid way again, all warm and fuzzy because of you. Only you could make her laugh like this, even after she’d been crying not even thirty minutes ago.

[아이사😻]

ㅋㅋㅋ stoppp

u look so stupiddd

Her cheeks were heating. You always managed to pull her back no matter how far her emotions had changed.

[GPT🤖]

excuse me, that’s offensive

u chose this for me, remember?

[아이사😻]

idkkk

maybe u chose it urself

She paused and browsed through her gallery, searching for the right photos she’d taken earlier that the store. Her in the store, hair loose, tan crop top hugging her upper body, flared dark skinny jeans on her legs. Biting her lips, Isa selected a few before hitting send, not giving herself time to think twice.

[아이사😻]

how do i look? i tried them on when u were busy with that stupid pants in the fitting rooms

this one too, should i post these on ig?

Her heart beat faster and more furiously when the photos went through. Despite trying to play it off as typical best friend things, Isa truly wanted to know what you thought, maybe more than anyone else's opinion.

[GPT🤖]

are u even aware of how you look, lee chaeyoung?

idk why you’re even asking me tbh

you look hot, like really hot

and just post them on ig already

The longer Isa stared at the screen, the happier her smile got. Your reply was more than enough, making her chest feel like it wanted to burst right out.

If only GPT was hers already.

✧✧✧✧✧

You and I, 어려워, 어려워, stop it Time is up, time is up, time to show I wanna know about it (click, click)

It was Friday afternoon, right after a tediously long lecture. The sunlight was warm as you sat with Yoon and Seeun at a table on campus. You were scrolling on your phone when Isa dropped down next to you with a small “nyaa~” sound. It was one of her odd habits that somehow felt natural around you. You didn’t mind, it was kinda cute. It didn’t take long for Yoon to speak up, like always.

“Where’s your girlfriend, Youngwon?” she asked out of nowhere.

Your head snapped up from your phone. “Who?” you asked, genuinely confused. “I have one?”

Seeun snort. “Don’t play dumb, GPT. It’s Isa. You’re always stuck together, basically official at this point.”

Isa’s cheeks burned as she let out a laugh that was too nervous to be casual. “Shut up. It’s not like that.”

You only shrugged, as the thought seemed too far to be reality. “Yup. We’re just close, that’s all.”

Isa’s chest sank as the warmth she’d felt just seconds ago was now replaced by your stone cold rejection. She forced a smile while her fingers fidgeted in her lap. But Yoon soon caught the sadness in Isa’s eyes that she thought she’d hidden well. Seeun propped her cheek on her fist, studying Isa with quiet concern. Like reading each other’s mind, the two of them soon exchanged glances before nodding subtly at Isa, signaling at her. Do something, their expressions urged. Push it further. Don’t let it end here.

Isa’s eyebrows furrowed at their silent encouragement, heart thudding. Do something? Push it further? Isa really wanted to but her mind was filled with all the directions it could go wrong. You laughing? You pulling away? Yoon being Yoon, she squinted at Isa and mouth “coward”. Seeun then gave Isa a judging look, making her bite the inside of her cheeks, torn to pieces inside. One half was begging her to stay still while the other was urging her to move.

Finally, before her last piece of courage could dissolve completely, Isa shifted on her seat until her shoulder touched yours. The contact jolted her heart, nothing Isa’d never done before but she still felt nervous. Her breath hitched as she let her chin lower on your shoulder. For a few seconds, she couldn’t breathe.

Calm down. I did it…

“What are you doing?” she said, almost letting the nervousness out. You didn’t even look to the side and just hummed, all calm and relaxed. 

“Just scrolling.” you said, finger flicking on your screen. “Was waiting for you to come out.”

The warmth in Isa dimmed a little at how normal you treated it. Still, she tried again by leaning even closer, exhaling a soft breath. You then glanced at her, noticing the weight of her leaning onto you.

“Tired?” you asked.

“A little.” Isa murmured, eyes lowering.

“The rest as long as you want.” you said with no hesitation, moving slightly so Isa could lean more comfortably. “We can catch the bus home later.”

Isa felt like you’d cracked her heart open and poured warmth right in, too easily. You were too oblivious and caring at the same time. Without knowing, she let herself sink a little deeper against you, hiding the excited sound that was threatening to escape. Across the two of you, Yoon clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a squeal while Seeun nudged her with her lips pressed together. The both of them were silently fangirling at the scene going on right in front of them. Couldn’t hold it in anymore, Yoon rested her elbow on the table and leaned forward.

“Seriously.” she said, voice a tad bit high. “Why don’t you two just get together already?”

Isa’s whole body stiffened. The heat flooded her cheeks so fast she almost felt dizzy. Her mind quickly scrambled for a way to escape the question but you took a breath, so loud it took Isa out of her thoughts. Staring into the distance, you gave the thought real consideration. 

“I don’t actually know… Never actually think about it that seriously.” you said honestly. 

You didn’t notice but Yoon’s mouth fell open and Seeun gripped her arm out of excitement so hard Yoon almost yelped.

Isa? Her heart was basically malfunctioning at this point. Was this it? Was this the moment she’d been secretly dreaming about? A single careless sentence from you but it gave her so much hope. Then your eyes turned to her, chin still on your shoulder.

“What do you think?” you asked, shaking your shoulder lightly, not wanting to disturb her rest. Blinking fast, she stuttered.

“M- me? What are you saying? I- I don’t know. That’s weird.” 

Her laugh then came out paper thin, breaking apart awkwardly. Your expression dropped a bit, the corner of your mouth tugged down before you let out a breath. Maybe it was to assure her you were thinking the same? 

“Right… Umm, I figured.”

You looked back at your phone again, finger clicking at the screen to distract yourself from what’d just happened. 

“Anyway…” you cleared your throat, the sound sharp and awkward at the same time. “Some of my friends keep pushing me to meet this girl they know. They set up a blind date for me next Sunday.”

You pulled up a photo, tilting your screen toward Yoon and Seeun with a smile that felt a bit unnatural.

“Kim Minjeong. She’s cute, right?”

Yoon leaned in closer with wide eyes, pretending to evaluate seriously while Seeun glanced at Isa, checking if she was fine.

“Ooh… yeah, yeah… she’s pretty.”

Isa felt she’d just been split open down the middle. She felt like the entire world could see how she’d just rejected her only chance to be something with you. Her heart twisted painfully, the sharp ache then spread to her throat until it became too hard for her to speak up or even breathe. Lifting her chin from your shoulder, Isa forced out a quiet laugh. She looked anywhere but you and your screen. You caught it this time. The way her laugh broke thinly and how she couldn’t meet your eyes. You tilted your head at Isa, voice softer than before.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Isa whispered, the lie managed to come out fine despite the trembling in her heart. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” you joked, lips smirking. Both Yoon and Seeun raised their eyebrows at it. For the first time, you weren’t just brushing it off with some tedious comment or a dumb smile. You’d just teased Isa like you saw something in Isa. Isa laughed at you, eyes curving into half-moon shapes.

“Idiot.” she said, shoving you with a little more force than usual. “Don’t say weird things like that.”

You grinned, rubbing the spot she’d just shoved. “Good.” you said, eyes already back at your phone like the matter was settled. “Just making sure.”

Isa’s smile died down slowly. She looked down at her hands, poking at her pants and pretending she was fine while she was actually dying inside. Yoon and Seeun stayed quiet. Their earlier amusement soon faded. They could see Isa’s act for what it was, and it hurt to see how fake she tried to be to keep you from asking more. They wish you could see it too.

Maybe you’d just started to see it.

Or you were too afraid to be more direct.

Who knew?

✧✧✧✧✧

Tell me, I'm calling you, GPT, 대답해 줘, GPT 넌 내가 안 궁금해? 이대로도 충분해? (Huh) No, never be the same (same) and I want you to say (say) 그만 모르는척해 줘

The next week soon came. And it felt different, without Isa. She wasn’t glued to your side anymore. She still showed up to class, still laughed at Yoon’s jokes and Seeun’s stories but when it came to you, she was distant. Your text also went unanswered longer than usual.

[GPT🤖]

yah

where are you? why are you avoiding me?

Nothing.

[GPT🤖]

let’s get something to eat

i’ll get you melon bread

[아이사😻]

i’m busy, sorry

another time

That was one of her answers. Same rejection, just different wordings. And they came hours later.

At lectures, Isa would sit between Yoon and Isa instead of next to you. She talked, nodding at their conversation but barely looking your way. When you tried to tease her like always, it felt like she only smiled to brush the interaction away as quickly as possible. And on the way home, it felt like she would walk faster so that you had to catch up. Or she didn’t wait at all. Now, Isa even made excuses to not sit next to you on the bus or not come home on the same bus with you. You frowned the third day it happened, watching Isa retreating figure blend into the crowd.

“Damn it…” you muttered under your breath, hands gripping the backpack’s straps.

Far away, Yoon and Seeun saw it all. They knew you and Isa way too well. This was her way of protecting herself before she got hurt even worse. But watching you yearning for Isa, watching Isa force the distance made their hearts hurt too.

“Why couldn’t they just get together?” Seeun wondered aloud. Yoon exhaled, eyes on the both of you moving farther apart in opposite directions.

“Because one of them somehow got too scared, and the other’s too stupid and robotic.” she answered simply.

“But isn’t GPT realizing? Looks like it.” Seeun studied the way you slowed your steps, eyes still chasing after Isa even when she disappeared.

“Maybe?” Yoon’s voice went up. “But Isa’s shutting down.”

“So what? We just watch them hurt each other like that.” Seeun sighed. Yoon glanced at her friend, eyes sparkling with something. “Maybe we could help them.”

By Friday afternoon, you’d felt like you had enough. Class just ended. And like clockwork, Isa was already slipping out the door, carrying herself far ahead before you could even pack up all your bags. This time, you didn’t let her vanish that quick.

“Isa.”

She didn’t slow down.

“Yah. Lee Chaeyoung.”

You caught her wrist, firm but not hard enough to hurt her. Her body tensed but she still didn’t turn around. 

“Let me go.” Isa tried to yank her hand back but you tightened your grip to keep her in place.

“No.”

You tugged lightly to pull her away from the crowd, down a quiet hall until the sound of other people faded. Finally, you stopped at an empty corner and only then did you release her wrist and let your hand drop. Isa took a step back and crossed her eyes, still not wanting to meet your eyes. You stared at her with frustration etched across your face. 

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you avoiding me?”

A humorless laugh came out of her. 

“Oh wow. Look at you now.” she mocked you. “Suddenly you care? Suddenly you’re mad at me for pulling away?”

You were taken aback. “Of course I care, Isa. You’re my-”

“Best friend?” she cut in. “I’ve heard that before. Too many times now.” Her arms tightened as she looked at you for the first time. Her eyes were glassy with frustration.

“You don’t get it, do you?” she spat. “I’ve liked you all this time. Every dumb little thing you do. Carrying my bag, buying me melon bread, taking care of me like I was your girlfriend. I fell for all of them. And you-”

Her words caught, chest heaving but she forced them out anyway. “You keep acting like some robot. Too oblivious, too logical. You ignored everything I felt.”

You opened your mouth but Isa’s voice cut in again. Sharper and angrier this time, fueled by all the time she’d been ignored.

“And now? Now you give yourself the right to corner me in a hallway and act like this? To demand why I’m avoiding you? When you’ve never once thought about how much this hurts me?”

“I tried, okay?” you defended yourself, voice shaky. “Maybe I was dumb. Okay, I was dumb. But I did notice in the end. Why do you think I asked if you were okay when I showed you that photo of the girl my friends tried to se-”

“That?” Isa snapped, her laugh came out disbelieving. She dragged a hand through her hair, pacing a step away before spinning back toward you. Her eyes shone wet under the hallway lights.

“I know. I- I’m sorry. I just-”

“Sorry?” Isa laughed. She shook her head violently until tears came spilling faster. “You think sorry is enough?”

Not letting you answer, she shoved at your chest with both hands as hard as she could. You stumbled back a few steps but didn’t resist. You chose to keep your arms limp to your body.

“You think cornering me and apologizing like this is enough?” Isa shouted, hitting you with smaller fists. “Do you know how long I’ve been hurting? Do you know how hard it is to love someone who doesn’t even see me?”

Her body shook with even more rage and heartbreak as she landed another punch on you. You stayed still through it all, letting Isa strike at you through it all. You knew it was your fault. When her attacks weakened, she pressed her fists against your chest and just kept them there. Isa even lowered her forehead until it nearly touched you. Her breathing was ragged and uneven.

My chance…

Slowly, you lifted your hands to pull Isa into a hug. Maybe to hold her and tell her that you were sorry in a way that you couldn’t express. But Isa immediately looked up with her eyes blazing through tears.

“Don’t even think about hugging me right now.” 

Your hands hovered uselessly in the air before you pulled them back down. Isa sniffled, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“I hate you. Don’t even come finding me again. We’re not friends anymore.”

Isa shoved you back with much more effort than when she punched you, putting undeniable distance between you. The push carried every tiny bit of her anger, her heartbreak, her need to escape before she completely fell apart in front of you. By the time you finally register her words, Isa was already walking away. 

“Isa-ah…” 

She didn’t turn around, not even bothering a glance. All you could do was watch her back grow smaller until she disappeared. 

Not even friends anymore.

You fucked up.

✧✧✧✧✧

Tell me, I'm calling you, GPT, 대답해 줘, GPT 넌 내가 안 궁금해? 이대로도 충분해? (Huh) No, never be the same (same) and I want you to say (say) 그만 모르는척해 줘

Tomorrow morning, you couldn’t take it anymore. So you went to the only people who knew Isa as well as you did. Yoon and Seeun. The second you asked them what to do, they both turned on you immediately. 

“You idiot!” Yoon smacked you on the head. “How could you let it get that far? Do you know why she calls you GPT now!?”

Seeun’s hit on your shoulder was even harder. “Cornering her, then saying dumb shit about noticing her at the last second? You’re pathetic!”

You winced and rubbed the sore spots. “I know I messed up, okay? That’s why I’m asking you two.”

“Unbelievable…” Yoon muttered, arms now crossed. “All this time she’s been pouring her heart into you and you just what? Be you?”

Seeun just rolled her eyes. You let out a long, guilty breath. Isa’s words were weighing so heavy in your chest. “So what do I do now?”

“If you actually mean what you’re saying then just fight for her.” Seeun said, hand shooting out in the air.

“Fight for her?” you flinched, already covering yourself.

“Yeah.” Yoon said, pulling out her phone. “We’re going to Isa’s place to drink with her and calm her down since she’s… You.” she eyed you up and down with a frown. You were pretty sure disgust was somewhere in her eyes. 

“Okay. I’m sorry.” you sighed with your head down, feeling small under her stare.

“Try and not look like some clueless AI for once, idiot.” Yoon muttered, shoving her phone back in her pocket. 

“And bring flowers, real ones.” See added, dead serious. “Real effort, not those cheap ones.”

“But isn’t Isa like, a good drinker?” you wondered. “I think she can outdrink you two easily.”

They looked at each other before bursting out laughing. 

“In her dreams.” Yoon said, snorting. “There’s no way Isa can take the two of us.”

“We’ll get her heart all soft and sad. Then you show up looking nice and hopeless, flowers in hand. She’ll be tipsy enough to maybe listen to you instead of punching you again.”

“Or she’ll still punch you.” Yoon confirmed with a shrug. “But either way… progress?”

“You guys sure this will work?” you groaned, hands on your head out of worry.

“What? You wanna do this alone?” Seeun asked, smirking.

“Oh no! Definitely not.”

So here you were, standing in front of Isa’s door. Flowers clutched so tight your hands were shaking. Everything felt too loud in your head, even the beating of your heart. 

You can do it… You can do it.

You swallowed and exhaled one last time. Nothing can go wrong, right? Then you lifted your hand and pressed her door bell before some other persona of yours could talk yourself out of this.

Ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

Then the door swung open.

Isa.

Her eyes met yours instantly and the glare there told you everything, no words needed. Isa had already expected it to be you. Her arms braced against the doorframe, expression somehow tight, angry but still… very beautiful. And behind her were… 

Huh?

Yoon and Seeun were lying on the living room floor, faces flushed with empty bottles scattered around them. They both burst out laughing when they saw you.

“Oohhhh, GPT!” Yoon slurred, lifting her cup your way before collapsing into giggles. 

“Look at you~” Seeun cackled, pointing at the flowers in your hand. “You actually bought them. Ai can learn, Yoon-ah!”

Damn… Isa is a strong drinker.

Isa, on the other hand, didn’t even laugh or blink. Her glare was locked on you.

“Hi.” you swallowed and adjusted your grip on the bouquet. “I came to…”

“To what?” Isa cut you off. “Say sorry again? Acting like everything’s all good now because you showed up with flowers?”

Her words hurt but they were the truth. So you forced yourself not to look away. “No. I came to ask for a chance. I know I’ve made a big mistake and I should’ve ju-”

“Boooriiinggg!” Yoon shouted from the floor, waving her arms. “Kiss already! You two!”

Seeun smacked her with a pillow then the both of them dissolved into another waves of drunken laughter. Isa didn’t budge. If anything, her eyes darkened. She inhaled sharply, her lips trembled lightly. Maybe because she was swallowing words she didn’t want to say out loud. She’d had enough already. No yelling, no theatrics anymore. 

Without warning, Isa slammed the door shut. 

The flowers almost slipped out of your grip as you found yourself staring at the wood grain just centimeters from your nose. You could even hear Yoon and Seeun’s laughter muffled behind the door, adding to the shame. You must’ve looked so pathetic right now.

Shoulders slumped, you turned around slowly and let your back slide down the door until you were sitting on the cold hallway floor, bouquet now limp just like your feelings. “Fuck…” you whispered with your palms pressed against your eyes. “Why am I so stupid?”

The guilt attacked you, heavier with every breath you took. Still, something in you told you not to move. And you did just that, stretching your legs out and leaned fully against the door, letting the night pass just like that. 

If she didn’t listen today, you’d wait, as long as it took. That was what you told yourself. Somewhere along your thoughts, your eyes finally fluttered shut when exhaustion caught you. Stuck between guilt and desperation, you decided if Isa’s heart had even a tiny space left for you, you’d still be right here when morning came.  And so you stayed, flowers now clutched to your chest. You dozed off in front of her door and waited for a chance.

✧✧✧✧✧

Baby, I love you (you) Dot, dot-dot-dot-dot, dot-dot-dot Baby, I love you (you) Dot, dot-dot-dot-dot, dot-dot-dot, dot-dot-dot

The next morning, the sound of her door unlocking jolted you awake. Too late.

What?

The door quickly swung open. You, still slumped against it, toppled backward with a hard thud.

“Ow!” 

Isa gasped and stepped back in shock. “What the- Youngwon?”

You breathed heavily, still recovering from the sudden wake up call. Rubbing the back of your head, you scrambled upright, the flowers were nearly crushed in your lap.

“Hi…” your voice groggy, hair a total mess. “You loo- look beautiful, Isa.”

Isa was stunned into silence. Maybe your determination did it? Her expression fell apart just for a second before her guard came back up. She crossed her arms and glared at you, though her cheeks betrayed her with a tiny hint of red.

Is it working?

“You’re insane, you idiot.” her voice quieter than last night. “You actually slept here last night?”

You nodded quickly and held out the bouquet sheepishly. 

“Isa, I’m sorry. I know I messed up and I know I hurt you really bad.”

Mid apology, you dropped to your knees right there on her doorstep. “Please, I just need one more chance. I’ll do anyth-”

“Yah.” Isa hissed, her eyes in panic mode as she looked down the hallway. She was horrified at the thoughts of her neighbors peeking out. Her hand moved to grip your arm.

“Don’t kneel out here, you idiot!”

Isa dragged you across the threshold and inside.

“Oh! Sorry abo-”

“My neighbors could’ve seen you. Don’t embarrass me like that.”

You stumbled into her living room, flowers still in hand as Isa quickly shut the door behind you. Awkwardly, you stood in place and brushed your messy hair down. You didn't know what to do with yourself. The silence was too loud until Isa’s footstep came closer. She stopped right in front of you, arms now crossed tight like she was preparing to scold you again. Her eyes scanned you from your wrinkled shirt to the bent bouquet in your hands.

“You slept outside my door all night just to say sorry?”

You swallowed hard, shifting on your feet. “I mean… not just sorry.” you murmured. “Didn’t want to lose you, Isa.”

Her arms stayed crossed, eyes locked on you to wait for you to keep talking. You exhaled.

“I’m not asking for forgiveness right away.” you started. “I know I’m not good with words. Half the time I sound like a broken robot but I swear… I see you. I just-” you shook your head in frustration, breaking off slightly. “I was stupid and too scared to ruin what we had. I knew I was a jackass for hurting you and doing nothing.”

Isa just blinked, eyebrows furrowed like an annoyed cat. A cute one too.

“I’m not asking for forgiveness right away. Just maybe… one chance. I want to prove I can do better. I want to show you that you’re not wasting your heart on me.”

You hesitated and cued a small, nervous smile.

“Maybe breakfast? Right now? Just us.”

For the first time, Isa’s eyes twitched with something. That alone was hopeful enough for you. She didn’t know how to answer and ev-

The bedroom door creaked, two heads peeked out. “Ooohh…” Yoon sang, smiling mischievously. “He’s confessing~”

Seeun covered her mouth to stifle a laugh, failing miserably. “Romantic~”

Isa whipped her head toward them, glare sharp like she could burn holes through the door. Both of them yelped and retreated instantly, slamming the bedroom door shut. Isa groaned before turning back to you. She cleared her throat, voice shaking slightly. Complete opposite to the calm mask she was wearing.

“Did… you even go to that blind date of yours last night?”

You shook your head instantly, no hesitation in your eyes. “No.” The next words came out rough but truer than anything you’d ever said.

“I realized I love you. I’m sorry for not realizing it sooner… for making you feel like you didn’t matter.”

Her eyes widened at your confession, her composure cracked the longer she looked at you. Isa quickly turned her eyes aside before you could catch how red her cheeks had gotten. Silence took over and stretched for what felt like forever. You scratched the back of your neck before smiling awkwardly. 

“So… breakfast date?”

Still flustered, Isa huffed out a breath while trying to hold herself together. 

“Fine. Just breakfast.”

Her voice came out a shade too soft. Her jaw was tight but her cheeks still burned a stubborn red and the quick glance she risked at you made her heart beat loud enough to make sure you could hear it. When she finally turned to the kitchen, her steps were overly controlled.

“Don’t- don’t think this means anything.”

You smiled to yourself.

Maybe, GPT’d done something right.

She’s wearing a t-shirt - yours, of course, although the lines that separated what was yours and hers had been blurred to the point of irrelevancy since you bought this apartment together a year ago. 

She’s so small in it. She was always small, but today she’s drowning in the soft cotton, the soft, worn fabric draped over her slim frame and resembling a loose, short dress more than anything else. As she emerges from behind the kitchen island her long, slim legs come into full view. Even from your vantage point in the bedroom hallway, you can see the slight blushing and bruising around her upper thighs and hips, evidence of last night’s indulgences. 

She stretches her arms above her head, her back arching slightly as she lets out a small, soft little yawn. The shirt rides up, up over most of that cute little ass of hers and confirming the fact that she was, indeed, wearing nothing else. The sun peeks through the gap between her thighs - the skin between them glistens as the sunlight catches on something wet or moist. Your cum from last night or her new arousal, you didn’t know nor care. You knew only that the sight of it stirred something inside you, chasing away the last vestiges of drowsiness and pulling you into full wakefulness.

“Come here,” she says, softly, without turning around to look at you. Of course she knew you were there. Of course she wanted to give you a little show first, with that performative little stretch of hers.

You leave the hallway and approach her, eyes drinking in the sight of her with every slow, measured step.

When you reach her, she leans back against you, her body molding to yours. You kiss the back of her head as your arms wrap around her tiny little frame - gentle, chaste gestures compared to what came before and what was probably to come soon.

Something like a soft purr leaves her throat. You can’t see it, but you know that her lips are pulling up the corners of her mouth in a soft little smile. You don’t waste any time. Your hands find their way beneath the shirt - one finds a small, round breast, relishing the soft weight of it in your palm; the other slips between her legs, finding her slick and ready, just as you’d thought she would be.

She says your name. It is soft and breathy as it leaves her lips, heavy with yearning as your fingertips glide along her slick, soft flesh. 

You say hers.

“Taeyeon.”

The sound of her name as it leaves your mouth triggers something inside you. The feel of her body pressed against yours, her stiff nipple against your fingers and cunt dripping onto your palm - it sends you somewhere long past, a day you’d left behind…

Her lips open. When she speaks again it’s barely above a whisper.

“Fuck me. Don’t stop until--”

You remember--

---

“--you fucking cum in me!” she spits, four years ago. 

“Fuck, Ryujin,” you hiss. You bring the tip of your cock between her legs. She rocks her ass back against you, needy, impatient. Angry.

“Just fucking do it,” she says between her teeth. “This is all I’ll ever be to you anyway, all we’ll ever be-”

You silence her by entering her with a deep, hard thrust that punches the air from your lungs and hers. 

You’re there again, in Ryujin Shin’s apartment.

Her apartment is small, cramped - a far cry from the luxurious penthouse you’d buy with Taeyeon three years later. Half-packed moving boxes litter most of it, each haphazardly filled with the sundries of a young woman’s life. Her messy, looping handwriting labels each one - clothes, kitchen, random shit. The movie posters and abstract art that once breathed life into the walls are gone, rolled or folded into a box, leaving behind cold, empty voids where they once painted its cold walls with vivid colors.

The sound of a police siren off the street filters in through the open window. It mirrors the alarm and desperation in Ryujin’s voice.

“Just fuck me,” she says, even as you begin to slide in and out of her tightly grasping cunt. “Just, fuck--, oh, just fuck me.”

Your hand leaves her breast. It wraps around her torso, pressing her back tighter against your chest. Her fingers dig into your forearm, as though wanting to bind you to her, keep you from the inevitable parting that was at this point only days away. She winds her free hand back behind her to grasp your skull, nails digging into your scalp as her head lolls back against your shoulder.

“Please,” she hisses, a note of desperation now amidst the anger. “Just fuck me. I’m your fucktoy, that’s all I am-”

You want to silence her. Want to tell her she’ll be more than that. Want to comfort her, want to tell her that you’ll find a way to fix things, find a way where she can stay here in Vancouver, with you, and not end up on the other side of the planet next week-

But you couldn’t bring yourself to lie. Not when you weren’t sure what the future held for the both of you. Maybe she didn’t need to hear them. Maybe she already knew that whatever you said wouldn’t be enough, whatever promises you made would be hollow.

And so you let yourself indulge in the enticing if temporary pleasure you took from her body with each thrust into her tight, wet heat. There is an intensity, a needy impatience to her tonight that had not been there before. She’s miserable, frustrated, sad - at you, the world, the email in her inbox that would uproot her from her home and send her to the other side of the planet for the foreseeable future. She’s heartbroken, most of all, because just when she thought she could allow herself to be happy the universe decided that she wasn’t worthy of it.

She channels the anger, channels the sadness, turns the painful aching in her chest. She turns it into something dark, something dangerous.

She throws her hips back against you as much as she can. She clenches tight around you, her cunt pulsing and quivering around your shaft as it drills into her over and over again with a fast, harsh pace that matches the frustration in her own movements. 

“Ryujin,” you begin, her name leaving your lips like a curse. “Fuck-”

“Shut up,” she spits, “shut up. Just fucking shut up--”

It was all too much. Her cunt, her anger, the flight next week waiting to take her away from you just as you’d finally found each other - it was all too much. You latch on to the guilty, disgusting pleasure worming its way up your spine. It wasn’t pure or pleasant, but you could feel it taking you over, just as it was taking over the young woman that had been reduced to a quivering, shaking mess in your arms.

“Fucking cum,” she spits, saliva flying from her lips. “Fucking cum in me, leave me a part of you--”

“Ryujin--”

You bury yourself inside her. As deep as you can go. Your cock quivers and your world goes blank as you fill her with thick, possessive ropes of thick white cum. She trembles in your arms, legs having long since given up on keeping her upright, relying only on your arms to keep her where she was. The feel of the cum pooling in her womb triggers her own orgasm, and she cums in your arms.

The pleasure is there, coursing through your bodies - and yet it is temporary, replaced quickly, all too quickly, with fatigue and something like disgust. Discontent. Dismay.

Ryujin’s hands finally leave your forearms, where they’d dug deep furrows in her pleasure. She holds herself against the wall, finally supporting her own weight again. 

Your cum drips from her cunt, still stuffed with your softening cock. It leaves a slick slide of glistening whiteness down the softness of her inner thigh.

You catch your breath. You look down between you, at the trembling cheeks of her ass. You move slightly with your hips and she lets out a sigh at the movement inside her cum-filled cunt. You begin to withdraw, but she stops you.

“Don’t,” she says, a whisper. “Just a little longer.”

You sigh. Fatigue sets in, accompanied by unwelcome reality. You press your forehead to the back of her skull, your arms wrapping themselves around her torso once more. It’s all you can do, all you can give her. You hold her close. 

You look for the words, but they still aren’t there. The ones that are won’t be enough, and ones that you want to say never come.

She clutches your forearm with her hands as though they were driftwood keeping her afloat. She doesn’t need words. She needs your arms, holding her close.

---

Four years later, you slide out of Taeyeon’s creamy, dripping cunt, and she lets something like a content but modest sigh escape her mouth. She raises her torso from the kitchen island, which you’d bent her over minutes before as you fucked her. Before she pulls her shirt back down a flushed imprint of your palm blooms over the pale skin of her lower back where it pinned her down onto the cold marble surface.

Cum drips from her cunt, down her thighs. She makes no effort to wipe it away. She turns, looks up at you. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes glassy - but she is composed, held together, the same way Taeyeon Kim always was in every facet of her life.

She kisses you, slowly, passionately. A rare moment of vulnerability. She was often cold and made of steel, but there were occasional moments of softness, chinks in her otherwise ironclad and imposing armor. These are the moments, rare and ephemeral, that bind you to her, that render you unable to walk away - because they convince you that one day, perhaps, she would shed her armor and never feel the need to put it back on.

The kiss ends. She turns, takes her cup of coffee, and starts to head towards the hallway and the bathroom within. 

“We have a budget meeting at 10,” she says. “Better start getting ready.”

---

Four years ago, Ryujin is on her balcony. She’s wearing nothing save the white tanktop she’d stolen from you at some point during your month together overseas. Her nipples poke out from beneath its thin cotton in the chill of the evening Vancouver air, but she neither notices nor cares.

She takes long drags from the cigarette dangling between her fingertips. Her building was a non-smoking building, but the moving boxes littering her apartment and that fucking email in her inbox meant she cared little for what the strata council might say about her nicotine indulgence at next month’s meeting - not when she wouldn’t even be in the country this time next week.

You join her. For a while the two of you sit there in silence, leaning against the rail.

“We should end things,” she says, plainly, with a clarity that both surprises you and hurts you. She doesn’t look at you. She takes another drag. The smoke leaves her nostrils and lingers between you. Just four words, but with them she’d ended everything you’d built up in the month you’d been together.

You say nothing. She doesn’t say anything further. Maybe she already knew what you wanted to say, even if you never actually said them. She was good at that. Perhaps the right words - words that would somehow fix this - didn’t exist.

At some point, long after her cigarette has become ashes on her balcony floor, she steps back inside her apartment and walks wordlessly into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. The click of the door closing sounds much louder than it had any right to be in her packed up, empty apartment.

You don’t follow. You linger on her balcony. It reminds you of the balcony of your hotel suite in Tokyo.

---

“The request came from Sakura,” Taeyeon says over the phone, two weeks before. Despite being on the other side of the planet her voice was calm, measured, the voice of one with armor securely fastened and shield raised. “Hirai approved it.”

“She’s not even in Logistics, or Strategy,” you hiss. Your hand tightens its grip on the balcony railing, turning your knuckles white. Tokyo’s evening buzzes around you, loud and bright and glittering, but you process none of it. “She’s in Marketing. She’ll get eaten alive in Logistics. You know damn well Sakura and Kazuha can get the transition to rail done on their own. Fuck, Kazuha can probably do it all by herself.”

“She said she wanted overseas experience. Now she’s getting it. And a promotion to boot.”

You scoff. “This isn’t a promotion, Taeyeon. This is exile.”

“Exile?” her turn to let a faux-laugh escape her lips. “It’s three years, max. Less if she’s as good at her job as you think she is.”

Silence. The anger burns, bright and insistent, in your veins. Anger at her and the audacity of what she’d done to you; anger at the corporate mechanisms that ground on mercilessly, without heed for the lives it was carelessly altering; anger at the sudden darkness that would take someone away from you right when your future with them seemed so bright. 

“I have work to do,” Taeyeon says, eventually, before the line goes dead.

You remain on the balcony for a while, long after the call ends. You look for a solution, somewhere within Tokyo’s palette of neon and LED - but the city is uncaring. It grinds on, cold and emotionless and relentless. Defeated, you step back inside the hotel room, empty handed.

Ryujin’s there, on the couch, knees drawn up to her chest. Her expression is unreadable, staring blankly in front of her. She’s still in shock, you realize, but the tears tracing glimmering streaks down her cheeks are unmistakable.

But as soon you re-enter the hotel room and her eyes find yours, she knows you have nothing to say - her features shatter, and she begins to cry.

---

Two weeks later, you leave Ryujin’s apartment, eventually. You take one last look at the hallway where her bedroom door remains shut. 

Three days later she flew over the Pacific, and was gone.

---

Four years later, you are standing outside Taeyeon’s office as she finishes up a meeting with the Director of the London office, who was in town for another occasion that same evening. The door is slightly ajar, and you are able to catch most of what was being said inside.

“I don’t care how much she cares about her staff’s work-life balance,” Taeyeon states, sternly. “The UK is a key market for us and she needs to get her team’s numbers up. It’s on her to figure out how best to do that. If she doesn’t, then you would do well to remember that as one of your direct reports, her performance is a reflection of your own, Miss Park.”

The London office’s director, one Miss Choa Park - well known around the company for her upbeat and friendly demeanor - gives a terse acceptance of Taeyeon’s criticism before Taeyeon dismisses her. There’s no joy or friendliness in her features today. The Director leaves her office looking frazzled, hands balled into fists next to her navy blue miniskirt as she stomps away, every step of her high heels echoing throughout the hallway like sharp gunshots. 

You enter Taeyeon’s office after Choa enters the elevator at the end of the hallway, arms crossed, a frown on her cherry red lips.

“Tough meeting?”

Taeyeon shakes her head, already readjusting, already pivoting to the topic of your own meeting with her. 

She was machine-like, most of the time. She had to be, to succeed in her world. She rarely showed weakness or emotion, and certainly not here, in her office, where her position left little room for it. This was her throne, her element. Here, she was always in control of her emotions.

Except when she wasn’t.

---

Four years ago, Taeyeon’s office was dark, unwelcoming. There is something in the air, something heavy and unpleasant. 

You storm in, all anger and rainwater from the heavy rainfall that had drenched you from the moment your plane had touched down in Vancouver after 9 hours of holding Ryujin’s hand as she trembled and sobbed in the seat next to yours.

Taeyeon speaks first.

“Surprised to see you here this late,” she says, with a glance toward the large designer clock on the wall that told you both it was nearing ten in the evening. She doesn’t make eye contact, eyes still fixed on her laptop and the documents littering her desk. “How did you know I was here?”

“Where else would you be, Taeyeon?” you spit. A hurtful statement. The indignation in your veins takes a perverse pride in the way she flinches at your words. It hurts her more than she lets on. Her lips purse into the slightest of frowns, but still she doesn’t look up at you.

“Sakura told me about the transfer,” you state. “She put it in, but you wrote it up and had her sign it.”

“I just did what Hirai implied I should do,” she says, not bothering to look up at you. She shuffles papers around on her desk, scribbling notes on the margins of one of them in red ink the color of freshly spilled blood. “Need I remind you that she said there ‘was a place for Ryujin in Strategy’?”

You step closer to her desk, leaning to plant your hands on the cold oak. 

“You know damn well that didn’t mean you had to transfer her to Tokyo,” you hiss. “You knew that Hirai meant transferring her up a couple of floors, not across the fucking ocean. But you did it anyway. And for what, Taeyeon? Why did you do it? Because some lowly Marketing Lead stole your thunder and made you look stupid in front of Hirai? To make sure she didn’t steal me from-”

“I did it for us!” 

Taeyeon finally looks up at you with an intensity in her eyes that catches you off guard. Her hands are fists now, the papers on her desk and the notifications on her monitor suddenly forgotten. There is silence for a few moments as her eyes bore into yours. 

“Hirai’s going on maternity leave in a month,” she says, softly. She drops her pen and brings both her hands to her forehead, as though massaging away a headache that was on the verge of breaking out. “She wants me to take over for her while she’s away. Senior Vice President.”

Silence again. The title lingers in the air, fills the space between you with its weight. It was only a title, but it meant so much more to the relationship between you. You knew what titles meant. You knew what they’d meant to your relationship.

“I’ll need someone to take over for me. A Vice President of Strategy--”

“Oh fuck off, Taeyeon--”

“Fucking listen to me!”

Taeyeon rarely ever shouted, rarely ever raised her voice. Even in her most intense moments her tone and volume rarely elevated.

It shakes you, as does the sudden passion in her eyes as she rises from her chair and comes around her desk to approach you. When she comes close, she straightens the collar of your shirt and brushes stray raindrops from your goretex rain jacket - but you don’t miss the slight, barely noticeable tremble in her fingers.

“We’re finally here, baby,” she says, softly, quietly, her voice small in a way it hadn’t been in years, not since she was your girlfriend a lifetime ago. “All those years of hard work, all those late nights slaving away - we’re finally here, at the top. You and me. Like it used to be. Like it still can be.”

“You’re insane, Taeyeon.”

“And you’re in love with a girl you didn’t know existed a month ago.”

You step away from her, shaken. Her fingertips leave your shirt.

“That’s not fair.”

“How long have we known each other, huh?” she counters, eyes fierce now, burning with a passion you only rarely saw in all the time you’d known her. You wish you’d seen this passion, this vulnerability more often, even if it was in the heat of an argument as it was now. “How many years? How many Christmases, how many birthdays? How many long nights in this office or in the fucking boardoom? We’ve been working for this for so long, baby, and it’s finally here. And you’re going to throw it all away for a girl you barely know?”

Silence again. A painful, dark pit of something like pain forms in your chest, forms a lump in your throat that made it suddenly difficult to breathe. You wanted to cry, wanted to shout and hit something, wanted to run away. It was all too much.

“Listen,” Taeyeon continues. She takes in a deep breath, as though steeling herself, forcing control back over her emotions - armored panels sliding back into place. Her hands return to your shirt, fiddling with its collar and buttons as she speaks. “Let’s do this, okay? Me and you. We’ll fill in for Hirai while she’s away - it’ll look great on our resumes, to say nothing of the pay and the bonuses. When she comes back, we can do whatever you want to do. We can go back to our old jobs or find something new. Whatever you want.” 

You run your hand through your hair and clamp it over your mouth, letting a long, heavy breath leave your nostrils. This was all too much. All too much, all at once.

“We’ll move to the other side of the country, or the other side of the planet. Whatever you want. But just give me one year. I need this. Please. After this, it’ll be just us. Me and you.”

She comes close again. She looks up at you with glassy eyes and a tremble in her lip. The smile on her lips is fragile, made of glass. She places her palm on your chest, above your rain jacket and shirt, over your heart.

“Me and you,” she says, one more time.

---

It didn’t happen right away. But when it did, it happened all at once.

She was an ocean away, and she’d wanted a clean break. It hurt, at first, and you’d spent many an evening with an empty bottle and thoughts of what might have been. But Taeyeon was there, as always, and soon enough her comfort became something similar to what you used to feel for her.

The apartment came next - with your respective salaries and her signing bonuses from taking over for Hirai’s maternity leave, the cost was never really an issue despite living in one of the world’s most expensive cities. It was almost trivial, the way Taeyeon had organized its purchase. It was in one of Vancouver’s most exclusive downtown districts, and was all newly-constructed exposed wood and steel and glass, with a view overlooking False Creek. She wasted no time in filling it with lavish furniture and fixtures, all of it arriving and being set up and installed almost at a whim. You’d come home from the gym or the office or drinks with friends and there it would be - a new designer side table, or art piece, or ridiculously expensive coffee maker that would soon become something you couldn’t live without. 

A small part of you chafed at all the extravagant expenses, feeling uncomfortable amidst all the opulence - but as the seasons changed, you became more and more used to this new life.

Four years passed. Four more birthdays, four more Christmases.

You only rarely heard about her - a brief mention of her name during a Town Hall meeting or company newsletter, if that. But you never spoke, never interacted, not since the day in her apartment when she’d walked into her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She was on the other side of the planet. And it seemed, more and more with each day, that she’d moved on. The month you spent together seemed far off, becoming more and more of a memory than a what-if.

Life went on. Taeyeon was there. She wasn’t, not anymore. 

To many it seemed you’d made it. Gorgeous, successful girlfriend; Vice President within your company; ridiculously expensive penthouse apartment to come home to every night. 

Life seemed perfect. You almost let yourself believe it was true.

---

From across the well-decorated, extravagant ballroom, he seemed almost ridiculously normal.

And yet there he was - the man from all the stories that had constantly circulated throughout the office. The same man who’d brought down YG, who’d engaged in the kind of corporate espionage that wouldn’t have been out of place in the movies or in some triple A stealth action game. And yet here he was - an average, normal looking dude.

To be fair, he certainly seemed to be winning at life, if the people surrounding him were any indication. In his arms is a bundle of soft white cotton, within which was his new son. His wife, the almost equally legendary Hirai Momo, is greeting the latest of the arrivals to her baby shower - a delegation of three women, one of which you recognized from earlier that afternoon as Choa Park, director of the London office. JYP himself, CEO and President of the company that bears his name, is chatting away with him like an old friend about the recent trades the Vancouver Canucks have made in the offseason, and whether they would be enough to propel the team into the playoffs.

“Guy’s got it made,” you say out loud. Taeyeon, next to you, lets out a sound under her breath that sounded close to approval.

“Guy deserves it, if even half the things he did overseas that year is true,” she states, matter-of-factly. She takes another sip of her champagne, and you both watch as a new pair of women approach Momo and her husband, exchanging warm hugs and pleasantries before revealing the matching engagement rings on their left hands to shouts of joy that quickly spread throughout their little group.

Every attendee in the hall orbits Momo, her husband, and the new baby - rightfully so, you thought, it being her baby shower and all. They vie for her attention or that of the little bundle of joy in her husband’s arms - or both. You’d had a long day in the office and you were more than willing to sit back and nurse your glass of whiskey rather than actively engage in the festivities. As happy as you were for Momo and her new family, you were looking forward to making an early exit from the event and spending the rest of the night at home, unwinding.

You are watching another new pair of women approach the happy family - a short, tattooed woman and an elegant looking woman walking hand-in-hand - when a woman’s voice calls out Taeyeon’s name.

“Paging Miss Taeyeon Kim,” says the soft, melodic voice, which belonged to one Suzy Bae. The Director of Human Resources looked lovely in a slim, backless emerald green dress, the smile on her lips warm and polite in the way that those belonging to HR staff usually are. You’d always had the impression that there was a kind of sadness behind her corporate-approved smile, although you’d never had the chance to figure out whether your hunch was correct or not.

Taeyeon returns Suzy’s smile before the Director continues.

“Hirai would like to have a chat,” she states, “now, if possible.”

Taeyeon gives you a nod. “Duty calls,” she states, before leaving her champagne glass on your table and leaving arm-in-arm with Suzy, one of her only real friends in the company.

You watch as the two approach Hirai, but before they reach her, the Vice President’s attention is stolen by yet more new arrivals.

One is a blur of neon pink hair and a loud screech that somehow passed for a greeting - Sakura Miyawaki. Kazuha followed closely behind, composed and refined as always in a conservative black dress. 

The Tokyo office. Which could only mean--

At the entrance to the ballroom, framed by the light of the hallway outside, was Ryujin Shin.

---

Your heart leaps to your throat, and for a moment there is an ache in your chest, as though you’d been physically struck.

You consider, for a moment, hoping she hadn’t seen you and disappearing into the crowd - but it’s too late for that. Her eyes find yours across the ballroom, and you see that same flash of fear and hesitation in her that you no doubt had plastered all over your face.

But it softens. Quickly. For a moment she looks sad, forlorn, as if she, too, was hit with the same unnamable ache in her chest. It’s only there for a moment, but you don’t miss it. She replaces it swiftly with a polite smile.

It stings, how casual her smile is, as though you were just another work colleague she hadn’t seen in a while, and not the woman you’d spent a month falling in love with. 

She’s wearing a short black dress, similar but not identical to the one she wore during that stupid networking event in Seoul - a lifetime ago. Another life. Her hair is a dark crimson now, falling around her bare shoulders in loose waves the color of spilled wine, framing a face slightly slimmer but still possessing the youthful charm that made her so ridiculously attractive four years ago. 

She steps towards you, right hand raised tentatively in a small, friendly wave. Her heels sound impossibly loud on the hardwood of the ballroom floor despite the jazz quartet playing in a corner, each one bringing her closer and closer to you, each one making you feel something between fear and longing.

Your legs suddenly feel like they’re made of gelatin, but you do your best to remain upright. You’d known that her presence tonight was a possibility, especially given Hirai’s relationship with Sakura, but you’d assumed that the crowd would be larger, or that you and Taeyeon could have made an early exit, or that--

“Hi,” she says, the first word she’s said to you in four years, and somehow with that single syllable the ache in your chest widens, deepens, and begins the gradual transition into pain. 

“Hey,” you manage.

Silence reigns for a few moments longer than you wanted. You stare at your champagne, and her at ruckus Momo and Sakura’s reunion has caused within the group at the center of the banquet hall. 

“Your, uh, your hair-” you stammer.

“Yeah,” she says, too quickly, eager to end the awkwardness. “Is it nice? I think it’s nice. Sakura said it’s ‘sooooo 2017’.”

“Funny, coming from her.”

There is silence for another moment, but this time your eyes meet. There is something there, in those dark chestnut pools, that you want to capture and keep and never give away. She gives you a smile - small, awkward, unsure, but genuine.

“It’s good to see you,” she says, finally, voice small.

Her words break you and fill you all at the same time. So warm, and yet so casual.

“It’s good to see you too, Ryujin.”

Her name on your lips sends a little shiver up her spine that she hopes you don’t notice - but it’s there, in the little quiver of her lips, the glimmer in her eyes that speak of too many lonely nights in her Tokyo apartment wishing she could hear it again.

“So how’s uh…” you begin. “How’s-”

“Trucks to trains?” she says, smile a little looser now, a little freer, now that you’d given her a mundane topic to speak on. “Went great. We wrapped up the last contracts in the last quarter.”

“Went?”

“Yeah. Now we just sit back and wait for the cash to roll in so I can rub it in Taeyeon’s face,” she says with a small grin - that small, sly little grin you used to know well.

The mention of her name causes your eyes to snap, involuntarily, towards Taeyeon’s last known direction. She’s deep in conversation with Momo now, the topic likely work-related, if her rigid posture were anything to go by.

“Speaking of which,” Ryujin says. “I hear you two are-”

“-yeah,” you finish. “It, uh, kinda just happened. Not married, or anything. Just… yeah.”

Ryujin nods, but there’s a flicker of something between surprise and hurt on her features. She does her best to hide it, and most people would’ve missed it, but you knew her better than most people. She smiles, but there’s no joy in it.

“Got it. You two were meant to be, anyway.”

You shrug, unwilling to give voice to a confirmation. “And you?”

A moment passes. Her eyes are locked on yours, as though she were surprised by your question, or didn’t quite know how or if to answer it. Then she smiles. “There’s a guy,” she admits, as she takes a champagne flute from a passing waiter’s tray.

It’s then that you notice that the silver chain that she was never without is missing from her wrist. Its absence makes you wonder for a moment - and what could have happened in the past four years that might have caused it. Another story, another part of her life you had no insight into.

While you are wondering about the chain, you realize that on the ring finger of her left hand is a glimmering diamond.

---

The conversation flowed easier from then on, even if a part of your chest ached every time she raised her glass to her lips or brushed stray locks of hair from her temple, because it brought that ring on her finger into your view. She shares anecdotes from life in Tokyo, talks about how the best places to get vintage games is in the used goods stores in the suburbs and not those in Akihabara; about how the coffee is so much better there but her first sip of a Tim Horton’s double double this morning almost gave her an orgasm; about how she feels like she’s baking alive in the almost 40 degree Tokyo heat come summertime.

Every story, every tale about the past four years of her life hurts just a little more than the last. Here was a woman who you had no trouble imagining the rest of your life with - and she was out there living that life without you. You wanted nothing more than to have been there with her -  digging for that copy of Lunar: Silver Star Story in a bin of used games; sharing coffee at a small hole-in-the-wall coffee shop in Nakameguro; fanning each other in vain as you struggle with a broken air conditioner in July.

But that life belonged to someone else. And the diamond on her ring seemed to remind you of it with every glimmer of light it caught in its many facets.

“What about you?” she asks, ignorant of the internal battle being waged in your chest. “How’s life dating the queen of JYP?”

“Great,” you answer, quicker than you would have anticipated, answering almost out of reaction and instinct rather than genuine thought. “Great,” you repeat, as though wanting to convince her or you, you weren’t sure. “She’s great. We… have a place. On Homer Street. By False Creek.”

“Wow,” she says, trying to appear surprised and impressed even when it was obvious not a bone in her body was either surprised or impressed. “Fancy.”

“Yeah,” you force. “But who knows where we’ll be soon. Taeyeon took over for Hirai while she was on maternity leave, and we promised each other we’d do the executive thing for a year. But now that Hirai’s coming back, we might do something different. Maybe travel? Something quieter, something less intense. Taeyeon’s promised me we’ll do something I want to do. Maybe we’ll sell mini donuts at the fair. Who knows,” you quip, earning a smile from Ryujin.

“Nice. Let me know when you open up your stand. I like the ones with sprinkles. Oh, and the ones dipped in caramel. Those are an S-tier mini donut if there ever was one.”

You let a small chuckle escape your lips despite yourself. When she doesn’t immediately continue the conversation, you find yourself in silence again - but this time you are oddly okay with it, the seconds seeming to pass slowly as you look into each others’ eyes. You aren’t sure what she sees in yours, but in her eyes you see the girl that you spent one of the best chapters of your life with.

You’re stirred from your reverie by the sound of someone testing a mic. You hold Ryujin’s gaze for a moment longer before you both turn your attention to the small, raised stage at one end of the hall, where Momo has approached the podium with her husband and child.

“This on? Suzy? Am I-” Momo begins, until Suzy gives her a thumbs up from the corner of the stage. “Great. Good evening, everyone,” she begins, bright and radiant in the way that new mothers are. “Thanks for coming. My little brat appreciates it. My kid does too.”

The crowd gives a small, polite chuckle. Her husband turns the baby in his arms towards the crowd, and the baby wriggles his hands and feet to a chorus of “awws.”

“As you know, I’ve been away from the company for the past year giving birth to and taking care of this little one,” she continues. “Thankfully the company has been doing great-”

“Hell yeah we have!” comes a shout from JYP himself, to a healthy dose of diplomatic laughter from the audience.

“-and that’s thanks mostly to the work of Taeyeon Kim, who’s been filling in for me as Senior Vice President!”

Momo extends an arm towards Taeyeon, who is waiting at the edge of the stage with Suzy. The crowd gives her a healthy, if reserved, round of applause.

“Well,” Momo continues, “I have a little announcement that I hope you’ll all enjoy. I know you’re all just waiting with baited breath for me and my husband to come back to the company, but you’re all going to have to put up with Taeyeon a little longer, because she’s agreed to continue in the SVP role while my husband and I - and our little brat - go on extended sabbatical. Two years, maybe three - as long as Mr. JYP himself will let us!”

“Take as long as you want!” JYP himself answers, to cheers and laughs from the crowd.

Momo continues her speech. She thanks everyone for coming. She shares stories and jokes about her husband, her child, and motherhood. 

All you see is the way Taeyeon avoids your gaze.

---

“Wait. Stop. Let’s just fucking talk about this-”

You spin on your heel. The audacity. The gall. You step up close to her.

“No, Taeyeon. The time to talk about this was before you decided to stay on with that title for the next three years.”

You turn and continue towards the waiting Uber. Taeyeon follows.

“Listen-”

“No, you fucking listen to me, Taeyeon,” you snap, turning to face her again. Your hands ball into fists, and it took more self-control than you would care to admit not to grasp her by the shoulders and shake sense into her. Every inch of you brims with anger. It makes you tremble. “You asked me to do this executive thing for one year. One year. Then you promised me - you fucking promised me, Taeyeon! - you promised me that we would stop and do something that wasn’t wasting away the best years of our lives as slaves on the fucking corporate ladder.”

She holds your gaze. Her hands, like yours, are fists at her side. She is small and tiny here, in her short dress and outside the fancy hotel ballroom and on the street, but she holds her ground. Composed. Like she always was, even a part of you wanted her to explode and shout and fight you - because then at least you would’ve known it meant something to her.

You’d been waiting forever for that moment, you realize. For that moment for her to choose emotion - choose you - over logic. Over her work. Over a title.

“You promised me,” you say, one more time, the words heavy in the air between you. “And I stayed, because I thought you’d keep that promise. Because you were building a life with me, or because - fuck me - maybe you were as much in love with me as I was with you.”

That’s it - that’s when the first crack in her armor appears. It’s small, subtle. But it’s there. She crosses her arms, now, as though to plug the gap and ensure it didn’t widen. For a moment she looks away. Her eyes linger over the space between you.

“Listen, I-”

“No,” you state, as firmly as you can, given the lump in your throat and the aching emptiness in your chest that Momo’s announcement left there. “No, Taeyeon. I spent most of the years I’ve known you listening to you. I spent it watching you choose a title over me once. And when we got back together I thought, just one more year. Fuck, maybe finally she’ll choose me - choose us -  over another promotion.”

Silence. She looks up at you again. For a second, there is a quiver in her glassy eyes, as though the great Taeyeon Kim might actually shed a tear or submit to emotion over logic. You want her to say something. You beg her.

“But here we are, Taeyeon,” you continue, when she says nothing. “And you chose the title over me. Again.”

You turn and open the Uber’s door, climbing into the back seat. The car peels away from the curb, leaving Taeyeon there alone.

---

Taeyeon handled it like she did most things in her life - efficiently.

It took a single day, all in all. You got a knock on the door of your new apartment one morning and the movers started piling the boxes in neat stacks in your empty living room - each one filled with all your belongings, neatly packaged and labelled. Neatly folded clothes, your PS5 and gaming computer, your mountain bike and snowboard.

It took her less than eight hours to completely erase all trace of you from the apartment you shared. Her lawyer sent you a PDF to electronically sign that same day, finalizing the 50:50 split of everything you owned jointly - investments, season tickets for the Canucks chief among them - except for the Audi, which she gave you, and now sat in your parking space in the garage. Maybe she didn’t want to drive around in a car that you picked out. Maybe she couldn’t be bothered to spend time removing the mountain bike rack. You didn’t have a couch or even a bed, but at least you had a luxury SUV. Lucky you.

When the movers finished before noon, you took a few minutes to peel off the egregious amount of packing foam and moving tape they’d wrapped around your gaming chair - the only thing you currently owned resembling something to sit on - and cracked open a beer. 

You’d taken a few days off work - Suzy was kind enough to explain it to the board as a “family emergency,” and quickly found and settled on a small but comfortable apartment in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood. You’d had to call in a few favors with friends in real estate to fast track the paperwork, but you were willing to do anything to get away from Taeyeon. The mere thought of returning to your shared apartment to gather your things filled you with dread - until, thankfully, she decided to take care of it for you. Efficient, as always. You expected nothing less from the Senior Vice President of JYP Inc.

You wonder if she felt anything as the movers came in and took your things. If she did, she probably hid it well, behind her armor. She was good at that.

---

The next day you’re putting your new desk together and cursing the fact that your set of allen keys was likely buried somewhere in the cardboard fortress that still took up most of your living room when there’s a knock on your door. As you get up your bare foot lands on a stray screw, sending a sharp spike of pain up your heel. Thankfully it doesn’t break the skin. Small mercies.

You hobble over to the door. Probably a furniture delivery. Hopefully it was your bed. Your back was not a fan of the inflatable camping mattress you slept on last night.

It’s Ryujin.

In her hands are a couple of paper bags, one of which clearly carried green glass bottles. 

She looks at you - messy clothes, favoring a leg, messy hair - complete mess. She is about to say something, decides not to. She smiles, crookedly, as though she is stifling a laugh at your present condition. That told you all you needed to know.

You smirk, open the door fully, and let her in.

---

You’re sitting in the middle of the cardboard box fortress, sharing soju and rice crackers on the floor, when she asks.

“So,” she begins, throwing another cracker into her mouth. “The fuck happened to you?”

You let a breath out through your nostrils and smile, despite yourself. You empty your glass, and Ryujin quickly refills your glass.

Vancouver’s golden hour sunset makes the ring on her left hand glimmer.

“She did what she does,” you answer, vaguely. You look up at her and assume that she needs further detail than that, but you can tell by the look in her eyes that she doesn’t. She understood exactly what you meant, even when you didn’t actually say the words.

“What did you want to do?” she says, carefully, as though she were afraid of poking a fresh wound. “I mean, if she hadn’t chosen work over your sorry ass. Again.”

You shrug, taking a cracker and nibbling on it. “Move to New York? Stockholm? Manila? Fuck around, maybe get married and have brats of our own because we’re bored?”

“Taeyeon having kids. They’d be born wearing pantsuits.”

You let out a laugh under your breath. “She’d have quarterly KPIs for them to meet in pre-school.”

You’re both quiet for a few minutes. She downs the rest of her glass of soju, and you refill her glass only to find the bottle empties mid-pour. You crack open the next one. Ryujin gives you a moment, letting you choose to continue - if you wanted. The silence isn’t heavy or oppressive. It’s easy.

“She told me everything she did was for us - the late nights, the relentless climb up the corporate ladder,” you begin. “But it was never for us. It was for her career. I was just an accessory. Can you believe it? Me, a trophy boyfriend.” Ryujin smiles and plays with the rim of her soju glass, fingertips tracing the edge. “Did you love her?”

“Yes,” you answer, after a moment spent staring at the clear alcohol in your glass. “But the more I think about it, the more I realize maybe I was in love with the girl I’d convinced myself she was. A girl that would pick me over her career, once it was all said and done. But fool me once…”

You down your glass. Ryujin re-fills it, spills a little over on the floor, but doesn’t bother moving to clean it up.

For a few moments there’s silence between you. Rice crackers are chewed upon, soju swallowed. 

“How long?” she asks, quietly, as though the words took every ounce of her willpower to say. “How long after we-”

“A while,” you answer, sparing her the trouble of finding the words. The mood shifts. The silence gets a little weightier. “You… wanted to end things, Ryujin. She was there. I thought you moved on. I thought it was clean.”

Ryujin nods. She stares at her glass. 

“It wasn’t clean to me,” she says.

You look at her, but her eyes are cast down at the floor, and she doesn’t look back. Perhaps she is afraid of what would happen if she did. Perhaps she was afraid of showing you what was there in her eyes.

“I had it in my head that you were going to show up at the airport,” she begins, voice starting strong but quivering slightly as the words left her mouth. But she continues, bravely. “Or maybe you’d booked a seat on the plane and you’d get up and sit next to me, because you decided to transfer along to Tokyo with me, and we’d spend the next three years living together in Tokyo. Or maybe you’d show up at Haneda. Or at Tokyo Station…”

Her voice breaks, as though each word cost her a piece of herself to say. She brings a hand to her mouth, covering her lips, gathering herself.

“Kazuha had to pull me out of bed those first couple of weeks,” she admits, softly, the quivers in her voice more apparent now. She sniffles, choking back emotion. “Then for a while I convinced myself you’d show up at the Tokyo office one day with a bouquet of roses. Maybe you were delayed, y’know? Maybe you had some trouble with HR arranging your transfer to Tokyo for the project.”

She lets out a sound that is somewhere between a laugh and a whimper. She wipes a tear from her eye before it has a chance to fall, and seeing it makes your chest hurt. 

“Stupid,” she says, taking a sharp, wheezy inhale. “I was stupid. So stupid. I wanted a clean break and you gave it to me and it broke my fucking heart.”

Your lip quivers, the way it does when your heart aches. You look at her and you want to gather her into your arms and kiss her and chase away her pain and heartache. But you don’t. You can’t, because she’s not that woman anymore. She’s not yours.

“I’m sorry, Ryujin,” you say, eventually. “Those first few weeks… they were hell for me too.”

She nods. She wipes away another tear before it breaks free of her eyelid. You had to touch her - had to do something - and you reach out with your right hand. She sees you, with your outstretched hand, and for the first time in a long while she makes eye contact. Her eyes are glassy. The smile on her lips is a sad, broken thing.

She reaches out with her left hand and grasps yours. You squeeze it for a moment, but the ring on her finger makes you pull your own hand away.

“Your fiance won’t like that you’re having drinks at the apartment of a guy you used to fuck,” you say, softly, with a smile, to make sure she knew you were joking.

Ryujin looks at you for a moment, searching, as though she were incredulous that you would try and make a joke right now. But eventually her lips curl into a smile. She straightens out her fingers on her left hand, eyes fixated on the ring.

She laughs, and twists the ring off her finger.

“He would be, if he were real.”

She tosses the ring at your chest. It’s cheap pot metal, the “diamond” actually clear plastic.

You reach for her hand, examining her ring finger. No tan, no indent - she hadn’t been wearing it for very long. She hadn’t been wearing any ring there at all.

“I bought it at Haneda on my way here,” she admits. “Wanted to piss you off. Make you jealous. Show you what you missed out on. But…”

“...but?”

She laughs, despite herself, washing her face with her palms as though ashamed.

“Ah, fuck,” she sighs. “The second I saw you I wanted to tear it off my hand. So stupid-”

You kiss her.

You were moving before she’d even finished her sentence, crawling across the floor and pressing her lips against hers. She is surprised, caught off guard - but it takes only a second for her to ease into the kiss, lips opening and tongue finding yours.

The tension between you snaps, shatters under the weight of your mutual need for each other - for lust, yes, but also for comfort, for a reminder of what once was before the world decided to send you to opposite sides of it.

Her hands find their way into your scalp, and suddenly she’s falling onto her back on the hardwood floor, your lips and the tongues duelling all the while. You break the kiss for a moment, and your eyes find each other. You will the words to appear and you get the sense that she is doing the same - but the moment passes without one being spoken. She lets her actions speak for you both, pulling you to her mouth and kissing you again.

You break the kiss, wanting to have more of her. You delve into her neck and she hisses your name into the air between your teeth. She’d said your name more than once since you’d reunited but not like this, not the way she used to - half breath, half gasp.

Before you know it she’s pulling her wool sweater off, revealing the modest bralette she wore beneath. She’s slimmer now, a little more toned than she was four years ago, and the sight of her body steals the breath from your lungs. She watches you take her in and giggles, reaching for the hem of your t-shirt and pulling it over your head.

When you return to her neck it’s hotter now, more passionate, the increased skin-to-skin contact between your upper bodies making every touch feel like electricity. You place messy, rushed kisses down her neck and upper chest and collarbone, and before you know it she’s arching her back and reaching behind her to undo her bra. The garment sags on her when she undoes the clasp and she practically tears it off her body.

Her small, soft breasts give the slightest bounce when her back hits the floor again - and the sight of her makes your mouth water. 

Her hands - which have found their way into your hair, nails digging into your scalp - pull you down to her. 

You find her left nipple first, the one she told you on a warm afternoon in Seoul was the more sensitive one, and latch onto it with your lips. Your tongue darts out to flick her sensitive bud and the sound that it tears from her throat sounds like relief and pleasure and something more, something deep and primal. You suckle deeply from her, tongue weaving random patterns atop her stiff bud, your other hand capturing her other nipple and pinching and rolling the nub between your index finger and thumb until it too is taut with pleasure.

She’s writhing on the floor now, lower body moving restlessly, capturing your hips between her warm thighs and pressing herself against you. You can feel the heat of her on your own thigh, knowing that she was probably already dripping.

Your hands slide down her side, catching on the waistband of the small black skirt she wore. Through the pleasured haze your suckling on her breasts has brought upon her, she quickly finds the skirt’s zipper beneath the small of her back. Her back arches off the floor again, pushing her breasts further into your mouth, and allowing her room to pull her skirt - and the drenched panties beneath - off her hips and down her legs. 

You take a second to take her in - naked, needy, wanting. Her cheeks are flushed, hips still writhing, still needing you between them. You glance down, at the glistening, slick flesh between her thighs as she spreads them and allows you between her legs.

“Fuck me,” she says, a hiss, a whisper - something you’d heard her say many times before but never like this, never so soft, so vulnerable. “Please,” she adds, as she pulls you down for a kiss. “Please, I need you--”

You reach to pull your sweatpants down just far enough to free your cock. It bounces free of your boxers and glances against the slick flesh of her cunt and that first contact is enough to wrench a wispy, breathy gasp from both of your lips. You grasp your aching shaft and bring your tip to her dripping entrance.

“Please,” she hisses, and then you push forward, and you’re inside her again.

You force your eyes open, despite the overwhelming desire to close them and simply savor the feeling of her tight cunt taking you - but you want to watch her, want to see what she looks like as she takes your cock again. Eyes closed, brow furrowed as if in pain, lips apart as a low, breathy moan leaves them - sublime. 

It’s uneven and wild, the rhythm you quickly find and settle into, as you fuck her on the floor of your new, messy apartment. The unresolved history between you, the empty void of four years you spent apart, the lingering ghost of what might have been and question of what still could be - it’s all still there - but it fades for just a moment. Right now it’s the feeling of her body taking you in that matters, and that sensation is all consuming.

She’s tight and wet, so tight and wet around you. You still remember what she felt like four years ago - how could you forget? - but she somehow feels even better now, as if her body remembered what you felt like, how you stretched her, and was waiting for you to return to it.

She hisses your name into your ear. “Oh god,” she spits. “Oh god, fuck me - fuck… for so fucking long, god--”

You only catch fragments of sentences - or perhaps she could only manage fragments - but the meaning is clear. She’d wanted you for so long, had waited for this moment for so long. 

Her nails dig into your scalp. Her thighs tighten around your waist, heels digging into the small of your back and butt. 

“Harder,” she says into your ear, and you obey, increasing your pace, thrusts gradually increasing in pace until you’re hammering her against the floor. The wet slap of skin on skin echoes in the empty living room, the raw, carnal sound echoing against the cardboard boxes and half-assembled furniture.

“So big, stretching me out, fuck-” she sighs, pulling your head from where it had settled in the crook of her neck so you’re in front of her now, face-to-face, every thrust sending a stiff vibration through her body. “Needed you, needed this--” 

“Fuck, Ryujin,” you spit, between gritted teeth. She was so tight, so slick around you. “Still so fucking tight for me.”

“Yes,” she answers, immediate. “Just for you, fuck, just for you. Fuck me, okay? Fuck me-”

You silence her with a rough, violent kiss, hard teeth clashing against soft lips and causing spikes of pain that lend the pleasure more sharpness. You break the kiss and raise your upper body with your arms, placing your palms flat on either side of her head.

What a view - her slim, tight body beneath you, small breasts bouncing with each thrust, saliva-streaked nipples tight and taut; warm, flushed thighs spread wide; the slick, pink lips of her cunt taking you in and squeezing tightly around you on the way out; her juices glistening on your shaft as it drills in and out of her, gathering and pooling on the wiry hairs at your base.

You relish the sight of her body, her lips, her eyes. She does the same. Her right hand grasps onto your left bicep, her nails of her free hand digging into your side as she tries to anchor herself against the pleasure building to a peak inside her.

“Gonna fucking cum,” she spits. Saliva drips down her chin, and her makeup runs. She doesn’t care. Doesn’t even notice.

“Cum for me,” you order, and almost as soon as the words leave your mouth, she does. 

Her body quivers, trembles, then goes rigid - then does it again. Her nails dig almost painfully into your side, and her heels pull you against her as though she were afraid you would pull out and leave her wanting. But you don’t, slowing but not stopping your pace, fucking her through her orgasm with slow but firm thrusts, elongating the length of each wave of pleasure that courses through her body.

You feel your own peak coming - quickly, far too quickly. Your arms give out, suddenly weak, and you find yourself back in the crook of her neck as the last aftershocks of her orgasm slowly fade from her. 

“Gonna cum, Ryujin,” you say into her ear, almost embarrassed at how quickly it was coming - but the time apart, the emotion, the spoken and unspoken words between you - it was all too much.

“Inside me,” she says, the same way she’d said it so many times in the past, but this time is different, is unlike all the others. “Fill me up, please. I’m yours, okay? I’m yours--”

Just as your words instantly brought about her orgasm, hers brings about yours - and before you know it you’re burying yourself as deeply as you can inside Ryujin Shin and letting your orgasm overtake your senses. You quiver, tremble, and go rigid - your cock pulses as it spurts thick, warm ropes of your semen deep inside her cunt and into her womb. 

“Oh god, yes, please,” she says, the words half-moan as she feels you cum inside her. “Yes, cum inside me, cum inside me just like that. Give it to me, Daddy please-”

Her old pet name for you breaks you, shatters what’s left of you. Your orgasm shakes you to your core, and you’re a trembling mess in her arms by the time you begin to recover. 

You raise your head from her neck to look at her. Flushed, eyes half-lidded, makeup messy - and somehow more beautiful than you’d ever seen her.

You want to say something, something that will resolve all the ghosts and make clear whatever future lay before you. But she smiles, warm and soft, and you realize there was no need for words with Ryujin. She knew what you were going to say, knew how you felt, even if you never gave those emotions a voice. 

In recent days you’d found yourself searching for words that were always somehow eluding you. The emotion is there, but the articulation of them wasn’t. 

The words you need are in the kiss she gives you.

---

You both spend a few minutes there, cuddling naked on the floor of your apartment, surrounded by cardboard boxes and soju bottles, sharing kisses and making jokes, fingertips tracing idle patterns on each others’ skin as though trying to etch the feeling of each others’ bodies into your memories - or perhaps trying to re-learn the same. 

It’s quiet for a moment as her eyes find yours, and before you know it her hand, which was cradling your cheek, is pushing you gently onto your back. 

She’s on you before you know it, thighs cradling your hips. You can feel the wet heat of her above your cock, the soft drip of your cum or her juices falling from her open, cum-filled cunt and onto your crotch. She grinds on you, the lips of her cunt splayed on either side of your rapidly hardening shaft, coating it in a slick sheen of juices.

Throughout it all she doesn’t say a thing - just lets her body and that unspoken connection between you speak for her.

Her brow wrinkles, her eyes shut, and her lower lip curls under a tooth as the first spikes of pleasure begin to work their way up her spine and into her brain. When you’re fully stiff she reaches between you, points your tip at the pink, slick lips of her pussy, and slides you inside her.

She begins to ride you - slowly, passionately. Your hands find their way to her hips and stay there, not pulling her down or guiding her, just touching her, anchoring yourself to her. You let her lead the way, let her find her own pleasure, at her own pace.

You take her in - the sight, the feel, the sound of her. She’s small - she’s always been small - but toned, now, slim and tight. The fading sunlight of the afternoon highlights the ridges and curves of her body - her round, small breasts and the taut nipples atop them, the flex of her abs, the fullness of her thighs. 

She moves with a grace and flow that takes your breath away with each movement, her full hips moving softly and slowly upward as you slide up and out and away from her, only to drive herself down and forward with a little more force as she takes you into her cunt. Her hips move in slick, slow gyrations. Every twitch, every movement sends another quiver of pleasure up your spine.

“Yes, Daddy,” she says, eyes finally opening. Her hands dig into your chest, her upper arms bringing her tits together into a delicious looking cleavage. “Fuck, you feel so good, stretching me-”

“You feel better, baby,” you reply. Your hands dig a little deeper into her hips, fingers clutching at her soft flesh, slowly pulling her toward you with each gyration of her hips, no longer able to contain the need for more of her, faster, harder.

“Can feel… fuck, can feel your cum inside me. I’m so full of your cum already, Daddy. Can feel you pushing it deeper inside me-”

“Ryujin-”

“Fuck,” she snaps, reaching between your bodies, her fingers finding her slick clit and teasing it. “Gonna cum on your cock, Daddy. Are you- are you gonna watch me cum?”

“Yes, baby-”

“--Fuck!”

Ryujin Shin shatters atop you, body trembling as she momentarily loses control of it. Her cunt pulsates around your shaft and for a moment you think you might cum there and then. Your hands tighten even further around her hips, surely leaving bruises for tomorrow - and you do your best to keep your eyes open, watching the orgasm course through her tight little body, watching her go rigid and tense for a long moment before loosening and falling to a heap atop you.

You kiss, passionately. She breathes heavily into the kiss and into your mouth, suddenly exhausted. You don’t give her long to recover. The hands on her hips slowly push her off your cock, and you both let a sigh out at the sudden emptiness.

You guide her onto her hands and knees, rising to take up position behind her. No words, no pausing to give her time to catch her breath - not when your need for her was so strong. You take your slick shaft in your hand and point your tip at her and you’re inside her again, her cum-slick, tight heat welcoming you, taking you.

You’re fucking her again, quickly finding a fast and firm rhythm, the wet smack of your hips meeting her ass filling the room. Your hands clutch at her hips and waist, pulling you back against her - and soon she’s doing the same, throwing herself back onto you, meeting you thrust for thrust.

“Fuck, Daddy, feels like, fuck, like-- feels like--”

“Use your words, baby girl,” you say, giving her ass a firm smack that leaves the full cheek reddened.

“Feels like… fuck, like you’re pushing your cum deeper inside me.”

Her words tear a sound that feels like a growl from your throat.

“Do it, Daddy,” she continues, looking back over her shoulder with fierce, needy eyes. “Do it, okay? I can feel your cum inside me, in my fucking womb, making me yours-”

The wet slap of skin on skin increases in pace. 

“God, I want it,” she hisses, eyes still not leaving yours. Spit drips from her lips. Her eyes want, plead. “I want it so bad. Want you to breed me, please, so I’ll have part of you in me always-”

You reach forward, grasp her hair, pull her upright - until her back is pressed against your chest. One hand wraps around her torso, claiming her breast in your palm, squeezing tightly - the other grasps her bruised hip tightly as you continue to fuck her. Juices - your cum, her arousal - drip from her overflowing cunt and onto the floor beneath you in heavy, slick drops.

“Yes, Daddy please,” she begs. “Breed me. Do you- do you feel… your cum, already inside me? I want more, Daddy please, give me more, cum inside me again I’ll be good, please, I’ll be so good for you, Daddy please--”

Your orgasm hits you all at once, without warning. You bury yourself inside her and lose yourself to her. Your cock quivers and pulses inside her, filling her already cum-filled cunt with another load of thick, warm semen.

You hug her tight against you, hand squeezing her breast almost painfully, the other surely leaving bruises on her hip that she’ll feel tomorrow. You empty yourself inside her - every part of you, every lonely night you spent in the last four years wishing she were there next to you. She sighs and moans as you fill her for the second time and there is nothing you want more in the world than to stay there, in that moment, joined with her in the most intimate way possible.

Your strength gives out, eventually - muscles burning with effort for a few moments too long. You release her, reluctantly, from your grasp, and she falls forward onto the floor again. You join her, her back pressed to your chest, and gather her into your arms. She wraps her own arms over yours, as though making sure you weren’t going to let her go ever again.

---

The third time is softer than the others.

This was not about ownership, or possession, and really not as much about pleasure. It’s about the way she looks at you, the way her hands cradle your face as you move in and out of her body. It’s about the words that linger between you, unsaid and unspoken, but still somehow understood, as though you were communicating on some level other than the physical.

But she took it, translated the unsaid and turned it into emotion, the way no other woman in your life could.

She’s sore and leaking, and maybe already bruised from your hands and the hard floor, throat raw from moaning and sighing her pleasure into your apartment. You’re similarly sore, exhausted, drained. But none of that matters. All that matters is telling her with your actions what you never could with your words.

When she cums it’s softer, more subdued, but no less impactful on you. The way her back arches up off the floor, the way your name leaves her lips half-moan, half-gasp as the orgasm courses through her tired, exhausted body - it’s perfect. When you spill into her for the third time that night it’s far from the thick spurts you gave her earlier, but no less pleasurable.

She takes every drop. Her body is filled to the brim and the slickness between you, sweat and cum and her juices, drips onto the floor and binds you to each other. Her arms wrap around your neck and her legs around your waist like she’s afraid to let you go, as though she wants to take you and this moment and make it a part of her forever, make it a part of who she is.

You kiss her. When your faces part it’s her that wants to say something, wants to tell you how she feels. Her lips part, but like you, she cannot find the words. 

So you kiss her again, and remind her that between you there’s no need to speak.

---

She’s gone in the morning. 

There’s a note on the floor where she lay sleeping just hours before, hastily scribbled in her loopy, messy handwriting. 

We’re never fucking around moving boxes ever again.

P.S. Clean your floors and get a bed, you fucking neanderthal.

Beneath the note is her ring, cheap and plastic. It still glimmers in the sunlight.

---

“I wish you found a way to stay,” Suzy says, as she stares down at the formal resignation letter you’d handed her. She takes it and gives it a sad look before placing it atop another recently received letter atop her desk. “I suppose I can’t blame you, though. This is a case study in why you shouldn’t date co-workers, I guess.”

She stands, walks around her desk and gives you a warm hug. Suzy was a real and genuine person, and a small part of you would miss seeing her around the office.

“What are you gonna do now?” she asks.

“Not sure,” you answer, honestly. “But I’ll figure it out.”

You give her the best smile you can manage, pick up your suitcase from the floor next to your seat, and make your way out of JYP HQ for the last time. You don’t look back.

---

You’re stepping outside the front doors of the building when you see her standing there - an iced caramel macchiato in her hand, phone in the other. Next to her is her carry-on luggage.

“Hey,” you say, motioning towards her drink. “Thanks for not randomly spilling that on me.”

She blushes. “Fuck off,” she spits, but with a smile.

“Don’t you have a flight to Tokyo to catch?”

“Had one last meeting with HR this morning. My flight’s this afternoon,” she says. She takes a sip of her drink. “Heard you’re quitting. What are you going to do?” she says, eventually.

“No idea,” you admit. 

Ryujin nods to herself. “You’ll figure it out,” she says, eventually, with a small smile.

“What about you?”

She shrugs, takes another sip of her drink, and looks up at the imposing tower of glass and steel that made up the JYP HQ building. “You’re not the only one that’s breaking up with JYP. Sakura’s put in her two weeks notice. Sounds like Hirai recruited her for another off-the-books adventure. Her job’s up for grabs.”

“Wow,” you say, genuinely surprised. “Gonna take it?”

“Maybe,” she says, playfully swaying in place and shooting you that crooked, mischievous smile of hers.

“Kazuha doesn’t want it?”

She scoffs. “Kazuha wouldn’t want that job with a ten foot pole. I’m thinking about it, though. Ryujin Shin - Director, Tokyo Office,” she says, free hand fanning out in front of her as though picturing the title on a nametag or on a wall. “It has a nice ring to it.”

“It does,” you agree, a soft smile managing to perk up the corners of your lips.

The city bustles around you, but for a moment, it’s quiet between you. The space between you fills with unsaid words and thoughts, the way it often did around her. You look up at her and for several long moments you look into each others’ eyes.

For a moment you see it all - the moments in your relationship when things could have gone differently.

Maybe you could have remembered your ramen date, back when she was new to the company and you were her mentor; maybe you could’ve remembered who she was when she was assigned to be your translator for your trip; maybe you could have argued more to keep her in Vancouver instead of having her transferred to the other side of the ocean; maybe you could have stepped into her bedroom on your last night together, finding her door unlocked because she was hoping you would open it, and spend the night comforting her, telling her you could both leave the company and start all over again somewhere else - together; maybe you could have stopped her at the airport, or met her in Tokyo; maybe you could have reached out to her at some point in the four years that passed since.

You see all those different paths in a heartbeat, and you picture yourself in them, allowing yourself to wonder what might have been had you done this or that differently. Maybe you would both be living in Tokyo, and were about to catch the same flight this afternoon to the apartment you both called home; maybe you would have realized that you just weren’t the right fit for each other, and the resulting breakup would have been messy and painful for the both of you.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Ryujin’s phone vibrates in her pocket, and she slips it out of her pocket to check the notification. A message from Sakura or Kazuha? A text from a boyfriend back in Tokyo? You didn’t know. You didn’t much care.

Her eyes return to you. After a moment, she turns and heads toward the sidewalk, dragging her luggage behind her. 

She looks over her shoulder back at you. She smiles and calls out.

“I hear the ramen place a block from here makes a good tonkotsu!”

She continues to walk down the block.

You smile and follow her.

---

Author’s Note:

“Maybe it will be an epic poem. Maybe it will be a short story. Maybe it will be a dirty limerick. You don’t know, but part of the joy is finding out what it will be.”